By Katie Lewin (Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada)

After all the applications, research and planning for what seems like the past year, I’m leaving for Canada on Monday! I feel slightly mentally unprepared but otherwise I have pretty much everything sorted from accommodation to my timetable. The only thing I’m dreading is saying goodbye to my friends and family, although it’s not too bad as I’m back at Christmas.

As this is the first year Simon Fraser University has been available to the University of Manchester for exchange, there hasn’t been any previous Manchester students I could get advice from. However SFU have a Buddy Program where they partner you with a current SFU student who is looking to study at your home institution. Therefore you share advice and help about studying at each other’s universities, which has been really helpful. As I am one of the first University of Manchester students studying at SFU, I hope to portray through this blog what SFU is really like to help provide more information on the university to prospective study abroad students.

So the only things left for me to do are to pack and squeeze in as many goodbyes as I can before I leave! I don’t think it’s quite hit me yet how much of a big adventure I’m about to embark on but I can’t wait for it to begin!