Queen's University
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The People of Mexico
Salma Rana, Queen’s Unversity, Canada Needing a break from the cold Canadian winter, a couple of friends and I flew out to Mexico for reading week. We spend most of the week in Mexico City and the last couple of days in Cancun. Everything was incredibly beautiful, from the colourful streets and detailed architecture to the delicious food. However, I want to dedicate this post to what made the trip truly special. The people I came across in Mexico were so happy and grateful. The photo above, of a man cheerfully selling us corn on the cob, is one of my favourites from the trip. I did not want to…
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Coming to Queen’s
♦ Ailsa Jones – Queen’s University, Canada ♦ First and foremost, know that all of the major Canadian stereotypes are true. Everyone is exceptionally nice, the winters are bitterly cold and Tim Hortons is everywhere.
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Love for learning, reignited
Salma Rana, Queen’s University, Canada My first semester as an exchange student, in Canada, is coming to an end, and those of you at university know that sometimes this can feel like a lifetime. I’m going to do some pitstops of my experience here so far, showing you my highs and lows, some of the lessons I’ve learnt and things I have been inspired by. This will be split into a few blogposts that I will be posting over the next couple of weeks. The past few months have been a true learning experience. The academic structure is very different here at Queen’s. Firstly, “electives” are encouraged here. When I…
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Is it home time already?
By Emily Privett, Geography, Queen’s University, Canada Everyone’s heard of the cliche ‘time flies when you’re having fun!’ and before I went on exchange, everyone was telling me that the year would fly by and I’ll be home before I knew it. I didn’t believe them then, but now that I’m reaching the end of my time in Canada, both of those phrases are all too true.
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Excursions with Emily…pt 2
By Emily Privett, Queen’s University, Canada, Geography. With the beginning of the winter semester came a more relaxed bands schedule which meant free weekends. This was all a bit new to me but allowed me to do some more local exploring! This semester I’ve been lucky enough to head to Ottawa, Bruce Peninsula and Mont Tremblant.
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Throwback Thursday…Travels in the Fall
By Emily Privett, Queen’s University, Canada, Geography. So on top of academics and Queen’s Bands excursions, what have I been doing? One of the many reasons as to why I chose Queen’s as my exchange University was because of its great location for travelling. To this day I’ve managed to visit NYC, Niagara Falls, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Mont Tremblant and Bruce Peninsula which has just made me realise how lucky I am to be in this part of the world right now!
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You think you have school spirit?
By Emily Privett, Geography, Queen’s University, Canada. As it’s ever-too-quickly coming to the end of my time here at Queen’s, I’ve been reflecting on all the experiences that have made my year abroad one of my favourite years in my 20 years of being a living and breathing human. The answer came immediately to my head and that is; Queen’s Bands.
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One Semester Down! Any differences between Queen’s and Manchester?
[By Emily Privett, Queen’s University, Canada] Before I get started about all the of the academic differences between Queen’s University and Manchester, I would just like to express my incredulity that I am already half way through my year abroad…I am struggling to understand how time has gone that quickly, but I guess as the well known saying goes; ‘time flies when you’re having fun!’
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Arrival Reflections: 43 days later…
By Emily Privett, Queen’s University, Canada Today marks the 43rd day of my being in Canada(!) and although I’ve only had two weeks of classes, so much has been going on. First, I would like to apologise for my blog being so late. I thought that the first week of classes would be a perfect time to catch up on my blogging as there wouldn’t be too much work. Safe to say, I was wrong about the ‘not much work’, but that’s a topic for another blog! So what has been going? So much! To stop this blog from being an un-structured mind-dump of everything that’s been happening since I arrived,…
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The Final Countdown (Pre-departure reflections)
By Emily Privett (Queen’s University, Canada) It’s weird how I’ve been planning for tomorrow for months and the flight has been booked since June yet I still don’t feel like it’s actually real. I mean, tomorrow I’m going to be getting onto a plane and fly thousands of miles away from my house, friends and family, to set up camp in Canada for the year..?! Although it is crazy to think that I will be living nearly 3,500 miles away from home, I cannot wait to starting building a life out there for a year; finding a house, meeting other students and even getting stuck into my academics (although on…
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Manchester beanie takes on North America
By Ros Harwood (Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada) To finish up my blog posts about my year abroad, I have some photos to share giving a snapshot of the five weeks I spent travelling to mark the end of my year abroad. It was a fantastic trip and I ticked off a lot of places I have always wanted to visit! I attempted to mark each place with a Manchester beanie picture. Travel is such a key part of study abroad, make the most of the opportunities! Canada Toronto > Rocky Mountains (Banff and Jasper) > Vancouver USA: Seattle > Portland > Yosemite & Sierra National Parks > Death Valley >…
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The Rocky Mountains
By Ros Harwood (Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada) After sad goodbyes with Kingston and Queen’s, my friend and I made a short one day stop in Toronto before taking a Greyhound bus across four provinces for two and half days to Banff, Alberta. A couple of beanie snaps: one on Moraine Lake at Lake Louise (still frozen at end of April) and the other at Johnson Canyon, where walking and wearing the Manchester beanie caused two girls to tell us they had graduated from Manchester the previous year and also studied Geography! A small world.
