The YMCA is a little bit like a students accommodation, sometimes you might be sharing room just with one person, sometimes there might be 4 of you - like in my case :) The space is very small but they want to recreate as much of a ship life as possible, as our crew cabins won't be any bigger than that.
We get dinners every night in the YMCA, but we need to get our own breakfast and lunch. There are no fridges available at YMCA for us to use so we are not allowed any food in the rooms, which is understandable. Apparently people used to keep strange things in their rooms, like cheese under the bed and no one could figure out where was the smell coming from ;) haha etc... But to be on the safe side - they don't wont any of us to get sick or food poisoned so that's the main reason of these restrictions.
We are all on the budget there right? :) so this is what I used to do. Me and the girls, after checking with the reception if it was ok, we got ourselfs a kettle! Yeeeey :) Since there was 4 of us in the room, it cost us sooo little :) and at least we could enjoy our teas and coffees in the morning while getting ready for the Academy.
We got it in a shop called Argos and it was only £5.00! YMCA is located next to a shopping centre ;) so you will always find everything you need at a door step.
Marks&Spencer for example does great lunch deals. If you buy 2 salads it works out £1,50 each so you can share it with your friends and they are super healthy and delish!! Of course you have to go to a shop everyday to have it fresh but it's all next to each other so really not an issue :)
You can also get breakfast and lunch at the Academy at a reasonable price!
To the Academy we travel by bus. So to make it again cheap and easy get yourself soon as you get there an Oyster card. You top it up like a phone credit and scan it each time when using bus or train and the money is being deducted from your card. A one week bus pass for Oyster card is worth it only in your first week/weeks when you come to the Academy also at the weekends. The weekly bus pass is a 7 day pass and it costs £19.60. When you start having weekends off you might just get a normal top up of £20.00 and it will last you more than a week as one journey on it costs only £1.40.
If you and your friends are planning to go to London Town at the weekend to do bit of site seeing or to have a tea with Quinn Elizabeth ;) it's good if you a get a group pass tickets, I think it was around £6-7 each and we had all the trains and buses covered for the day :)
Good to get - a UK sim card (if you are from abroad), talk to your friends which networks they are with or if you are all new in town get yourselfs the same networks. Myself and the girls we got the O2 cards, cost us £1.00!! When we topped up we had Internet on it and free calls to each other, you just have to follow few options to get that set up, so it's really worth it :)
Also very handy is to have the What'sApp application in your phone, Skype of course and Viber :) these are my 3 musts to keep in touch with friends and family - there is a free wifi in YMCA and in the Academy! Thank God for Internet haha!! ;-)
It's great to live with all the students in one building. You can study together, help each other, practice on each other. There are massage sessions going on every day in the corridors, personal trainers giving yoga or bootcamp classes :) it's real fun!
I hope I've covered the main areas here.
If you have any questions feel free to ask!
Ciao for now!!
Gosia :)
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