International students share their experiences of the first few days on campus at the University of Birmingham -- otherwise known as International Welcome Week
Title: International Students – Settling In
Duration: 2.59 mins
S1 I have met the representative at the University of Birmingham back home in Kazakhstan who helped me to prepare for coming over here, who answered all my questions and this helped me a lot.
S2 When I was preparing to leave home for my studies in the University of Birmingham, I felt really excited just about getting a new experience in life.
S3 When I was just about to leave my home country, I was really nervous of going on my own to a foreign country – but at the same time it was very good how people took care of us here and also it’s not that difficult to go back home from here, as you have a really big airport which basically offers flights to nearly every destination in the world.
S2 With the amount of information provided from the University of Birmingham in advance through them sending a lot of handouts about accommodation, about the first week and about what will be happening during the first week, I had plenty of knowledge before coming and it was really great that the University of Birmingham also organised a pick-up in the airport.
S4 One of the things that was really great was the Welcome Week because we had students that met us at the airport and then the whole week they were just guiding us, we had different campus tours, city tours.
S5 Now I’m a second year student and I’m working for the Welcome Week. What we do is we pick up people from the airport on the weekend and then on Monday the Welcome Week starts.
S6 Here we stand in the marquee. This is how international students are going to sort everything out during their first week.
S2 I was given out a timetable of all the activities which the Welcome Week team was running.
S5 We had dancing events, Bollywood Nights and dinner on the last night. During the day they can come to the marquee and there is refreshments where they can meet with their friends. We can also help them with all sorts of things like opening a bank account, signing up with societies, and all those things to make them be happy at University.
S7 The first impression, which is nice, everybody was so attentive to me. They are very helpful and friendly and willing to answer all my questions – so yeah, it was brilliant.
S8 It’s not hard to find friends in Birmingham because people here are very nice and it’s very multicultural society.
S9 So everything you can think about as an international student when you first arrive, just don’t be nervous at all because everything has already sorted out for you.
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