Sean GOODWIN

University of Queensland, Australia
Exchange to Shandong University, China

It’s necessary to begin this story with the obligatory statement that it’s hard to sum up the experience of my last year in 300-500 words, but of course I will try. Before going on exchange, I had little to no travel experience. To say that coming on exchange and any travelling I’ve done in between studying has opened my eyes to the world would be a complete understatement. I will begin with an example.

When travelling before my exchange began, I met a girl from Norway who was staying in my dorm in a Hostel in Xi’an, a city in central China. This was in mid-August, and just a few weeks before the horrendous 2011 Norway attacks which claimed hundreds of lives, both in the city of Oslo and at a popular summer camp on a not-so-far away island, occurred. I found out that this girl had regularly attended this summer camp every year since she could remember, but this year she decided to take a medical internship in Beijing for something different. I also found out that more than 10 of her close friends, and over 20 other friends were murdered when this massacre took place. Talking to her you would never have known that such a horrible event had just taken place in her life. She was loud, talkative and funny. When another of our roommates expressed his condolences she simply brushed it off and told us that her view was that ‘life goes on’. I will never forget those words leaving her mouth.

During my exchange I have experienced my own share of loss, none that could compare to hers of course, but still losses. Her strength and these simple three words she had said to us have stayed with me ever since, and form part of the indelible experience that my exchange has given me. I have been given the chance to make friends that will last me a lifetime, however tragic it is to face the possibility of living in separate parts of the world for probably most of our lives after our exchange is done. I have been given the chance to experience one of the world’s oldest and richest cultures first hand in China, and many others throughout the world. I have been given the chance to learn about so many different peoples and cultures, and it seems easy to forget that after all this, the exchange’s main purpose was to improve my Chinese language proficiency and yet it became so much more than that. It became a lesson. My campus here in China became my classroom, not only for Chinese, but rather for learning some of the more finer details and beauty of life on earth.

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