Like a modern jules verne, I took my trip to the center of England, because if you draw a line from Manchester to Cambridge, one from London to Edinburgh and another from Liverpool to Norwich, these meet in Nottingham. There is no better place to start exploring England: with a few hours of travel you can get to the big cities like London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester or Newcastle, or discover the Peak district and Yorkshire, or even look for "lost things" in Norfolk.

And Igloo hostel is the perfect base for this kind of adventure: it's like finding a second family away from home, they all do the possible to put you at ease, starting from the managers, passing through the workers up to the volunteers like me.

As in a family, share everything: space, food, thoughts, adventures, beautiful moments (many) and ugly ones (very few). At this moment we are five volunteers, we come from different parts of the world, with different cultures and different habits, but being there together it makes you realize that we are actually more equal than you can imagine.

For all of us this is the first experience of life (even if only for a few months) away from home, and Nottingham we can say that she has adopted us and like a mother is teaching us many things that will be part of us in the future. Every evening we gather and cook together some specialties from our countries of origin (Italy, Colombia, Japan, Spain and France) and we watch some movies (strictly in English) or go to have a beer in one of the many pubs that can be found around here.

I had arrived to stay a month and a half, but immediately I decided to extend my stay: I was looking for only a new experience for learning English, but I found a lot more!