What I've learned from studying abroad

I'm 19 and I recently moved to Belgium for my first year of university, studying chemistry at the Katholiek Universiteit Leuven.

I thought my mediocre Dutch would give me a head start on other foreign students, but I had a difficult first month or so. Lectures, social events and life in general seemed to pass by in a flash of quickly spoken dialect.

I developed a stammer and my self-confidence took a hit. My problems with the language solved themselves out over time, but the transition was more difficult than I'd ever imagined.

It's not just the language that took some getting used to: local students here have had a very different experience of secondary education from the one I had in England.

The Belgian students at my university had 32 hours of lessons during their last years of secondary schools; the measly 16 hours I had paled in comparison. A mandatory range of subjects such as modern and classical languages, along with philosophy, are commonplace in Belgian secondary schools.

The difference continues at university level: in my first year I'm going to sit a much wider range of subjects than my friends studying chemistry at English universities. Lessons that I didn't expect to see again or had never seen before have suddenly become part of my university life, for example geology, philosophy and a large physics module.

I've had to adjust to a new way of life and I've grown to love the quirks of living in Belgium. They name their sports teams after coloured animals (a list which is seemingly endless), have a bizarre form of singing party called a cantus and the beer is as strong as wine.

Most students at my university, even second and third years, go home for the weekends – and often come back laden with food prepared by their parents.

While in England you properly fly the nest when you go off to university, here it is seen as a stepping stone to independence.

One thing that has helped me settle in has been sport. I'd taken part in sport for fun during my secondary education, but once at university in a foreign country it became a great distraction. It's been one of the best stress-relievers during my time studying away from home.

The strange feeling of being "the foreigner" is something I have had to get used to.

"Why are you in Leuven?" is normally the first thing people ask when they meet me. Slowly they have got used to my being here, and I am seen as just another student.

Relocating to a new country is hard, there's no avoiding that fact. But the benefits for me have far outweighed the drawbacks.

I've only been home for about two weeks since I've been here. But the fact that I'm paying roughly £500 a year for university is something you just can't argue with.

And a year abroad can be a great experience. There is so much that can be taken from the new culture, the new language and the refreshing feeling of trying something completely new.

(Source: TheGuardian)