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On Privilege
By Jessie Punn, Universidad de las Americas, Mexico Last weekend, I went on a trip to Puerto Escondido on the Oaxacan Coast. It was paradise – white sandy beaches, the most crystal-clear ocean, and the most spectacular sunset I had ever seen. One afternoon, after having spent hours floating in the sea and reading my book on the beach, I went for a wander with my friends where we bumped into a lady selling tamales. We bought some and sat down to eat them on the sand. About 10 minutes later, the lady came back and asked if we would mind if she sat with us for a minute in…
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Cafes + Cramming … Amsterdam’s best cafe study spots!
By Anna Bluemel, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands The rumours are true… the workload at UvA is pretty heavy. You don’t need to fret, though – the work is super interesting and varied, and it doesn’t take up allll of your time. Yet a chunk of the year will definitely be spent studying. During exam periods, I got just a little bit too used to the view of the UvA library, and whilst it is stunning, I felt the need to switch up my study location every now and then. In Manchester, I enjoyed going to cafés to study, but in Amsterdam, there are quite a few cafés where laptops…
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A Love Letter to My Bike
by Lily Sanders, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands One of the things I have loved the most about living in Amsterdam is cycling everywhere. I know that may sound slightly ridiculous, but cycling in Amsterdam is so much more than simply riding a bike. The default assumption is that everyone will cycle, whatever the occasion, going to uni, meeting at a café, heading to a restaurant or even a club! I find it so lovely that cycling is a communal activity here, and I feel this especially at AUC because we all live together in the dorms. At the start of my exchange when we were constantly exploring the city…
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Everything I did to prepare for Mexico (and when I did it)
By Jessie Punn, Universidad de las Americas Puebla, Mexico As my third week at UDLAP draws to a close, I have found myself reflecting on all the decisions I made which have led me to be sitting in an extremely comfy armchair, in the gloriously air-conditioned UDLAP library, overlooking the most beautiful of campuses. Moving to Mexico and leaving behind literally everything familiar has certainly been an adjustment, but I am a person that loves a checklist and lives life according to my Google calendar, so here is a mostly comprehensive list of timeline of everything that I did to prepare for UDLAP (that I wish I would have had…
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52 Hours, 7 States, 5 Friends
For our end-of-year trip, we decided to travel sustainably and take the train across the United States from Chicago to San Francisco. We travelled on Amtrak’s California Zephyr, which makes 35 stops along the way.
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A Collage of My Favourite Activities – Ver. South Korea
If my other posts have been about the big things – the culture shock, the travel, the emotional weight of leaving – then this one is about the small things. The afternoons, in-between moments that didn’t make it into the itnerary but made it into my heart anyway. Consider this a collage: unchronological, unpolished, and entirely honest. Cherry Blossom Walk Spring in Korea arrives slowly at first, snippets of sunshine, a warm breeze cutting through the cold, and then all at once. One week the trees look bare and the next the streets are lined with blossom so dense it almost looks like something out of a fantasy book. We…
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My Top Tips for Studying Abroad
A year abroad is, in my opinion, one of the best things you can do for yourself. But like anything worth doing, you get out what you put in. Here are some things I hope will help you to either decide whether or not to go for your year abroad, or some things you can think about while out there. Say yes (almost always, and within your means). The version of you that stays in and watches Netflix is not the version of you that comes home with stories. Say yes to the dinner invitation even when you’re tired. Say yes to the day trip you hadn’t planned. Say yes…
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January in Japan
Three Weeks of Food, Culture and Friends Winter in Korea is cold. It’s so cold. Temperatures can get down to -20°C… so I decided to book a trip to Japan to escape the worst of it. Don’t get me wrong, I love cold weather, but two months straight and you begin to feel differently. I left Korea and its -11°C weather, and flew to Japan, landing in 11°C (still not warm, but marginally better – I’m not built for winter okay) wearing layers upon layers. Happy to be able to take off most of them and not get hypothermia, I left the airport and was picked up by my friend,…
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The Truth about Coming Home
What no one warns you about when you depart for your exchange is how difficult coming home will be. Obviously this feeling is different for everyone; some may find that, at the end of their exchange period, they are ready to come back. Some may want to come back sooner and some may never want to leave. I was the latter. During all of the preparation for my exchange year, so many people told me that I will likely get homesick, and that even if I find it really hard in the first few weeks, to stick it out and give it a chance. I knew there was a slight…
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Keeping up with hobbies whilst on exchange in Melbourne
By Amelie Duroux, University of Melbourne, Australia What I hadn’t expected when I moved to Melbourne for my exchange was how much I’d miss the activities I would do every week in Manchester. When you suddenly leave that life behind, there’s nothing making you continue these activities, but I hadn’t realised how much they had contributed to my identity and given me structure in my weekly routine. Luckily for me, I found ways to keep most of these hobbies going, and also start some new ones. For example, in Manchester I went bouldering with my friend every Monday. I was worried that I wouldn’t find anyone who liked climbing in…
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All about Melbourne accommodation: where to live whilst studying on exchange
By Amelie Duroux, University of Melbourne, Australia It can be so tricky to know the best place to live at university, especially when you are moving across the world to study abroad. I personally had no idea which accommodation to choose when I was preparing to move over to Melbourne, and ended up choosing the accommodation that the majority of the other University of Manchester students chose. The student living culture at the University of Melbourne is so different to the UK universities, because the majority of Australian students do not move away from home – they continue living at home and commute into university, sometimes with journeys which are…
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Choose your timings
Scarlett Gilligan, Universidad de las americas Puebla, Mexico One thing to consider about your year abroad is how you choose to divide it. For me personally, I believed the most suitable thing for me was to stay for the entire year, something I don’t regret at all. However, I have friends that have moved to South America for semester 2, friends that have moved to work in CDMX for semester two, and some who are spending their first semester in Mexico after Christmas. I have loved both semesters dearly but without a doubt, they are starkly different, each with their advantages and disadvantages. Here I will try to stay as…
