Student Comments - Marialuisa Stadelmayer

I am Marialuisa from Germany, 23 years old and a student of Business Administration. As English is the Business language and necessary for working in a big international company, I decided to improve my language skills in Canada. I have been always interested and curious about this country.

In the Internet I found the home page of the Vancouver English Center and I was immediately attracted by the BINT program.

After my trip, I can tell that this was the right decision and everything was like I dreamed of. First, Vancouver is a beautiful town with so much things to do. You can go shopping, hanging around at the beaches, or do exciting outdoor activities or trips to the Rockies or Vancouver Island. The cool thing in Vancouver are the many different cultures and people you will meet there.

I lived with a very nice Canadian family where I was totally involved. My home mum Glenda showed me places and arranged events that I would never have experienced as a normal tourist.

Also the coordinators in the school cared much about us. We got a good introduction on the first day and there was always a helping hand to get along with the new situation. In the classes I had a lot of possibilities to talk and I gained confidence in speaking and special knowledge of business language. After one month I was well prepared for the internship in the human resources company PCMG Canada. Like in the movies, I worked in a tower in downtown on the 29th floor in a very nice office. Everything was very exciting as I had my own little project to do. There my English got very fluent as I was involved in the company as any of the other colleagues. The work was very varying as I took part in a trade show and the company's own radio show. The VEC coordinator that chose this internship for me did a great job.

In conclusion, that trip to Vancouver was wonderful; and the best thing was I found lots of new friends from all over the world. Getting to know people from other countries is fun and widens your horizon. You will see some things in a different way, get more open minded and start new ideas. My next trips will be to Mexico and the Czech Republic to visit all of the nice guys I met in the VEC.

Marialuisa Stadelmayer
Germany

Work in Banff National Park.

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