Basically I have always liked the English language. An important factor for me is that in fact with English, you are able to trade with a lot of different nationalities. Trying to get my marketing degree was a factor that I had to keep in mind.
But I realised that staying 6 weeks in a foreign country was an opportunity. I had never been to the United Kingdom. So I concentrated my research on this country.
During my second year of study, I begin to search for a suitable work placement, for my third year. I picked up 4 different work placements. I thought that all was all right for this very important period of the third year. But when I received the convention, my different opportunities didn’t work any more! After 2 months of research, I received an email address from Mr Simon and a phone number of a company in Liverpool. There were 2 students who had the opportunity to work for him. The name of this company is Mando Group. Directly, I decided to send an email with my motivation letter and CV. After 2 weeks without an answer, I phoned the company! Actually, the person whose email address I had didn’t work there anymore.
After 2 emails, I received with pleasure the agreement for my work placement and the opportunity to rent a room in the boss’s house.
To be honest, I was SCA-RED! I have to tell you why. In fact, when I had stayed in different country, it was always in France or in Spain. So I didn’t have a language problem! But this time, I had to stay 6 weeks in a foreign country and live with some people whom I had never met.
One week before I left Belgium, I was excited to discover this new world for me. But on the day of my departure, it was very difficult to leave my mother and my girlfriend. But the worst was the waiting time during my second flight in London to Liverpool. During 5 hours, I thought about my English, this family, this new job, alone in an other country… It was horrible!
.... To be followed in the chapter 5.1 
....
Intituled When/Where happened
1. Honeymoon 
Departure’s week
2. Disorientation The departure day
3. Irritability/Hostility When I didn’t understand conversations
4. Adjustment/Integration In host’s house and at work
5. Biculturality At the end of the work placement
When I arrived in Liverpool John Lennon airport, Ian (Managing Director of Mando Group and my host) was waiting for me. From the start, he was very friendly and he spoke slowly. We arrived at John and Sally’s house. In fact, we lived the 6 weeks of my work placement in their house because Ian & Lou’s new house wasn’t finished. It was a beautiful and welcoming house. This house was never empty, you should know that John and Sally have 4 boys: Sam, Jo, Aaron and Josh. But Sam lives in his house with his wife; Aaron stays a lot of time in France for his architecture project and Josh stays the week in his university room. During the week, we were more or less 6 people in the house but on the weekend it was like a hostel. I am usually alone at home, it was nice to be surrounded by a lot of people. I had some unbelievable memories. In fact, they were so welcoming: we ate together every night, after that we watched TV or we went in the hot tub. I think that I’ll never forget the 19th April day. I told them: I was in such a bad mood because I felt British people are so cold. After 5 minutes, everybody in the family gave me a hug. It was intense. After this first hug, every morning I had a hug from this amazing family.
]]> www.mandogroup.com
Mando Group Ltd was founded on 1st September 1997. It is a creativity company, which specialises in web development and design consultancy. 10 years later, it has in customer portfolio companies like Sony, Motorola and Capcom. Nowadays, it has completed more than 500 different projects. With this amazing growth, everybody can understand how it received awards like:
2006: Bravo Award for Brand-Marketing-Communication Partnership (Mando Group and FACT)
2004: Best design and advertising agency (for the Legal Sector)
2004: The digital Accessibility Award
2004: Achieving Investor in People
(The Investors in People is a business improvement tool designed to advance an organization’s performance through its personnel)
Mando Group is composed of 6 departments (9 women and 23 men).
Indeed, every one of them is vital for Mando’s success:
A. Managing deparment
B. Marketing department
C. Corporate department
D. IT department (so funny department! Rock&Roll guys) 
E. Design department
F. Programming department
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I can’t say a lot about the old office because I only worked there one day. But I am able to explain how the new offices are better!
