My experience in Europe FTC, London 2015

Hello everyone!

I wanted to tell my europe fct experience 2015 here from valencia in london.

I must warn you that my experience is negative enough maybe due to bad luck...?

I have approximately one month left in london but even in this case, I wanted to relate how my experience has been so far.

Let's begin from the beginning. After the trials, my name appeared in the website. I had been conceded this scholarship.

There had been several informative meetings in valencia after this. I must say that they provide all the information about the stay in london or in dublin. However, we had remained with the doubt of where we were going, how, when etc. For almost two months. (The group of the first period was published much later than had been foreseen, which can be very annoying if you have a job or you need to pay the rent... )

We received an e-mail with the date and hour to depart. W e were given our tickets in the airport. When we arrived in london, we found a guy waiting for us to lead us to a private bus (very luxurious) to take us to the meeting point where our host families were going to collect us. We arrived there at 22:00.

When we got to the meeting point, one organizer belonging to the organization that was in charge of our stay and job during these three months (twin centre) informed us about whom we were going to share the house/room. In my case, I did it with three girls (a total of four people).

When the rest of the group (about 25 people) had already been collected by their host families, we were still waiting in the street with our luggage and freezing (very much). after several trials to locate our "mother", the organizer decided to ask his neighbour to take us to our accomodation place in his tiny car and we were 4 girls with 8 pieces of luggage...

After arriving to our place, our "mother" was not at home. Two italian girls opened the door aged between 14-16 years old, who were also hosted there to study. These girls showed us the house. (This lasted for two minutes since the house was extremely small). they told us our experience, which was not very nice. We decided not to judge it and give it a try.

The woman got home. She was tremendously (it was scary) kind. We were led to our rooms. The room had two bunk beds and a little table. There was no wardrobe nor space to keep the luggage. Underneath the beds we found pop corn, a comb, one sock and much dust.

We four along with these two italian girls and our "mother" shared the bathroom. This bathroom had no mirror. The mirror was in the kitchen hidden behind all the plants that covered all the sideboard of the kitchen.

As we looked at the fridge, which was in the corridor next to the table to have lunch (whereas i used to have dinner at this table, I could enjoy a precious view of the toilet), we saw some out-of-date products and other which were unknown with mould.

The italian girls were right. Food was awful. Pasta was practically hard with some hairs.

This woman made sandwiches for us the next day (lunches had to consist of a sandwich, a drink hermetically closed and snakcs). each of us was given a sandwich. This sandwich had butter, lettuce, tomato and hair (right, more hair).

You must bare in mind as well that the rule that says "it will not take you more than one hour to get to your working place" will not be applied unless you are basically lucky.

We took the decision to make a complaint in the afternoon. We sent an e-mail to europe fct. Hitherto (2 months later) we did not have any response from them.

We were strongly determined to inform the organization twin centre greenwich. It. They listened to us and what they did was to call our mother host and to tattle about our complaints. This made our host mother get angry and we had a quite uncomfortable quarrel with her since our host mother had a very intimidating attitude. As it seemed that they were not going to change us and place us into another house, we decided to cope with the situation as much as we could. Nevertheless, it was difficult in that we fell sick due to the pasta. Our "mother" did not want to wash our clothes... She did it just once and it ended up stinking... The "clean" linen had mucus stuck on them, we remained a whole week without toilet paper... I presume you can figure the situation out.

We decided to complain again. The story repeated itself. Instead of helping us, they decided to tattle again and we had a bad time. After more than a week, a new twin worker helper, who really took it serious, helped us at last.

After a week, we moved! I am still in this house and i have no complaints at all!

Now the problem is the location of my job. I am working at a companny in camden town. This is two hours away from my home. It takes me almost 4 hours travelling per day. Twin does not really care about this.

Apart from travelling pretty much, I do not do absolutely anything. I do not get anything to work on. They did on my first days and afterwards they started not to care about me as they do with the other five students who are with me. Some of them spend the whole day watching videos of jersey shore and those things, others play games... They go out to smoke every hour. Bosses come and go into the office four times everyday "to do one thing". and of course i have asked them at least 50 times if there is anything else i can do or if i can assist them in any issue. However, they always respond to me by saying "one moment" and they never return and i end up getting tired of it.

Twin centre knows this. I informed them twice about my situation and...surprise. They made a calling to let the staff working at my office know that i am bored and to give me something else to do. In other words, they know you are not going to be changed but the do tell the staff that you get bored. Only to make a good impression to your bosses...come on!...

So here i am, still, in my "job" writing this, watching videos, reading, having teas...

I am not the only one who is or has been in such situation. There are plenty of people! I have seen students neglecting their scholarship even if the did not have a scholarship (directly paying twin centre and then you do not get your money back) and coming back to their countries because of the fact that they are in this poor situation without anybody who can help you.

Of course, there are people who are having a good time but this is a matter of luck rather than anything.

Conclusion: do not trust twin centre greenwich. They create a beautiful fancy world that does not exist and they will do their best in order not to spend much money on you. We are regarded as a financial transaction.

I also want to tell you that you can request for the rules for the host family. They will print them and there you will have everthing you must know about the rules and the conditions of accomodation.

Apart from that, I need to say that this experience was no doubt worthy. I have learnt a lot. Many things that i did not expect to learn here but which one has always time to learn about everything!

I hope this has served you and i wish you would have a nice stay and be a little bit luckier than me! And if you are not, do not give up! Complain, threaten them saying you will come back to spain... And whatever you need to say!

Regards!

c.