My name's Charlotte and I have a passion for travelling and documenting my adventures through writing and photography. Having lived in several countries and visited 30, I've seen a lot of the world, but still have much more left to explore! Here on this blog, I do full recaps of all my trips - big and small - and write about a range of travel-related topics. Hope you enjoy and find plenty of travel inspiration!
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Thursday, 15 April 2021
Westbury Court Garden: The UK's Finest Dutch Water Garden
Monday, 12 April 2021
Ladygrove Lakes
At the end of March some Covid restrictions were finally eased, meaning it's now possible to visit family and friends, provided that you meet outside.
My parents and I took advantage of the new rules to pay an Easter visit to my sister and her husband, who live in the town of Didcot in Oxfordshire. We had tea and biscuits in their garden, which was really nice (even though it was very cold!). And then afterwards, we walked to a nearby area of nature: Ladygrove Lakes.
The area consists of two lakes: one very small one, and another slightly larger one. The larger one has a path, so you can walk around it and enjoy the sights of geese (including a unique hybrid goose!), ducks, willow trees, and islands in the middle of the water.
The electricity pylon spoils the view slightly, but it's still a very pretty lake. Overall, it was really nice to do our daily exercise in a new place, as my village doesn't have a park like this, and I've got quite bored of walking or running along the same pavements and country roads every day. The day out in Didcot took me back to my days at university in Nottingham, where I used to regularly walk around two beautiful lakes: one in Highfields Park and one in Wollaton Park. I find it really calming and relaxing to walk around lakes, and it's something I've missed during these past few months of being stuck in the same place.
A few days later, my parents and I went on our first proper sightseeing trip since December. We visited a place that had been on my outdoor outings list since March last year, and it definitely didn't disappoint. It's one of those British places that make you feel like you're in another country, so our visit there felt a bit like a short foreign holiday. I'll be writing all about it shortly...
Saturday, 10 April 2021
Planning a Year Abroad
So far in this Year Abroad series, I've written about the toughest challenges and the biggest advantages involved in doing a Year Abroad. And now in this final post of the series, I'll be discussing how to plan the year in order to get the most out of it. This will be in the form of a sort of step-by-step guide that will help you plan the Year Abroad of your dreams!
1) Think about your goals for the year
The first thing you need to do is think about any specific goals you want to accomplish during the year. Maybe there's a particular country or city you'd like to live in, or a particular type of placement you'd like to do?
Personally, I had three goals before I started planning anything:
- To spend the French part of my Year Abroad either in Paris or the south of France, or both. (I more or less accomplished this; I spent about a month in the south of France and 10 days in Paris overall. However, circumstances forced me to spend a longer amount of time in Normandy.)
- To work as a British Council English language teaching assistant. (I accomplished this in Austria!)
- To spend part of the year in Latin America. In particular, I was interested in the continent of South America, and Chile was the country that appealed to me the most. (In the end, after looking into placements in Peru, Costa Rica and Argentina, I chose to go and study in Santiago, Chile and had an incredible time!)
- To visit Vienna and to spend a weekend in Italy (preferably Venice) during my semester in Austria. (I ended up going to both of these places, plus many more).
- To visit Valparaíso during my semester in Santiago, and if possible Argentina and the south of Chile. (I did manage to go to all three of these places, plus a few more, during the semester, but now that I have more confidence about travelling in South America, I feel like I could have travelled even more!)
Monday, 5 April 2021
Year Abroad: The Best Bits
In the first part of this Year Abroad series, I wrote about some of the challenges I came up against during my own Year Abroad, all of which are fairly common issues students abroad face, and I shared some tips on how to deal with them. So it makes sense that the second part of this series should focus on the biggest advantages of doing a Year Abroad!
While it's true that some students have a less positive experience than others, I think everyone finishes the year with improved language skills and a sense of accomplishment. My personal experience was that it was the best year (well, 15 months actually!) of my life so far, and it changed me in ways I'd never expected.
In this article, I'll be writing about the six best things that happened to me during my Year Abroad. I'd say that most people who go to live abroad experience the majority, if not all, of these things, so hopefully this post can serve as inspiration for anyone debating over whether to do something like this!
Travelling
Experiencing a Different Culture
Improving Your Language Skills
Gaining Work Experience
Finding Friendship or Love
Personal Growth
Thursday, 1 April 2021
Year Abroad: Dealing With Problems
As promised, I'm going to be writing a series of posts about my experiences of completing a Year Abroad, with some tips for getting the best out of a Year Abroad, and this post is the first of three. This series is going to be mainly aimed at modern languages students who go to study and/or work in one or more foreign countries as part of their degree, as that's my area of experience, but some of the advice will be relevant to anyone who's planning to spend an extended amount of time abroad, whether that's for university, work, a Gap Year or any other reason.
This first post is going to focus on some of the problems students come up against during the Year Abroad, and how best to cope with them. It's natural that doing something like this will involve challenges, and that's part of the fun of it, but it's also good to know how to manage these challenges so that they don't put a dampener on the year.
So here's a list of some of the issues I faced during my own Year Abroad (which are all fairly common problems), and some tips on how to deal with them!