{"id":6868,"date":"2019-06-24T16:29:10","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T06:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/qut-exchange-students\/?p=6868"},"modified":"2020-06-23T12:05:40","modified_gmt":"2020-06-23T02:05:40","slug":"blossoming-in-sweden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/gone-global\/2019\/06\/24\/blossoming-in-sweden\/","title":{"rendered":"Blossoming in Sweden"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Hayley &#8211; Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan (KTH), Sweden<\/h3>\n<h4>Semester 1, 2017<br \/>\nBachelor of Urban Development<\/h4>\n<p>For my semester abroad I attended KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm City, Sweden. It was by far the best six months of my life. I was challenged in many different ways, given the most insane opportunities and experiences, met people from all over the world that I wouldn\u2019t have otherwise met. I was pushed out of my comfort zone in terms of learning.<\/p>\n<p>Living in a different city provided me with many differences to Brisbane that I had to deal with, one particular aspect being the cold. I had never seen snow before going to Sweden and had never experienced a proper winter! At first I found it extremely hard to adjust to the short days (5 hours of sunlight) and the freezing temperatures in conjunction with not having any friends or knowing many people. This caused me to become very homesick at the start of my exchange, spending a lot of time in my room alone. However, the staff at my host University were amazing and made me feel very welcome, they hosted numerous events to encourage other international students to meet each other and this is how I made my friends (from Turkey, Brazil, England and Ireland!).<\/p>\n<p>In hindsight, the challenges I faced at the beginning of my exchange taught me so many lessons in life \u2013 it taught me lessons about being grateful (grateful for where I am lucky enough to live, and how I grew up) and also lessons about myself (such as I now realise how weather can effect my mood, and every day I wake up and it is sunny, I am grateful!). By the end of my 5 months in Sweden it was Spring and I had felt like I had blossomed along with the seasons \u2013 going from a shy girl spending most of my time in my room to a fully bloomed flower with heaps of friends out enjoying the sunshine and everything the city had to offer me! By June I did not want to leave Sweden, but I was so thankful for all of the opportunities I had received and the people I had met.<\/p>\n<p>I am so thankful to the QUT mobility team who encouraged me to put in my application and assisted me at all stages of my application to ensure that I had the opportunity to go on exchange.<\/p>\n<h4>Read more about <a href=\"https:\/\/qutvirtual4.qut.edu.au\/group\/student\/student-life\/student-exchange\/choose-your-destination\/kth-royal-institute-of-technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kunliga Tekniska Hogskolan (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hayley &#8211; Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan (KTH), Sweden Semester 1, 2017 Bachelor of Urban Development For my semester abroad I attended KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm City, Sweden. It was by far the best six months of my life. I was challenged in many different ways, given the most insane opportunities and experiences, met<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1513,"featured_media":8589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,450,5267],"tags":[213,450,5267],"class_list":{"0":"post-6868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-friends","8":"category-student-life","9":"category-sweden","10":"tag-friends","11":"tag-student-life","12":"tag-sweden"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Blossoming in Sweden - QUT Gone Global<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.qut.edu.au\/gone-global\/2019\/06\/24\/blossoming-in-sweden\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blossoming in Sweden - QUT Gone Global\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hayley &#8211; Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan (KTH), Sweden Semester 1, 2017 Bachelor of Urban Development For my semester abroad I attended KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm City, Sweden. 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