[Study abroad testimonial] From nurse to Cebu Island, and back to Australia

“Quit your job and go abroad.” It is easy to say, but actually taking that step requires a lot of courage.

This time we introduce Lino, who spent 8 weeks studying English at 3D ACADEMY. After finishing high school, she began her career as a nurse and, at some point, took the plunge and went on a working holiday in Australia. This article tells how, some time later, she looked at herself again and set out to “learn seriously, from scratch” at a language school on Cebu Island.

What led her to decide to study in Cebu was the “frustration” she felt during her stay in Australia. She had proudly declared that she “would come back able to speak English,” but she did not manage to speak it as she had hoped. Faced with that reality, Lino decided to “learn seriously once more” and chose 3D ACADEMY, where she lived a life completely devoted to daily study.

Stories from class, study methods, how she spent her afternoons after class and her thoughts about the future. In this article we explore Lino’s experience in detail, divided into seven chapters.

This real testimony will surely be useful for those thinking about studying a language abroad, for those considering a working holiday, and also for nurses who are looking to make their way abroad. “The study abroad experience of someone who took it seriously to the very end has meaning.” The weight of these words will surely be felt through Lino’s story.

“I decided I would hold out for at least three years. But, honestly, I wanted to quit every day.”

Lino started working as a nurse right after finishing nursing school, after graduating from high school. It was a job with the great responsibility of caring for human lives: it had meaning, yes, but the work environment was harder than she had imagined, and she lived days of both mental and physical exhaustion. The pressure from more experienced colleagues, night shifts with no end in sight, the weight of facing patients’ lives. She says she thought “I want to quit” many times.

Even so, Lino resolved to “hold out for at least three years” and kept working. The reason was that, if she quit halfway, she would be left with the idea that she “ran away because it was hard,” and she feared repeating the same thing in her next job. She couldn’t escape so easily. She says she endured each day by repeating this to herself.

However, around her third year the situation changed even more. She was put in charge of training the new hires and became someone her younger colleagues relied on. When she finally wanted to quit, other people’s expectations and the weight of responsibility were even greater, and it became even harder to leave.

It was then that her “first trip abroad” became a turning point. It was a trip a friend invited her on and that she went on without giving it much importance, but it ended up being the trigger for a major change in Lino’s life.

The friend who accompanied her on that trip was fluent in English and communicated naturally with the local people, enjoying every moment. Seeing that scene, Lino says she thought from the bottom of her heart: “How great it is to be able to speak English.”

In addition, the fact that a classmate from nursing school was on a working holiday in Australia was another great stimulus. The free life she led there, which could be sensed through social media, and the image of that friend living with a smile, having made a completely different decision from hers, ignited in Lino the wish to “try living abroad” that she carried inside.

From then on, although she kept working as a nurse, she always kept in a corner of her mind the wish to “live abroad” and “get to the point of speaking English.” However, reality was not simple: she couldn’t find the right moment to leave her job, and her days remained full of everyday tasks.

Lino finally took the step toward “action” at 27. A friend’s resignation was the trigger that made her decide to leave her job too.

“If I let this opportunity pass, I may never get to go.”

She gathered her courage, quit her job and, while saving money with a temporary job at a resort, began preparing for the next step: the working holiday in Australia.

Not “someday,” but “now.” With that decision, in the spring of her 27th year, Lino left the hospital where she had worked for so long. Of course, it was scary to leave the stability of being a nurse. Even so, she says it was scarier to let that “longing for life abroad” that had been burning inside her pass by forever.

After quitting, she worked as a live-in employee at a resort in Okinawa. While working by the sea, she took time to reflect on herself. And a few months later, she finally left for Australia on her working holiday.

“This year, I’ll come back able to speak English.”

Lino left after declaring this to the people around her. The first weeks in Australia were spent at a language school, where she took English classes alongside students from all over the world. However, at first she felt disoriented when conversing in English and found it hard to gain confidence.

