{"id":225,"date":"2016-11-02T12:47:12","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T12:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-abroad\/?p=225"},"modified":"2016-11-02T12:47:12","modified_gmt":"2016-11-02T12:47:12","slug":"isobel-o-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/2016\/11\/02\/isobel-o-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Student blog: Isobel &#8211; &#8220;O Canada&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi, I&#8217;m Isobel and I&#8217;m studying abroad at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.<\/p>\n<p>It seems like forever ago now that I was\u00a0standing at the Lancaster stall at a UCAS fair, learning about the study abroad options for my course. Study abroad was actually one of the main reasons I made Lancaster my firm decision! When I found out there was one place this year for a student to go to Canada, I knew it had to be mine. Several forms and three planes later, here I am!<\/p>\n<p>Carleton is very similar to Lancaster in a lot of ways, the main one being the fact that it is a campus university. The residence halls here are conveniently situated no more than a 15-minute walk from the furthest teaching buildings, and my hall (Leeds) even has kitchen facilities so you don&#8217;t have to buy a meal plan if it&#8217;s too expensive for you. Included in your university fees is a UPass, a card which allows you to take buses and the O-Train,\u00a0which connects campus with downtown Ottawa and the suburbs. Although it&#8217;s a much bigger university than home, Carleton has a similar sense of community, mostly built around the Ravens family of sports teams.<\/p>\n<p>On an exchange programme at Carleton, you&#8217;re never alone. Many of my friends here are also on exchanges, and the International Office organises loads of different events to help you build connections. For example, I just got back from an amazing weekend in Niagara Falls! And of course, it&#8217;s Canada, so everyone is legally required to be ridiculously friendly and helpful if you run into any difficulties.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been here for almost two months now, and here&#8217;s the truth: studying abroad is a challenge like no other. You will miss friends, you will miss family, you will miss silly things like familiar brands in a supermarket. However, it is also an incredible experience which really forces you to step out of your comfort zone\u00a0and basically build a new life from scratch, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/68.media.tumblr.com\/03e6683dc9e8422eef1706ce88560ce9\/tumblr_ofl01dpgjz1uw3xxso1_540.jpg\" alt=\"niagara falls\" width=\"600\" height=\"448\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi, I&#8217;m Isobel and I&#8217;m studying abroad at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. It seems like forever ago now that I was\u00a0standing at the Lancaster stall at a UCAS fair, learning about the study abroad options for my course. Study abroad was actually one of the main reasons I made Lancaster my firm decision! When&hellip; <a class=\"continue\" href=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/2016\/11\/02\/isobel-o-canada\/\">Continue Reading<span> Student blog: Isobel &#8211; &#8220;O Canada&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/2016\/11\/02\/isobel-o-canada\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Student blog: Isobel &#8211; &#8220;O Canada&#8221;<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","tag-canada","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/linguistics-study-abroad-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}