Hi guys! How is going? I hope you all have had a good week. It has been very busy for everyone lately, coursework is to due in soon and exams are coming in about a month’s time. Also, this is the time of the year when all the societies have their annual general meeting to elect new members of the committee. So lots of take overs and more responsibilities for people who take part in! I have been quite busy with my coursework and revision, I have got two more pieces of coursework and four exams for the rest of the semester. At the moment, I am just really focusing on getting my coursework done and try to revise as much as I can. But obviously, I am still trying to enjoy the rest of my first year as much as possible ;).

So this post is again going to be about my Easter holiday, I hope you guys like it. As I mentioned before, My friend, Carina and my mum came to visit London. My mum came while Carina was still in London, so there was a bit of a clash there but anyways I was really happy that they got to meet again. And I mean seeing two of your favourite people in the world at the same time, what more can I ask for? The two of them have met before when Carina came to visit Hong Kong around two years ago, the three of us went to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Festival Walk ( A shopping mall in Hong Kong). End of flashback, I thought it would be a good idea so I decided to take them to China Town after packing up my mum from the airport. We went to a really nice restaurant called “Four Seasons” in China Town, I introduced a lot of new dishes like “Lectuce wraps” and “Lo-Han Style vegetable stew or the Buddha’s Delight” to Carina and she really enjoyed it, I am glad she did:).  We had a really lovely meal, however we ordered a bit too much so we brought some leftovers back for my cousin. (Not wasting any food here!) Afterwards, we walked around China Town and got some Chinese pastries for desserts. YUM!

Both of them were very keen to visit my accommodation and the university, so I organised a lovely day trip to Guildford for us. I showed them around the campus and the flat I am staying in at Manor Park. Afterwards, we met up with a friend of mine from my six form college for lunch. We went to a Japanese restaurant in town and the food was so delicious! After saying goodbye to my friend as she had an event to go to, I showed Carina and my mum around Guildford and we did some shopping. It was a very good afternoon, apart from the fact that the weather was a bit rainy and cold.

It came near to the end of Carina’s visit, and my cousin had arranged a short holiday in Paris for my mum and I and she and her fiancé. I know it sounds a bit strange, but because we were flying to Paris a day before Carina’s flight, I had to ask her to stay in London and entertain herself for the evening. ( I am going to write about my trip to Paris in the next blog post, otherwise this will be too long:) ) She came with us to the train station and we said Goodbye, but we made sure that we are going to see each other again probably this summer and keep in touch.

And I think I might share a bit of my experience and give some advice on how to deal with making friends and adjusting to the changes in relationships you will encounter when you study abroad, I think the struggle of being an international student is that you are going to meet a lot of people and make a lot of friends and chances are they could be from all over the world. It is amazing how you can be friends with people who have different ethnicity backgrounds and come from different cultures that you may or may not be familiar with. From my experience, there are obviously some pros and cons. The pros are that it really open your eyes to different cultures and you get the best excuse to go travelling to some places you probably never have thought of, plus your friends will always offer to be your personal tour guide and offer you to stay over at their place. In this era of globalisation, we now get the chance to step out of our comfort zone to explore the world and meet new people. It gives us the opportunity to broaden our horizons and learn things that your textbooks or your degree won’t teach you. Studying abroad has given me this opportunity to do a little bit of travelling as well as doing my study. One of the best things from it is that I have made some really good friends. However, it is indeed quite difficult sometimes because you know after you leave school or university, you might not see them again or you might only get to see them once or twice a year and sometimes even longer. You and your friends obviously will have to put in a lot more effort to maintain your friendships and try to communicate with each other more. Well, thanks to technology we now have Facebooks, whatsapp etc that it’d made life a bit easier. Can you imaging what it would be like 20 years ago? The lesson here is that, through out your time at university you are going to meet a lot of new people and make new friends; don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and be proactive to make friends! Also, you might find that you and some of your friends might become more distanced, but that is okay because sometimes relationship changes, try to be more easy with it and keep a positive mindset. Not all changes are necessarily bad and you will need to put in effort to maintain your friendships, this is something you should not be lazy about!

I hope you guys enjoyed the post and my experience and advice can give you a little bit of insight of how the some of the challenges you might face when studying abroad haha. Please feel free to leave a comment or email me if you have any questions. 🙂 Have a good weekend!

See you next week!

Diana x