Afterward, with the goal of obtaining the second visa (visa extension), she moved to a farm in northern Australia. There, days of hard physical work from the early hours awaited her, such as harvesting and packing fruit. She says that little by little she began to feel that this work was moving away from her goal of improving her English.

When the farm work ended, she returned to the city and worked in cleaning. There she met colleagues who, like her, had come from abroad and aspired to become nurses or clinical laboratory technicians in Australia. They all had clear goals and, without letting the language barrier defeat them, worked hard to reach their dreams. Faced with them, she says she almost lost sight of where her own place was.

“What did I come to Australia for…?”

Busy with work every day, hardly traveling, time simply went by. In the middle of that life, Lino stopped for a moment and looked at herself again. She liked nursing work. But if she was going to get involved in this field again, she wanted to have a goal of her own. It was then that the option of becoming a “caregiver” (elderly care worker) reached her ears.

Lino discovered that in Australia, elderly care staff are highly valued and that there are job opportunities in that field. She was attracted not only by being able to use her experience as a nurse, but also by the possibility of doing work that is useful to others, and she felt that “this was for her.”

Right away she began attending a specialized school to obtain the caregiver certificate, and at the same time she also obtained a first aid certificate. Although the classes, full of technical terms, were hard for her, her field experience helped her understand better, and little by little she began to find the learning interesting.

However… only her English level had not improved as much as she expected.

“By now I should be speaking better.” “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

Before coming to Australia, she had proudly declared to others that she “would come back able to speak English.” But reality was very far from that ideal. Even in conversations with classmates or coworkers, she often could not express what she wanted to say, and the “shame” she felt about her own language level gradually turned into great frustration.

“There is no way I want to end my life in Australia like this, and go back to my country just as I am.”

As that feeling grew stronger and stronger, she began to frequently hear stories among her Japanese friends about “studying on Cebu Island.” Hearing again and again that “your English improves a lot” and that “you get much stronger in speaking,” Lino decided to take on a new challenge once more.

“I’m going to give myself another chance.”

And so she decided to temporarily interrupt her stay in Australia and opt for a short study program on Cebu Island in the Philippines to polish her English.

When her life in Australia began to stabilize, Lino started attending a local school to obtain the caregiver and first aid certificates.

“Since I had experience working as a nurse, it was easier for me to understand the content. But even so, studying in English was really hard.”

In class she learned elderly care techniques, care ethics and notions of medical procedures, all of course in English. In the middle of a flood of technical terms, she says she could barely keep up with the pace of the classes, constantly going from the textbook to the dictionary.

In the field placements there was also hands-on training in nursing homes. There she provided care while communicating in English with elderly Australians. Not understanding what they said to her, not managing to make her explanation understood: she lived that frustration again and again.

“Just by not being able to communicate well, it becomes hard to build a relationship of trust. And above all, what I regretted most was making the other person feel uneasy.”

Until then, as a nurse, giving the other person peace of mind was something she took for granted in her idea of the profession. However, the reality that the language barrier prevented her from doing so was a great dilemma for Lino.

Even so, Lino worked with all her strength toward the goal of obtaining the certificate. Without a doubt, the care knowledge and practical experience she gained in Australia became a valuable step toward moving forward, in the future, along the path of medicine or care abroad.

However, one thing remained unresolved: the frustration of “not being able to speak English.”

“Before leaving Japan, I thought that just by going I would learn to speak English naturally. But reality was different. There were many days when I felt frustrated and downcast because I couldn’t say what I wanted to say.”

Among the many Japanese working holiday colleagues she met in Australia, many had traveled after doing a short language program on Cebu Island in the Philippines, and their English level was visibly higher.

“There were really many people who said: ‘I’m where I am thanks to what I learned in Cebu.’ Those people answered in English very naturally. Listening to them, I felt envious, and I thought I wanted to try it too.”

