Studio Cambridge

I went to Studio Cambridge - Sir George School. Established in 1954, Studio Cambridge is the oldest English language school in Cambridge, UK. Teachers were very friendly and they taught us with all their heart.

It has a two-store building, where we studied English language. We had a two weeks' course in advanced English. My teachers were Jessica and Dermot.

Mr. Dermot was very funny and serious at the same time. He had classes with us: me, a Korean guy, Arab, Japanese and many, many Swiss on the second week of our course in the afternoons. Everybody loved his lessons, because there was always some action on his lessons and we had fun learning English. You could never be bored there. Maybe his favourite phrase was "Don't worry, be happy", because he always said that. Everytime! We had to listen to some discussions and songs and write down the words and fill the gaps of missing words from songs. I rememeber he gave us a song about Van Gogh's picture that is called "Starry Night" and, even now, I listen to this song and I remember that exact lesson, when Dermot first gave us this exercise to listen to that song and fill in the gaps those missing words.

Once he had us partnered with someone from another country and we had to introduce our countries to each other and describe them so that the other person would want to come and visit our countries. I had to describe my country (Georgia) and my partner was from Switzerland and he had to describe his. I remember he gave this three main reasons: cheese, chocolate and the Alpes. I know, I know, who doesn't want to go to Switzerland! He didn't even have to give me those three reasons. Even no comment would be enough!

Jessica was our main teacher. We had our classes with her in the mornings. She lives there in Cambridge, but as she said, she had been teaching in some foreign countries and she had just come home in England when we got there. She was very active and sociable person and she taught us lots of things. She also worked with us on a school magazine, where we all had our "page" or "corner" and we wrote articles about some stuff we wanted. I chose culture and some of us chose sports, etc. We even watched movies and then we had to write about them, what we liked, what we didn't like, what was the main point in the movie and so on.

There were people from all over the world willing to study English better. There were Austrians, Swiss, Turks, Koreans, Germans, Japanese, Italians, Saudi Arabians, Argentinians… My classmates were Anna and Dennis(Germans), Alex, Alexis, Erick, Sabrina, Max (Swiss), Erika (Italian), Lee (Korean), Saudi Arabians and Japanese. I also made some friends there: Anna, Dennis, Erika, Alice and my teachers Jessica and Dermot, who were really lovely and friendly people.

While studying in Cambridge Sir George School, we made a newspaper with our teacher, Jessica. I made an article about graffiti and took an imaginary interview from Banksy, the most popular graffiti artist of UK and the whole world in fact.

Interview with Banksy

What do you think about graffiti? Is it art or is it only a way to get yourself known by people?

Graffiti art is an art form. Suppose that Leonardo, Monet, Picasso, or any of the recognized artisans of Western European culture were alive in the present day. Then, suppose that one of these famous artists decided to paint a masterpiece on the side of your house or on your front door or on a wall in your neighbourhood. Would Picasso or Monet's markings be graffiti or art or vandalism or graffiti art? The answer may vary across people, but I would claim that those markings are art in the form of graffiti. Their markings would qualify as vandalism only if they appeared on private or public property without permission. The same answer holds for the present day, genre of graffiti known as graffiti art.

How long have you been doing graffiti?

I’ve been doing graffiti for a long time, but I started as a freehand graffiti artist in 1992, after aerosol boom.

Is it easy to do graffiti? Why?

No, I don’t think it’s easy to make graffiti. It’s art. You can’t just go and paint something on the wall. I do my best to make graffiti. I use whatever it takes. Sometimes that just means drawing a moustache on a girl’s face on some billboard, sometimes that means sweating for days over an intricate drawing. Efficiency is the key.

Untold rules?

I can say, there aren’t rules in graffiti, but there sure are untold rules. They do exist. It’s like, you mustn’t make your graffiti on legend’s graffiti. You must respect other artists, and other. You really have to pay attention what you’re doing, that’s the untold rules.

What levels are there?

You usually start from Toy level. When you hit the walls and you’re really good then you get hated and so on. You have to practice all the time and then it all depends on what you bring on the table. It’s not easy, it’s really hard work.

Isn’t it a crime?

It depends on a situation. If you made graffiti on somebody’s property without their agreement, then it’s a crime of course. You need to know where you make graffiti.

Do you have a crew? What type of guys are in your crew?

I had a crew. My first crew was DBZ with Kato and Tes. They were my friends and we made graffiti together. Another one of my homeworks was to write something with a tittle "with lies you can get ahead the world, but you can never go back". So here is my essay:

Life is full of lies, but it may be white lies or lies that don't affect important things. You can tell lies without thinking what will happen in the future. So when that future comes, you won't be able to change your past. It will last forever. As one Georgian saying says, a lie had short legs. Your lies won't "live" forever. One day they will be discovered. So it's not really easy to live truthfully, but you mustn't build your life on lies, because then you can't change anything.

I asked my friends these two questions some days ago:

• What do you think about Cambridge?
• What experience did you get with studying there?

Alice:

I think Cambridge is a nice city. It's small but I like it. I wish I could study there at the King's College but it's too exepensive. Shopping in Cambridge is great too.

I met new people from a lot of different countries and I practised my English. It was the only time in mylife that I enjoyed going to class (mostly) and learning English.

Anna:

I think Cambridge is a fantastic place to study. There live a lot of friendly people and they’d also help you when you are in trouble or something like that. The weather was excellent too. The most people told me that there’d be lof of raining days but I think in this month when I was there and there were only approximate 6 raining days! The school was excellent and all the teachers I had were very friendly. For example when I was ill, Jessica helped me and in the afternoon there were very funny projects: magazine, the act Germany’s next topmodel... I don’t know if you was there when we did that... The atmosphere in our class was also very gooooood!

Now to the town. So there are a lot of greeeeeeeeeeen and beautiful parks. You can play there football and also do nothing and only lie on the grass and "enjoy" the time in Cambridge. And there are also a lot of good shops where you can go shopping!

The food was also okay! But I ate there a lot of rice ----> every day!

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