When I first came to university, there were a lot of things I wanted to do and, for the most part, I’d achieved them when I came into my third year. However, I’d never studied abroad. I study Economics and, at least for my cohort, we could only go on exchange in our third and final year which is heavily weighted as 66% of our degree. And, as much as I wanted to go abroad, I wanted a good degree classification more so I resigned myself to never quite achieving the former.
But then I heard of summer schools.
There are a lot of different destinations, courses and dates available and I took my time sorting through them. Eventually, I went for Hong Kong. There are a number of reasons why with the chief among them being my family is from there and, while I’ve visited a few times, I hardly know anything about it since I was a child most times we went. This school presented me a chance to find out more.
For those interested, I was offered an Opportunity scholarship of £750 from Southampton and there was the possibility of a $1000 USD scholarship (UK students would get £750~) from the PolyU but that required a few conditions: students had to study two courses, attend 80% of their classes and get a D grade or above. As I’m graduating this year and the credits don’t count for me, I chose to take just one course so I could have more time to explore and get to know Hong Kong. However, it should be noted each course consisted of four 3-hour classes a week for a total of three weeks which still left students with plenty of time if they took two. 🙂
My explorations took me all over Hong Kong and I ate a lot. Anyone that knows me knows I love food so I was really excited to eat and I made sure to do some research before I left so I knew what I wanted. Here are a few of the highlights of my food journey in HK and China!
And here are some of my explorations of Hong Kong itself:
Everyone on the summer school was so welcoming and I made some really great friends on the trip.
Lastly, one thing I can’t neglect to mention is the six day field trip we took to Xian, the old capital of China. It was an absolutely amazing experience and we had the best tour guide to lead us through it.
To end, I had the best time on my summer school in Hong Kong. I definitely wasn’t ready to do this in my first year and, even in third, I was worried about travelling abroad alone or getting lost or not fitting in. And I did get hopelessly, hopelessly lost and I rode a few wrong trains to the end of the line but I had my friends with me and it was fun. Hong Kong is also such a tourist friendly country with wifi everywhere and lots of English speaking people. Whether it’s on a summer school or something else, I’d definitely recommend visiting!