I’m already over 4 weeks into my 8 month travel and exchange experience overseas and so far it has been nothing short of an adventure full of memories and mishaps.<\/p>\n
Thank god for travel insurance which I organised before I left, definitely an important thing to purchase before heading overseas as I’ve already had my luggage lost, phones and money stolen, gotten sick and had airlines charge me extra for luggage which I had already paid for. Before coming to Europe I was so excited for the experience to begin, and now that I’m living it day by day, it feels so surreal!<\/p>\n
I will be studying at Utrecht University for a semester beginning on the 5th September and I’m really looking forward to finally moving into my student accommodation in Utrecht to settle down and develop a home base.<\/p>\n
As fun as backpacking around Europe can be, it does get tiring and I miss having a daily routine because at the moment I’m jumping on buses, couch-surfing and booking hostels all over Europe spontaneously at the last minute with absolutely no plans of what I’m doing next!<\/p>\n
I’m also really looking forward to making new friends at university and hopefully some local Dutch friends too. I can tell already the experiences yet to come will be nothing short of incredible!<\/p>\n
I’m currently in Bulgaria and have had terrible access to wifi and computers so communication with the outside world has been a struggle.<\/p>\n
That’s me for now \u270c Hoping the next 4 weeks go smoothly before I begin living in the Netherlands!!!! #EXCITED<\/p>\n
Patrick Marshall, a\u00a0Bachelor of International Tourism\/Diploma in Language <\/a>student,\u00a0Semester 2 2016 exchange at\u00a0Utrecht University<\/a>,\u00a0the Netherlands<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m already over 4 weeks into my 8 month travel and exchange experience overseas and so far it has been nothing short of an adventure full […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[72,155,176,178,182,194,400,428,478,487,488,530,550],"class_list":["post-2880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-experience-blogs","category-outbound-student-experiences","tag-bachelor-of-international-tourism","tag-diploma-in-language","tag-excit","tag-excitement","tag-experience","tag-flinders-learn-without-borders","tag-pre-departure-post","tag-semester-exchange","tag-the-netherlands","tag-travel","tag-travel-insurance","tag-utrecht-university","tag-wifi"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-exchange-experiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-exchange-experiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-exchange-experiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-exchange-experiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-exchange-experiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-exchange-experiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-exchange-experiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-exchange-experiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-exchange-experiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}