music: the kooks- naive
mood: contemplative
There is one thing to say about preparing an Erasmus semester: it sucks!
As it is EU, it is bureaucratic... nobody likes this. An estimated one million of papers sent back and forth internally, externally, bla.
What is more important is mental preparation. For the official preparations, you get help, checklists, reminder mails, information packages. University of Kuopio (after merging with Joensuu university, it is called University of Eastern Finland) does care about exchange students quite a lot, they tell you exactly what to do at which point, that is great!
But moving into a foreign country without knowing the language, the way of living, the weather (big subject, will get to this later!), or anybody there is a huge step and quite scary.
In summer, a friend of mine left for Erasmus in Granada and totally freaked out with excitment. I didn't quite understand her at that point. I was really relaxed like what bad can happen? Before Christmas I went crazy, too.
I'm at a point in my life where everything is changing. I'm almost finished studying, a lot of my friends will be gone to who knows where for work so even when I come back my life won't be the same again. The prospect of going to a foreign place and returning to a foreign place afterwards is hard. Saying good-bye to everyone while being in the middle of holiday preparation, not knowing yet about my tests from this semester, where I will be living (found out about this at the beginning of december), from which money I will be living (found out about this one day before leaving) and so on gave me the creaps!
I am a lot calmer now that I'm here, Skype is working ;-), I met some other people and most of the things are settled.
Suitcase packing is a bad thing, too... and it is true: never go out to minus 20°C without ski underwear! A guy I met here had his suitcase lost on the flight. My tutor told me that this happens quite a lot so I'm even more lucky!
Again: preparations suck! And stress makes my skin go random... spots, dry lips, ... I hate looking like some kind of cake!
mood: contemplative
There is one thing to say about preparing an Erasmus semester: it sucks!
As it is EU, it is bureaucratic... nobody likes this. An estimated one million of papers sent back and forth internally, externally, bla.
What is more important is mental preparation. For the official preparations, you get help, checklists, reminder mails, information packages. University of Kuopio (after merging with Joensuu university, it is called University of Eastern Finland) does care about exchange students quite a lot, they tell you exactly what to do at which point, that is great!
But moving into a foreign country without knowing the language, the way of living, the weather (big subject, will get to this later!), or anybody there is a huge step and quite scary.
In summer, a friend of mine left for Erasmus in Granada and totally freaked out with excitment. I didn't quite understand her at that point. I was really relaxed like what bad can happen? Before Christmas I went crazy, too.
I'm at a point in my life where everything is changing. I'm almost finished studying, a lot of my friends will be gone to who knows where for work so even when I come back my life won't be the same again. The prospect of going to a foreign place and returning to a foreign place afterwards is hard. Saying good-bye to everyone while being in the middle of holiday preparation, not knowing yet about my tests from this semester, where I will be living (found out about this at the beginning of december), from which money I will be living (found out about this one day before leaving) and so on gave me the creaps!
I am a lot calmer now that I'm here, Skype is working ;-), I met some other people and most of the things are settled.
Suitcase packing is a bad thing, too... and it is true: never go out to minus 20°C without ski underwear! A guy I met here had his suitcase lost on the flight. My tutor told me that this happens quite a lot so I'm even more lucky!
Again: preparations suck! And stress makes my skin go random... spots, dry lips, ... I hate looking like some kind of cake!
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