This year changed my life
1 year, 12 months, 365 days, 8760 hours, 525,600 minutes, 31,536,000 seconds...
One year
A lot can happen during this time, and for me it did. China changed me and I'm glad for it.
My year started off full of excitement, me and my friends were all so psyched to be in China. To explore the place, check out the night life around uni... and for the first two weeks, that's all we did was party!
It was so nice how all the international students knew each other. We bonded so strongly because we arrived early and didn't have lectures for a couple of weeks yet, just compulsory documentation and appointments to attend. Probably my favourite event of the year still has to be the first big uni party. It was a pool party organised by our international students society. It was just such a crazy night that everyone was talking about for the next couple of days!
However, after this it all went quickly downhill and I became seriously ill. I was diagnosed with pneumonia which also led to me having tonsillitis. I had the choice to stay and continue my year abroad or to defer for one year and go home. I decided to stay, and it was definitely the right decision. After all the preparation, visa, flights, everything it took to get to China, I didn't want to give up and do it again.
Sometimes I felt really down during my recovery because I couldn't do anything and I was just so sick of being ill. It tired me out, I wasn't able to do anything and I was trapped inside. But this was also a valuable lesson for me to keep positive through tough times. You'll likely come out stronger than before and better things can happen as a result of that.
After recovering I had an amazing winter holiday travelling around for one month. One of my achievements that I am most proud of was climbing the Great Wall in Beijing. I was so happy to have done this as the previous month I could hardly walk up stairs without becoming breathless and exhausted. In summer I also climbed another section of the wall when my brother visited.
For summer I backpacked around mainland China, also visiting Taiwan, Macau and Seoul in South Korea. Visiting all these places was such an eye opening experience. Even before my summer travel I thought that I had changed and become more open minded. But visiting even more places and countries, seeing different people's way of life really has affected my way of thinking for the better.
I've learnt so much from my year abroad and some of the simplest lessons, I learned early on and they have proved to be the most important.
I learnt to say yes to every opportunity I could. This is something I thought was especially important to do whilst being in another country, but I've realised that you don't have to be abroad to do this, it can still be applied at home. By saying yes to every opportunity you will get to meet people and do things that maybe you wouldn't normally, or that you wouldn't think you were capable of. Even if it's something stupid! I was once dragged into a group of Chinese people to sing on a live internet stream! Never in the world had I imagined I'd do that and it was surprisingly fun! But the point is, whatever it is the experience will be worth it and you will learn something from doing so.
My mum always says to me, "it's not what you know, it's who you know." I really like this saying and I try to adopt it because some opportunities you may meet someone who you will later realise is important to you. You could meet your new best friend or a business partner, you just never know!
During the last year, I've met so many different people from such different backgrounds and I find this super interesting but it also reminds me to be grateful for everything I have and that if I want something more I should work hard for it.
Travelling solo seems scary, especially being a girl. Some places are more dangerous for us or we have to be extra careful. Despite some stressful times like flights being delayed or cancelled. I found my solo travel experience to be a really good one. I developed many different skills whenever I was alone and it greatly helped with my self confidence. I would always think that travelling alone was scary but really, I'd just imagined it to be worse than it was and it's actually not so scary or too difficult! Most of the time I wasn't alone either, I'd meet up with uni friends or meet new friends as I was traveling and this is what's really exciting about travelling: being able to meet new people, hear about their life and have a new perspective on things to think about.
So if you're about to go on your year abroad, maybe you've already set off then I hope you can learn from me!
Remember to:
-Stay positive
-Say yes!
And
-Don't be afraid to travel solo
And keep an open mind, I think that a lot of Europeans probably already view themselves as having an open mind but honestly you can never stop learning and travelling is such a fun way to learn. As I said it will open your mind up even further, you will see and do things you'd never imagined. Some may be good, some may be bad but EMBRACE IT ALL!
Truly the most important thing however, is to ENJOY YOURSELF!!🎉🎉
Your year abroad should be about having fun and when you come home you'll have lots of photos and stories to share with everyone. Even if you are only going abroad for one semester or six months, make the most of your time it really will fly by just like everyone says but even more so with just one semester.
