Mazzy, sounds like you had fun! You said:
in the c152, the nose seemed to crawl, and when it came up, it was a couple of seconds before the aircraft came off the ground – it felt like a stall and that it was struggling
My guess would be that the performance had more to do with density altitude: what was the ambient temperature at the time? Light aircraft really do perform MUCH worse as the temperature rises, something which can often go unnoticed here in Blighty!
Andy