She wanted to learn English again from scratch. And this time, she wanted to become someone who could say with pride: “I came back able to speak.”

That feeling grew stronger every day, and Lino decided to pause her life in Australia and began looking for an environment where she could concentrate completely on English.

What she chose was to study the language in “Cebu Island, Philippines,” which her colleagues praised endlessly. And, in particular, the fact that two trusted acquaintances were 3D ACADEMY graduates was what gave Lino the decisive push.

“I could take classes with native teachers and practice speaking intensively even in a short time. Also, I had friends in Cebu, which gave me peace of mind. I thought there was no other option but to go.”

Eight weeks of study on Cebu Island: the journey of a new challenge was about to begin.

Cebu was the place chosen to face English seriously. On that island, the school Lino chose was 3D ACADEMY. The deciding factor was that two Japanese friends she had met in Australia were graduates of this school, and the words they said with a smile: “my English improved,” “I got to the point of speaking.”

“It was very important that my friends recommended it so confidently. The testimony of someone you trust is, without a doubt, the most reassuring thing.”

Her stay was 8 weeks, and she took an ESL course centered on speaking. The core was one-on-one classes, so characteristic of the Philippines, and days began that were completely immersed in English conversation, several hours a day, one-on-one with the teacher.

Classes so fun they chased away sleepiness: meeting the American teacher Tyler

One of the teachers who stayed most in Lino’s heart was Tyler, an American teacher. He was in charge of a class for English beginners, and his lessons were full of ingenuity for learning vocabulary and grammar not by simply memorizing them, but by enjoying English through games.

“It was a class in the time slot after lunch, when you usually get sleepy, but every time we learned laughing, with games and quizzes. Feeling that class was ‘fun’ was the moment my idea of studying English changed completely.”

In addition, being able to learn idioms and slang that native speakers really use was a great achievement for Lino. Many of those expressions are hard to find in Japanese textbooks, and she was able to develop a practical sense of which phrases to use naturally in each situation.

“With idioms, even if you think you know them, sometimes the way to use them is completely different. Teacher Tyler taught me those very subtle nuances in detail.”

Teacher Jel’s classes, where the study habit is acquired naturally

The second memorable teacher was Jel, who mainly taught grammar. Her method was extremely clear, with very concrete examples and situations. It was a teaching style that was easy to remember and that really sank in.

Each class began with a review of the previous day. For example, if one day she learned ten adjectives, the next day her homework was to create sentences “in her own words” using those same adjectives.

“Speaking while recalling things without looking at anything is extremely hard (laughs). But that really helped enormously. Because I felt the tension that if I didn’t review I would fall behind, I naturally acquired the habit of studying seriously every day.”

The lessons did not end with the class itself. By repeating every day the process of “making what you learned your own and using it,” Lino’s English level grew steadily stronger.

The pronunciation classes, where she felt the greatest progress. The guidance of teacher Daisy

And above all, what stayed most in her heart was meeting teacher Daisy, who specializes in teaching pronunciation.

“Pronunciation was always my weak point. Even though I spoke English, many times people didn’t understand me… But I myself couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.”

For Lino, who carried this worry, teacher Daisy’s class was a true revelation. In class she learned in depth how to read and pronounce every phonetic symbol. By understanding from the ground up, before words, first the “sounds” and “how to move the mouth,” her pronunciation was visibly corrected.

“We also practiced transcribing into phonetic symbols the sounds the teacher read out, almost like a musical listening dictation. Now, just by seeing the symbols in the dictionary, I can immediately imagine how a word is pronounced.”

Through this class, Lino internalized the feeling that “if your pronunciation changes, the English that reaches the other person changes.” She says that for the first time she truly felt the joy and confidence of having her English understood.

Classes ended every day at 16:00. But Lino’s day did not end there.

Classes ended every day at four in the afternoon. But for Lino, her day really began from there.

