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The Journey of Making Friends
by Alicja Banasiak, University of California Santa Cruz Coming to California for a whole year knowing no one and never even setting foot in the US before was a scary experience and although the journey wasn’t a straight forward one, I ended up having a cliché experience of making great friends and memories that I will cherish my whole life.
- University of California - Berkeley, University of California - Los Angeles, University of California - San Diego, University of California - Santa Barbara, University of California Santa Cruz, USA
Reviewing LAs Most Popular Attractions (+ Hidden Gems)
Alicja Banasiak, University of California Santa Cruz, US Griffith observatory If you play GTA you may already know that this place has all the views! You can drive to the very top by car or bus or you can hike, entry into the observatory is free but any shows or presentations are extra cost. From the top you can see the Hollywood sign and the entire city of LA as well as mountains in the background.
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Living in Santa Cruz, CA (Part 2)
By Alicja Banasiak, University of California Santa Cruz, US In this part of living in Santa Cruz, I will discuss activities to do on campus and downtown, local wildlife and the International Living Centre on campus. In my first post I spoke about grocery shopping, money spending and saving, commented on the local weather and free student facilities at UCSC.
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Living in Santa Cruz, CA (Part 1)
By Alicja Banasiak, University of California Santa Cruz, US Studying in Santa Cruz is definitely different from Manchester! First of all, you are in a forest, surrounded by mountains with super fresh air. Despite the fact that the campus is open to the public, you see very few people from the public on campus. The campus isn’t located near Santa Cruz town (the town is about a 15-20 minute bus journey), which has its positives and negatives. The campus is quiet, full of wildlife, and has a unique student community. However, finding activities to do without a car and shopping for groceries is a little tricky. In this post I…
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Going Abroad? But what about your significant other!
By Alicja Banasiak, University of California Santa Cruz, US Can a long-distance relationship work? Well, I’d say yes. Before coming to the US, I was dating my boyfriend for a couple of months. We entered the relationship knowing that I was going to study abroad the following year.
- North America, Uncategorized, University of California - Los Angeles, University of California - Santa Barbara
Final Road Trip and Goodbyes:
I have now been home for over 3 months and I thought I would write about my thoughts on leaving Case Western and my road trip around California. The last few weeks of term were extremely stressful with trying to pack up my belongings, say my goodbyes, plan a road trip and submit all my final work. Luckily, I did not have any finals to take and I decided to leave the campus early and meet up with friends from Manchester to travel around the East Coast. But this did mean that saying goodbye to all the great people I had met felt very rushed. As I am writing this…
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Summer travels, or the reason I need a job
By Rhiannon Jones (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA) Our time at Illinois had finished. Finals were done with, emotional goodbyes were had and we had a month left on our visas before we got deported from the country. We were heading to the West Coast. The initial planning wasn’t the laid-back ‘Cali’ lifestyle that the trip itself promised. With seven of us to book flights, hostels, car hire, coaches and entrance tickets for, a month to remember started out more as an exercise in herding cats. Thankfully someone more organised than me was fluent in Google Docs and the phrase “check the spreadsheet’ became a mantra, chanted back at you…
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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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Above-Ground at Miramar
By Sam Thoburn (University of California, San Diego, USA) I write every day, but not very often on this blog. So for that, my many, many readers, I apologise. The Spring Quarter out here began three weeks ago, and among my new classes is one in travel writing. Since San Diego is a recruitment and command centre for both the American Navy and Air Force, I thought it would be interesting to look into that military history a little. To that end, I have been (and will be) visiting the city’s military cemeteries and writing about them. Here is the first piece I wrote, to be read in the knowledge that Jerry…
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The Country from the Air
By Sam Thoburn (University of California, San Diego, USA) San Diego is a long way from most places, and this year in America is precious time to be used diversely, so in the last three months I have flown more often than ever before in my life. And when I fly, I usually fly at night. That hasn’t been a conscious choice, but it has held true for the past few months. A break has come in that pattern now, though, and it has left my nocturnal partiality as nothing at all. For Christmas and New Year, I was in New England with my parents and my brother. It was…
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A Month at UCSD
By Sam Thoburn (University of California, San Diego, USA) I wrote my first entry for this blog weeks ago, when I had only been here for a day or two. When I wrote it, I was spending nights on the floor of my half a room and feeling, perhaps unsurprisingly, terrible. Aside from the barren nightly arrangements, every time I noticed that a turn of phrase or a product in the supermarket was even slightly different from what I know it to be at home, my assumption was that this was a change for the worse. I maintained rather longer than I should have the arrogance of the traveller, who…
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Finally home!
By Elizabeth Hardy (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA). It seems bizarre to be reading all the blogs of the students heading out for a year of fun abroad. I have now been home a month and life is (somewhat) getting back to normal. The only thing that reminds me the past year hasn’t been some crazy dream is knowing that I have changed. I am different; we all are different from our experiences. We are shaken up to a point that we cannot be put back together in the same way. We are challenged on how we have lived our lives so far. This is good for us. It…
A study abroad journal by students, for students.
