{"id":484,"date":"2016-01-23T10:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T10:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/?p=484"},"modified":"2016-12-02T12:42:34","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T12:42:34","slug":"experience-of-studying-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/experience-of-studying-abroad\/","title":{"rendered":"Experience of studying abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Elise\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Elise McDonald<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5464-small\"<\/a>Hi, my name is Elise and I\u2019m studying in Vienna for my second year of International Business Management. I chose to study at WU as I really enjoyed learning German at GCSE and I\u2019ve been desperate to start learning the language again to help me in my future career in business \u2013 it is crazy the number of employers I have seen that are looking for German speakers!<\/p>\n

Obviously, Vienna is also a beautiful place and Austria has great links to other countries which will make it much easier for me to travel this year. I\u2019ve only been here a couple of weeks and I\u2019ve already been to Oktoberfest and have booked to go on trips to Salzburg and Budapest next month, as well as a ski trip to Zell-Am-See in December!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8071-small\"<\/a>It\u2019s so great to have so many things to look forward to, particularly the Christmas markets in November\/December. I\u2019m already shocked by how much I\u2019m enjoying myself as, for the whole of first year, I dreaded this year abroad. Yes, you\u2019re probably reading that sentence thinking that I\u2019m crazy, but I\u2019ve always been a glass half empty kind of person and I kept focusing on the negatives of the experience; leaving my boyfriend and friends behind, missing out on a second year uni house, being so far away from home\u2026 need I go on.<\/p>\n

So, I guess my blog posts will be good for people that are considering a year abroad but find the idea scary! Hopefully, this year will prove me completely wrong and help to ease other students\u2019 nerves. I\u2019ve been here for just under two weeks and I can already say that nothing I was worried about has happened. To be honest you\u2019re so busy exploring and meeting new people that you don\u2019t really get a chance to think about home and if I have had a difficult moment there\u2019s always Netflix to distract me.\"IMG_5349\"<\/p>\n

So far I am so happy that I picked WU as my host University as the Erasmus set up here is amazing! We have the Erasmus Buddy Network (EBN) which organises so many trips to other places and gives you a \u2018buddy\u2019 to help you settle in. I was so lucky that my Buddy offered to collect me from the airport and showed me to my accommodation as I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d have managed on my own. By the way, the accommodation here is great and was so easy to apply for. I have my own kitchen and en-suite and its cleaned every week \u2013 it\u2019s like living in a hotel which is perfect for an undomesticated person like me! The University itself is also incredible and so modern that the library looks a lot how I\u2019d imagine a spaceship would look. I have already been assigned two essays to write before I even start classes though which was a bit of a shock to the system! I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m prepared for the change in teaching style that they have here but hopefully it won\u2019t take long to adjust as I start classes this week.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5407-small\"<\/a>Now enough of the boring stuff and on to the fun things I\u2019ve already done. The first thing I did when I arrived was go for weiner schnitzel and apfel strudel, which definitely did not disappoint and was really good value for money at an all-night restaurant called Mozarts. I also went on the Giant Wheel at Prater which was great to do at sunset with views of the whole city.<\/p>\n

The whole time I have been here the weather has been so warm which was obviously not what I was expecting in Austria. I was also surprised to find that they have beaches and bars along the Danube but I thought I\u2019d best experience them before the weather changes and they close for winter.<\/p>\n

Again, AMAZING FOOD and just generally a great night but so surreal to be sat on a beach looking at high rise buildings! Finally, the main attraction: \"IMG_5362\"<\/a>Oktoberfest. Two days ago I went on my first EBN trip to Munich on an overnight \u2018party train\u2019 with a free bar. It\u2019s safe to say that it was one of the weirder experiences of my life but seemed a lot more normal by about my 10th<\/sup> drink. I didn\u2019t get much sleep on the way to the Festival which is a huge regret as I spent the whole day too hungover to drink again. Yes\u2026 I went to Oktoberfest and didn\u2019t drink!<\/p>\n

I think I\u2019ll leave it there for now but I\u2019ll try my best to post regularly to brag about all the fun stuff I\u2019m doing!<\/p>\n

Elise x<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Elise McDonald Hi, my name is Elise and I\u2019m studying in Vienna for my second year of International Business Management. I chose to study at WU as I really enjoyed learning German at GCSE and I\u2019ve been desperate to start learning the language again to help me in my future career in business \u2013 … Continue reading “Experience of studying abroad”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,6,7],"tags":[38,36,22,39,35,37,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mgt.dept.shef.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}