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Mando Group Ltd
32 Faraday Road
Wavertree Technology Park 
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Mando Group Ltd
131 Mount Pleasant
Liverpool Science Park 
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The new offices have a central position in Liverpool. They are located near the Metropolitan Cathedral. As we can see on the pictures, there is a panoramic view where the natural light can enter in the offices. Why they moved in? The personnel didn’t like to be far from catering and quite simply because Mando is a creative company and the staff (specially the designers) has to be surrounded by a good environment. Moreover, Mando receives clients in its offices, it must take care of the meetings room, the secretariat,…. In business (more in a creative company) you must take care of every little detail because that’s what can make the difference.
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All the people were friendly with me. The thing that was very clear for me is that you enter Mando like in a family, it is not a question of self-success, all the people who work in the different departments form Mando Group (if a developer has a problem, an another directly help him).
I had never met a group previous to this who are so aware of the environment:
Ø A lot of people go to the office by bicycle
Ø Coffee and tea are fair trade products
Ø They pay attention to recycling
Ø They drink a lot of water
Ø There is a fruit bowl present for the staff
I found something very nice: every Friday after work, the Mando staff goes for a drink in a pub near the office. It was the opportunity for me to speak with people, what was not possible to do during the working hours.
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On 24th April in the afternoon, my supervisor invited me with her and the designers, to visit a shop that made books like our predecessors. This shop is located near Manchester.Basically, the shop was more or less like a museum. The owners showed different machines and how to use them. After visiting the different parts of the shop, we were invited to drink a coffee/tea with some cookies in their living room. It was a beautiful way to end the day.
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My second day was in the new offices. When all the offices were more or less operational, I received a desk with a dual screen 
!
I was equipped to do a quality job:
* I helped on the direct marketing
* I contributed in brainstorming during meetings
* I worked in the database
* I realized a Powerpoint presentation
* I translated some texts in French to English
* .....
http://www.mandogroup.com/blog/latest/all/European_relations_/46.aspx
As you can read, it was so unusual to hug people that you know only for few days that the chairman thought that it was a day of celebration in Belgium! What was my surprise on the next Monday when I arrived in the offices: everybody said hello in a more friendly way. After this famous Friday, the next Friday became the “Hug day”! I hope that British people, with whose I have had the opportunity to hug keep, remember not only the fun but also the importance of the act. I stayed 6 weeks in Liverpool to improve my English and to learn more about this beautiful country but I also wanted them to have the opportunity to know more about Belgium. During our conversations, I tried to make correlations with Belgium. So they could imagine how is this small country where I live.
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I come from Belgium but my mother is Spanish so I am able to do some different comparisons between English, Belgian and Spanish people. In the first place, what shocked me with English people it is that they are a little cold. I have the habit to kiss or shake hands contact but in U.K you never do that. In Mrs Billard’s course, we read the story of a Portuguese student who had been to Northern Country to study. He explained that he didn’t understand the day after the party, in the office, why people acted as if they had never spoken to him. Although I had some difficulty in believing this story, I had the experience in Liverpool. And I can tell you that I was angry. In fact, one day for lunch, I went with 2 colleagues to eat something. I was so happy to speak with people during lunchtime. I thought that it would be the same for the rest of my work placement. In fact, it wasn’t! I didn’t believe it! The day after, they went with others! Even if we spoke about this in class, I felt very alone and I was missing my home and my family. But the situation would have been worse if I had lived 6 weeks alone in a flat.
I remember that 5 years ago, young Belgian guys didn’t kiss other males. Now the trend has changed: every guy and girl say hello with kisses. I don’t know if English people are too shy or that they don’t like human contact. I don’t want to repeat a sentence that we learned in class, but for me, English people miss something that is very important: human warmth. So I explained this to my host family, and we had a conversation about the different cultures during 2 hours! I explained that I couldn’t understand why people are so cold with others. With Ian, we decided that on 20th April was a Belgian day in the company. When I arrived this morning, I explained that today was a Belgian day and I gave a hug (like we were very good friends).
My supervisor found this initiative very good. She could understand me because her husband comes from Brazil and there the human contact is important. I think that the Mando staff will not forget my work placement with them. The “Hug movement” was so unexpected and surprising for Mando’s staff that the Chairman (Matt Johnson) wrote this experience unique on Mando’s website!
