Virtual pub night for former English students
Classmates from Latin America, Africa and Europe laugh, cry and swap lockdown stories
Last week, a local English language teacher hosted an online ‘pub night’ on the video-conferencing site Zoom to re-unite classmates who attended language schools in Cambridge.
Former students from Latin America, Africa and Europe chatted, swapped stories of the lockdown in their country and reminisced about their time studying in Cambridge.
Robert Coe from English language teaching company englishincambridge.com said: “We used to meet every Thursday night at the Hop and Grain Store on Regent’s Terrace to interact socially, play pool and, of course, have fun and practice English”
“With the worldwide lockdown, everyone has been trying to find ways to escape the boredom and I dreamt up the idea whilst chatting with a few former students one evening on Skype.”
“I advertised the event on Facebook with a few old photos and the interest was really good. We met at the same time as we used to, 8pm on a Thursday, and we chatted, laughed, cried and some even drank a beer.”
The students from Venezuela, Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Switzerland, Peru, Costa Rica and Italy all had their own stories of lockdown in their own countries with some having to endure more severe restrictions than the UK.
However, it wasn’t all about the harsh realities of life under the coronavirus. Mr. Coe went on the say, “there was a lot of good humour, memories about the students’ time in Cambridge and some heart-warming stories.”
“Jose, who lives in the Amazon region of Peru said that with the absence of cars in his hometown and the resulting drop in pollution levels, he has seen birds on his balcony that he hadn’t seen since he was a child.”
Many students have gone on to lead interesting careers and some also decided to stay in the UK. “Carlos from Brazil now works for a UK-based IT company and Marty from Italy is a manager at the London Eye,” explained Mr. Coe. “Others work as phycologists, in the military, advertising and teaching”
Mr. Coe, who set up englishincambridge.com five years ago, explained that the local industry for teaching English as a second language has been severely affected with the temporary closure of all language schools. Local businesses like tour operators have also been hit and local residents can no longer expect to supplement their income by being host families to international students.
Mr Coe’s business has also suffered. “All of my 1to1 teaching is now online and fortunately that is still busy but I have lost out on my main business with students coming to Cambridge to study with me or at partner language schools.”
The virtual pub night will continue as long as the world is in lockdown and people need a way to occupy their time. “Next week, many more have said they will come. Students in the Middle East have promised to stay up late and a student in Japan even said she will be setting her alarm for 4am.”