Hi my name is Eve Armstrong and before I tell you about my exchange experiences I’ll fill you in a little about myself. I am a 19 year old, native Scot studying a BSc in Geology and Physical Geography and am going to spend my 3rd year at Carleton University in Canada’s beautiful capital city, Ottawa. I’m an obsessive scuba-diver and swimmer with a tendency to have a go at almost anything with a bit of danger to it! I’m huge music fan with wildly varied tastes and a love of live bands. As well as having a liking for brightly coloured clothes and even brighter hair colours.
OK, onto the exchange. So far my exchange experience can pretty much be summed up with one word. Paperwork. With all my course selection, visa application, accommodation, flights, insurance, release form and loan application I have signed my name a thousand times and lost track of why! The big motivator is that it is definitely going to be worth it.
Since buying my flights (and after worrying about my bank balance) the excitement has been building and I can’t wait to leave. I am looking forward to living the fantastic, bustling capital city of the second largest country in the world. It looks like a vibrant city with shops, museums, history, the obvious political influence and annual festivals and events celebrating everything from music to tulips! Canada also has varied and exciting landscapes which encourage many activities- mountains to climb up, islands to sail round, artic wildernesses to dog sled across, buzzing metropolises to get lost in, great lakes to Scuba-dive in and so much more I worry that a year just isn’t long enough especially when I need to fit all this around actually going to classes!
Thinking of studying I am actually excited about the work I will be doing at Carleton- honestly I am! Learning in a whole new environment with a new teaching style and new expectations is going to be an interesting experience.
However what affects us the most in life is not where we are, but who we are with. So naturally what I am most excited about is people. I can’t wait to immerse myself in a new and exciting culture with its own traditions, holidays and language (I dread to think about ‘pants’ and the countless other words I’m going to suddenly be using wrong). I can’t wait to make new friends and explore this exciting country with them. I have already started this process by meeting the other exchange students from Edinburgh heading to Carlton with me and I hope to make many more friends once I arrive in Canada.
So welcome to my blog! In three months time I will be arriving in Canada, the country which I will call home for the next year and I will keep you posted on how I get on with my exchange year all the madness that it will surely bring with it!