During the first week, Lino says, she spent her time observing how the other students spent their time. But little by little she found her own rhythm.

“After class I ate at the school restaurant and stayed there to review and do homework. Even when I went back to the hotel room, I tried to spend time in contact with English as much as possible.”

Among her close friends there were many students of the type who concentrated more on studying than on having fun, and that attitude ended up naturally feeding Lino’s own motivation.

Even when people told her “all you do is study,” she kept going

On weekends, in response to simple social media posts such as “I went out to eat with friends” or “I went to the shopping mall,” she even received messages from friends in Japan asking: “Huh, are you out partying? What did you go abroad to study for?”

“Even a small outing can look like ‘fun’ depending on how you see it. But, for me, my study time was very well secured, and I went out intending to use those outings as an occasion to practice English, so being misunderstood was a bit frustrating.”

That comment was the trigger for the routine of going out on only one of the two weekend days and devoting the other entirely to study to become established naturally.

There is nothing wrong with having fun. But right now there is something I have to do. That thought is what sustained her intensive study life during those 8 weeks.

“Precisely because it’s my second time studying abroad, I don’t want to waste it in any way.”

For Lino, this study trip to Cebu was “the second time in her life she studied a language abroad.” The first time, in Australia, she had faced the gap between the ideal and reality, and she was left with strong frustration at not having gotten to speak as well as she had hoped.

“I didn’t want it to happen like last time. There was no way I wanted to go back to my country without having improved my English.”

That is how Lino tells it, saying that during those 8 weeks she always kept in mind being “demanding of herself.” She was not the type who is good at studying. Precisely for that reason, she knew that if she didn’t work twice as hard as everyone else, she wouldn’t get results.

Even to relax, “in English.” Her whole life became a learning space

Even so, it is true that spending all your time at a desk ends up wearing down your spirits. That is why Lino also consciously included “English study as a break.”

- Writing a diary in English at a cafe - Practicing listening with English-language YouTube channels - The challenge of watching foreign movies without subtitles - Chatting with classmates at the school while deliberately forbidding herself to speak Japanese

“When it becomes an obligation of ‘I have to do it this way,’ English becomes exhausting. That is why I looked for balance by mixing ‘a little fun English’ into my daily life.”

And above all, what weighed most was the presence of her classmates.

The other international students were not only Japanese, but came from very diverse countries such as Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam or Saudi Arabia, and every conversation with someone who did not share her native language was held in English. Even if neither vocabulary nor pronunciation was perfect, everyone shared the attitude of “trying to make yourself understood.”

“There were many people with an English level similar to mine who spoke without fear, and that gave me courage too. It’s OK to make mistakes; the important thing is simply to say it out loud. By repeating it every day, my resistance to ‘speaking’ gradually disappeared.”

Eight weeks devoted entirely to study. Behind them lay frustration, determination and a constant struggle to “not run away from herself.”

Lino finished her 8 weeks of study on Cebu Island. This intensive language program, which she took on with the determination to learn again from scratch, gave her a real sense of achievement and confidence.

“That feeling of rejection toward ‘speaking English’ has finally lessened. I’m no longer afraid to speak, or rather, being able to think that my English, just as it is, does get understood was something very important.”

Looking back, she says she realized that in her first experience in Australia her attention was on “being in contact with English,” whereas in her study in Cebu she faced “speaking English” head-on. That difference was the key to her growth.

The feeling of having “gotten to the point of speaking” at the end of the experience

Not only did she get to the point of being able to express her opinion in English, but the mental barrier to using the language clearly dropped. Her days on Cebu Island were not only an improvement in her language level, but also a time to cultivate the “ability to live in English.”

Not only classes, but also shopping, meals, weekend outings, everyday chats: everything was a space for English practice, and every moment was a moment that “led to the next one.”

The goal: return to Australia. And beyond

After finishing her 8 weeks of study, Lino has a clear goal for the next step. This is to go back to Australia once more and seriously begin her career as a caregiver.

