Welcome! I created this page to show you some of the amazing opportunities a Year Abroad has to offer. As a photographer I've taken thousands of photos during the year, and I proudly present them to you throughout to properly illustrate first-hand just how great a year abroad can be. I will also walk you through the process I went through, the experiences I had, and why studying languages and doing a year abroad is a fantastic opportunity. Enjoy!
Firstly, I'd like to tell you a little bit more about what my choices were for my year abroad, and why I make the decisions I did.
For my year abroad I had three options for the type of placement I wanted to do: Study, Work, or Teach with the British Council. All three of these options have their own merits, but in the end I chose to study abroad, for a variety of reasons. Firstly I was already used to university life, having completed my first year at Warwick and being halfway through my second. I also knew that studying meant I could meet other students my age with similar interests, and in addition it meant I had more control over where I could go to study.
Furthermore, as a student of multiple languages (French, German, and Spanish) I had the opportunity to do a split placement, i.e. I was able to spend one half of the year abroad in one location, and the other half in a different one.
After you've made this choice of what type of placement to do, you get to the exciting part of choosing where you want to spend your year abroad. As I'd chosen to study I had to choose my destination from a list of host universities who have partnerships with my home university. After careful consideration, and many hours of researching each university, its courses, and the cities they were located in, I chose to spend my first term abroad in Strasbourg, France, and my second term in Santiago, Chile. This presentation is focused on my time in Strasbourg, but I hope to make a similar one for my time in Chile.
I chose to study in Strasbourg because as a student of both French and German a city right on the border between the two seemed perfect. Nowadays Strasbourg is located a stone's throw from the Rhine river, the natural border between the French region of Alsace and Germany's Bundesland (State) of Baden-Württemberg, but historically the city of Strasbourg and its region Alsace have been passed between French and German hands many times. This history made the city even more fascinating and intriguing for me, and I knew it would provide a great opportunity to practise both my French and German.
Engaging with the history of the country and city you're living in is a great way to understand its culture. For example in Strasbourg I enjoyed visiting its various museums, and I especially enjoyed walking across one of the many bridges over the River Rhine, the natural border between France and Germany. On both sides of this river there are memorials for those who died during both World Wars, fighting for freedom for Europeans so that people like me could walk across such bridges without even needing to show a passport.
Whichever city you go to, more often than not they have their own speciality. Strasbourg's speciality was its Flammkuchen, or in French Tartes Flambées, a sort of thin pizza with cream cheese instead of a tomato base. I would often go and get one of these delicious tartes with my new Erasmus friends. This, in addition to the other French delicacies of croissants and pains au chocolat, made for a great year abroad menu.
Speaking of which, the Erasmus programme is a great part of any year abroad placement in Europe, giving you the opportunity to go to events and meet people from different countries, all whilst practising your languages. In fact one of my courses I took in Strasbourg was beginner's Portuguese, and luckily there were several Portuguese Erasmus students in my friend group, a perfect opportunity to practise. In addition the Erasmus+ scheme offers a grant to all students to help you fund your time abroad, whether helping with rent or allowing you to travel between countries.
Travelling, of course, is a major part of the year abroad. It allows you to spread your wings and travel between countries and across continents, learning about other cultures and trying the cuisine. I had studied French and German for years before I went to Strasbourg, but I never felt like I had truly lived them until I went out and used them in all the places I travelled to. My advice would be to try and organise your timetable in your new foreign university so that you get an extra day off, or even an afternoon. In Strasbourg my classes were finished by 12pm every Friday, which meant I could use that afternoon to travel to my next destination. In just one term I went both near and far, from Mannheim and Heidelberg a couple of hours away in Germany, right across to Bordeaux on France's Atlantic coast. I went to Basel in Switzerland, Germany's Freiburg, and to the nearby town of Colmar in France. It was an amazing way to practise my languages whilst seeing the world, especially when in Germany with friends who couldn't speak German and having to translate everything for them! If you have other friends doing Erasmus placements it's definitely worth going to visit them and exploring their new home, and it also saves a lot of money on accommodation.
The seasons can have a great effect on the experiences of the year abroad. When I first arrived in Strasbourg it was 30°C almost every day, and I'd often meet up with new friends to sit by the side of the Ill River and chat as the sun set. Within a few months though winter had set in, and those evenings on the river banks were a distant memory. But this cold weather brings about one of Strasbourg's if not Europe's greatest features: Christmas Markets.
The Christmas Market in Strasbourg is one of the oldest and most famous in Europe, attracting thousands of tourists from across the world each year. Parts of the city effectively shut down as stalls are set up across the whole city, and the smells of glühwein and crèpes fill the air. It was an amazing opportunity to experience a truly European Christmas, seeing the market stalls almost every day from the end of November until days before Christmas Day.
I loved my time in Strasbourg. I made amazing memories with great new friends, experienced a variety of European cities and their cultures, and most importantly I improved my French and German in ways I never could have in the UK. I went from being told my grammar was good but that my accent was obviously English to meeting new people and being told how surprised they were at the level of my French and just how French I sounded. I also learnt how to be more independent than ever before. Living independently in a foreign country is an experience that not many get the opportunity to do, and it truly allows you to grow as a person and make memories that will last a lifetime.