My first weekend in Great Britain, I had an amazing opportunity: Aaron had to come back in his flat in Edinburgh to clean it and to recuperate things. He asked me if I would like to discover this beautiful city. So we were on the road for a trip of 3 days. It was amazing: I took 150 pictures and some videos. We drove 4 hours to arrive in Edinburgh, after we had left our luggage we went to a pub. On Saturday, we visited a big part of the city. We had lunch in a beautiful park where there was an Easter play. We walked on the main shop road and I saw the Elephant House where J.K.Rowling wrote in 1993 the first Harry Potter novel. On Saturday night, we watched Sunshine in the cinema. On Sunday, we had breakfast and after we came back to Liverpool. But on the road, Aaron decided to show me the famous Lake District. It is a beautiful place and that day was a sunny day.
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Liverpool was founded in 1207 (the 800th of the city was celebrated in 2007) with a population of 500 people. Liverpool began to grow round about 17th century with the first slave ship. At this period, Liverpool controlled 41% of European and 80% of Britain’s slave commerce. It is important to know that in the beginning of the 19th century, circa 40% of the world’s trade passed by Liverpool! The population grew quickly in 1840 when Irish people arrived because of the great famine. During the World War 2, mostly in May 1940, Liverpool’s city was bombarded: around 2500 people died and nearly the half of the houses were ruined. In the sixties, Liverpool city became an inevitable point of the young culture. It is in this period that the band The Beatles was born (their first single Love Me Do was released in October 1962). In the seventies, the Liverpool’s docks began to downtrend. In fact, the Southampton port expanded (near London) and the companies used more and more containers. But the worst was going to come in the eighties; the unemployment rates in Liverpool were the highest in the UK! For some years, there is an amelioration of the Liverpool’s economy but more slowly than in the others big cities. Nowadays Liverpool is well known internationally because of the 60’s rock group, and the tourism has become an influent factor in the Liverpool’s economy.
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Liverpool is located on the North West of England. It touches the Irish Sea. By the last public 2001 census, Liverpool is one the most popular cities of England with 4.000people/km2 which makes 441.477 peoples (and ± 816.000 in the Liverpool urban area: Bootle, Crosby, Haydock, Huyton-with-Roby, Litherland, Liverpool, Prescot, St. Helens). The metropolitan county of Merseyside (it stands on the river Mersey) governs Liverpool, Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens, and Wirral. The Liverpool’s habitants are called Liverpudlians and their nickname is “Scousers” (in link with their accent and dialect).
In 2008, Liverpool was chosen for the European Capital of Culture!
Now, after 6 weeks, I can say that it was a unique experience. I am so happy I’ve had the opportunity to live 6 weeks with a family and not alone in a flat. So for that reason, I would like to thank the family once again for their hospitality.
I have to admit that sometimes it was not easy to stay very far from my home. Inevitably, there was sometimes a clash of cultures but it is the only way to encounter biculturalism. It is with experience like that you can understand that people in others country don’t have the same habits. As far as I am concerned, it was exciting to try to speak only in English. After learning 10 years of English, it was the first time that I had to speak every day with people just only in English. But to be honest, at the beginning, I had some reticence to order food and to get on bus alone. The restaurant or the engine noise was sometimes so intense that it was not easy to speak with people. But after some attempts, I got used to it.
First of all, if you are frightened to leave your house, parents, girl/boyfriend, and your habits; I prefer to tell you now: it is nor-mal!!
But if you can’t see that the work placement is an opportunity to understand and to learn something from different people: you are losing something. It is easier to try to find a work placement in Belgium but you live in this country! Please try to overcome this fear. What is 6 weeks? It is only 42 days or 1,008 hours or 60,480 minutes if you prefer. It is nothing in a life, is it? But you can in 42 days learn so much about foreign habits/culture. Ok, it is true that I stayed in a very friendly family. But if you have (and I write: IF you have) a problem there, you have your promoter who can help you. Sometimes you will have some cultural clash and it is normal! But it is so nice to try to speak all the time in a language that you have been learning for such a long time and I am sure that at the end of your work placement, you will have a lot of good memories.
I would like finish this blog with two quotations :
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained!