The first autumn I spent in Canada was a little over a decade ago, when I lived in a rural town of Québec as a college exchange student. After a rough month of adjusting to the new life on campus, Canadian Thanksgiving arrived, and just like many other international students, my new dorm friend and …
It was seven summers ago that I visited Sicily, Italy, for three weeks. At the time, I was doing a master’s study in Yorkshire, England, and one day, I learned about an interesting math graduate summer school to be held in Catania. Something about the event advertisement spoke to me, and I quickly signed up …
It was about 8 years ago. One early morning, I was heading to the airport to catch a flight to London, England, for my graduation solo trip. After the night of final packing, I had left my apartment in Tokyo with a backpack and one huge suitcase that contained all my clothing, travel gears and …
I was ten years old when I made my first trip overseas. My family was not a frequent traveller, but that spring, just one month before my eleventh birthday, my father got a business trip to visit London, England, for about a week. England was the country where both my parents once did their graduate …
Several years ago, when I studied in Yorkshire, England, one winter weekday, I made an overnight solo trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, to visit a university there and meet with a professor. I would have loved to stayed there longer since it was my first time to visit any part of Scotland, but unfortunately, it was …
Ten years ago, I was staying at a small college in Quebec, Canada, as an international exchange student. Just before the autumn, I became friends with another exchange student from France, who happened to live only a few doors away from my room in the same dormitory. We started hanging out together, and during our …
Several years ago, I lived for a year in Sheffield, England, doing a graduate study in math. Though I didn’t have my own family in the country, one of my mother’s close friends, whom I call Rosy in this story, and her family lived in London. So, during my time in Sheffield, I often visited …
Spilled coffee: unexpected misery and unexpected kindness Read More »
About ten years ago, I came to Canada for the first time on a year-long college exchange program. I had never lived in a foreign country before, and even though the language wasn’t too much of an obstacle (except the speaking part), I immensely struggled with some culture shock. The shock was usually around small …
Several summers ago when I stayed in Sicily for three weeks in a graduate math summer program, I got myself an unexpected souvenir – a beautiful bathing suit. Even though the purpose of the stay was to study and work on a math project, we participants had evenings and weekends to explore the city of …
About a decade ago, I happened to spend one month in spring in Boston attending an English language program. I home-stayed in the northern suburb of the bustling city and commuted every day to the city centre to attend the lessons. After the classes, I would pick a place to spend my afternoon exploring the …
