Cardiff University English, Communication & Philosophy Daphne Blanken d.s.blanken@student.rug.nl I made my way to Cardiff on the 20

Cardiff University

English, Communication & Philosophy Daphne Blanken

d.s.blanken@student.rug.nl

I made my way to Cardiff on the 20

of September last year. I did not have

accommodation yet, because I decided to see for myself what were the options in Cardiff when I got there. So, first I stayed in a hostel for a couple of days. I booked for 10 nights, but luckily (although the hostel itself was alright) found accommodation quite early on. The hostel that I stayed in was on St Mary Street, one of the main streets in Cardiff. I walked with my two suitcases to the hostel and was welcomed to Cardiff very kindly by the staff. This is why Cardiff, in my opinion, is really nice. The people working in shops or other stores are for the most part very welcoming and kind. Everyone is open to have a conversation with a stranger. I found myself talking to and meeting a lot of new people in the first couple of weeks, both because of the mentality towards new students in Cardiff and because I wanted to meet new people myself. Luckily, Cardiff University had many events planned in the two weeks before the semester started. There were both activities for first-year students of Cardiff University and activities for the international students. Like in Groningen, the university organised a sports societies market and one with general information on student life. It was very cool to see how active Cardiff University is especially with its sports societies. A lot of students are members of these associations and new students could visit their introduction lessons to figure out if they wanted to join a society. Personally, I did not feel the need to join, but many students that I have met that did join a society seemed to have a wonderful time! The events that the

university hosted for Erasmus students during the semester that I stayed were nice as well, even though I did not go to every event. They are a perfect opportunity to meet other international students. One of the first items that I needed to check of my list was of course finding accommodation. The university hosted an event for

international students to help with finding accommodation. I met a French girl there with whom I then looked for a house to live in. We went to the Student Letting

Agency that was in the Student Union building and met up with 3 other girls to look at houses at. Because we were a little bit late with finding accommodation, the agency said they did not have a lot of options anymore. But, as it turned out, they had a house left on the same street as the Student Union. I didn’t know it then, but it was one of the best places to live in. It was just a 10-minute walk to both my faculty and to the city centre, and all of the people that I would eventually hang out with lived close to this place. I found that the Student Letting Agency is very helpful when trying to find accommodation, and you do not need to worry about not having found

accommodation before going to Cardiff. For me personally, university

accommodation was a bit too expensive, and finding a house to rent with other

international students was much cheaper. Mainly first year students stay in university

accommodation and the rooms were much smaller. So, for me finding a house was

much better! I lived in that house with 6 other international students, who all stayed

for the Autumn semester. It was quite a diverse group of people. There was one girl

from Germany, one girl from Belgium, one girl from Italy, one girl from French and two French guys living with me in that house. I mostly hung out with the French people and enjoyed my time with them! Even though the cultural differences are quite noticeable (such as the Dutch always wanting to be on time as opposed to the French not minding being a little bit late), living with people from other countries proved to be very educational. I am even making plans to visit my friends from Toulouse sometime this spring! Even for just meeting new people from other

countries I would recommend going on an Erasmus exchange. But, going abroad is not just for meeting new people of course. I also went to Cardiff because of the interesting subjects the university offered. I took three courses, which were all worth 10 ECTS. When I first started looking into which courses I wanted to do, I found some that I was very interested in such as creative writing courses. Sadly, these were not available to international students. These courses were a big part of my motivation to go to Cardiff, so I was not too happy to hear this. I also found that this information was shared a little bit late. Therefore, I would recommend keeping in mind that the courses that you might want to do, may not always be available.

Luckily, I found some other courses that I was interested in as well. I took Modernism and the City, Imaginary Journeys: More to Huxley and Island Stories: Literatures of the North Atlantic. The first two were second-year courses and the last was a third- year course. Because I was in my fourth year of studying English Literature, the two second-year courses were a bit easy. I found that the close reading we do in

Groningen is a bit more extensive than in Cardiff, but that might also be because they were second-year courses. Nevertheless, all courses that I took had amazing syllabi. I thought the works I had to read each week were very interesting and required the same amount of work from me to prepare as in Groningen. The workload was a bit lighter than in Groningen because of the way the assessments work at Cardiff University. Apart from some small assignments, the courses mainly only required a big essay at the end of the semester. During the semester the

workload is a bit lighter, but at the end of the semester the courses require quite a bit of work. Because the courses I took were so interesting, working on the essays was not boring at all. Luckily for me, all the deadlines were on the 10

of January, so I could spend the rest of my time in Cardiff exploring Wales and hanging out with my friends. When I was back in Groningen, I got my grades and passed all three

courses. Because everything went quite smoothly, I did not have to contact my study advisor or students support from Groningen when I was in Cardiff. Really the only problem that I encountered was financial, which was because the deposit you have to pay to rent a room is a lot. In the UK, they have this thing where you have to pay double the deposit if you don’t have a UK guarantor. This means that if you do not know somebody in the UK who is willing to pay your rent if you are unable to (this is of course probably not going to be the case), you have to pay double the deposit.

For me this was 680 pounds, which is of course a lot of money. Because you have to

pay this deposit and the first month’s rent when you arrive, you have to keep this in

mind. Luckily, the Erasmus grant helps with this issue, but I found myself that it was

quite annoying that I had to pay an amount close to the first part of the Erasmus

grant right at the beginning, so that I didn’t have much left the rest of my stay. The

UK is quite expensive, but it is very manageable if you keep track of what you spend.

Another thing to remember is that if you rent a room in private accommodation, you

probably have to figure out how to get Wi-Fi and electricity yourself. This takes a little

bit of time and it is in these cases very useful to open a UK bank account if you don’t

have a credit card. I found that it was better for me to see what I have in pounds than

to have to deal with converting the amounts all the time. To end this report on a more

fun note, the Students’ Union in Cardiff has a big building in which not only most

Erasmus events are hosted, but which is also made into a club every Wednesday

and Saturday. These nights out were a lot of fun and I enjoyed seeing all the funny

ways the sports societies dressed up as part of theme parties. Overall, I had the

most amazing time in Cardiff, met a lot of new friends and never regretted going

there!