“My experience as a nurse, the caregiver certificate and the English level I gained on this study trip: I feel these three things have finally come together as one.”

The woman who once wondered “I don’t know what I’m doing in Australia” has now become someone moving toward the next step with a clear sense of purpose. Lino describes those 8 weeks at 3D ACADEMY as the time when she “got herself back.”

“I don’t think knowing English is, in itself, something extraordinary. But when you know English, the ‘range’ of things you can do really widens. I truly feel I did the right thing by gathering my courage and coming to Cebu at that moment.”

A new challenge: also considering an internship on Cebu Island

In addition, Lino also has the wish to come back to Cebu Island once more and try an internship at a language school.

“I would like to keep improving my English while gaining experience working in the field. And I hope to become someone who gives a push to those who want to take on the same challenge.”

The good things about Cebu, the frustration and the path of effort she lived through as a student. Now she wants to pass all that on to someone else, this time from a position of support. Lino’s learning is expanding, right now, from being “for herself” to being “for someone else.”

After her 8 weeks of learning on Cebu Island, Lino shared with us a series of pieces of advice born from her own experience. For those thinking about studying abroad, for those who feel insecure about their language level, for those who can’t quite believe in their own potential: it is precisely those people her words will reach.

1. Preparation before traveling makes the difference. The “basics” of high school English are enough

“If you master just one vocabulary booklet and basic high school grammar, your understanding of the classes changes completely.”

This is something Lino stressed firmly, based on the “regret of not having studied enough” that she felt in Australia. In Cebu, since many classes specialize in speaking English, whether or not you understand basic vocabulary and structures changes the “speed of absorption” enormously.

“If it’s only words you don’t know, you end up using your head just to ‘translate’ throughout the whole class. Even if the teacher makes an effort to talk to you, it stops being a fun moment.”

Precisely for that reason, she strongly recommended that, before traveling, “it doesn’t have to be perfect, but you should do a good ‘review’ at least once.”

2. When you get tired of English, it is also important to truly “rest”

“During the first week, just continuing to use English all the time, your head gets completely saturated (laughs).”

This is something many international students feel, and Lino herself went through the same experience. While the “English brain” is not yet developed, just communicating in a foreign language consumes a considerable amount of energy.

“There’s no need to think ‘maybe I have no talent for English…’ Everyone goes through that at the beginning.”

In those moments, instead of forcing yourself to keep studying, Lino says it is important to truly rest and to include moments to clear your mind. Listening to music you like, taking a break at a cafe, watching a movie: “taking a little distance” from English actually becomes the strength that lets you keep studying.

3. Keep your own pace. Without straying, without rushing, step by step

“Don’t compare yourself with others. Perhaps that is the most important thing.”

Among the classmates Lino met in Cebu, some already spoke well and others were still beginners. Their nationalities and ages were also different. But, no matter who they were, everyone learned “at their own pace.”

“Precisely because I wasn’t the type who absorbs quickly, I really valued moving forward little by little each day. I think it’s important to congratulate yourself even for just ‘today I learned one phrase.’”

During a study abroad experience, there are times when your spirits drop or you lose confidence in yourself. But it is precisely in those moments that you must firmly hold your own axis. If you accumulate small steps without straying, before you know it they will have become a big change. That was the “law of growth” that Lino confirmed firsthand.

“I used to think that when you study abroad, some people do well and others don’t. But I was wrong. For ‘the person who sees it through to the end,’ there is always meaning. That is what I truly feel.”

In her first experience abroad, Lino did not get the results she expected and felt great frustration. Being finally able, on her second attempt, to meet a version of herself able to say with pride “I got to the point of speaking” was not the result of comparing herself with anyone, but of having faced herself.

“Above all, I’m proud of the person who made the effort.”

These words from Lino will surely be powerful encouragement for everyone who does not want their experience abroad to remain a mere passing “experience.”