Josh Rawclffe

I'm now 4 weeks into my exchange year at Queen's University in Canada and I thought I'd briefly go through some differences between here and my home university! 1. School 'Spirit' You've seen the classic films that depict North American universities in all their style and glamour, yet being here definitely does seem similar to that vibe! There's a great deal of 'Queen's University' spirit across campus and the town of Kingston both in terms of the campus and also the sports here; whlie I'm yet to watch a game live, I'm looking forward to watching the American Football very soon! While Warwick does have elements of school spirit, in particular the varsity competition with Coventry, it's yet to really build it to this level. 2. Coursework...! Warwick Economics has a general habit of being very exam focused, with often modules having 80% of the assessment based on a written exam in May. Yet here, the focus is fairly different! A...

It's been nearly 3 weeks now since I first landed in Canada and it's flown by incredibly quickly. Oddly enough, despite being 5262km away from home, it's felt very homely since day 1.This may be simply due to having another English person, 2 Scottish, 1 Finnish, 1 Norweigan and a Canadian all under the same roof, but also due to the lifestyle and relaxed nature in general in Canada's first Capital. Kingston, with a population of around 125,000 people, is geographically placed around 3 hours from Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, while also being located on the coast of Lake Ontario. While, I haven't taken much advantage of these relatively close travel opportunities, I'll be sure to check them out at some point! I've been fortunate enough to find a house ideally located within a 5 minute walk from the main University campus and about a 15 minute walk to the coast. This has made life much easier on a day to day basis, but it was nice to find time to final...

After spending two weeks at home with friends and family, it was time to depart on the second big 'adventure' I'd planned for this year. My decision to do a year abroad was one I made back in December last year, when the opportunity to apply to lots of different universities from across the world finally changed from idea to reality once I had been switched onto the 'Economics with Year Abroad' course at Warwick University. I'll likely write a separate post in near future in more detail about why I did a year abroad, what I'd like to do get out of this experience and how I ended up at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. I'm aiming to keep this updated every week with a new post about this and a variety of topics! *That's it for now, but more to come very shortly...* 

I've tried to sum up the Warwick in Africa experience in as compact a way as possible - read below! :-) "The 'Warwick In Africa' experience for me was one of excitement, challenges and adventure. Getting stuck into and being open to new experiences was a fundamental part of the process but with this attitude, it offered an unforgettable 6 weeks. Without doubt I've grown as a person from this experience. Having to stand in front of a class of lively 16 year olds and lead a lesson that's intriguing, engaging and mostly importantly education was a huge hurdle with such a mix of abilities in the classroom. At first, this did feel like a very daunting experience, especially for the first few lessons with the lower ability classes. Yet as days went on, my confidence grew and I began to felt at ease at the front of the class. Developing communication skills, resilience following lessons that didn't go as well as planned, open mindedness and also persev...

I've been home nearly over a week since returning from Tanzania and it's still a little crazy to think I spent 6 weeks in such a different part of the world. The biggest thing without a doubt was seeing the difference in how people live, even when we weren't directly shown the real picture for many of the people living there. Stories from children walking over an hour to get to school in the morning, the majority of students not having any lunch, the state of the classrooms and lack of basic resources such as tables, chairs and even access to water. It was dramatically different to my secondary education - with our school moving to a a brand new site costing millions when I was 13. I don't think anything could really have prepared me or any of the other volunteers out in Tanzania, Ghana and South Africa for the first time about what the experience would be like. Yet I without a doubt enjoyed volunteering for Warwick in Africa this summer despite the challenges, hurd...

I'm finally back in the UK! Unfortunately I didn't have the energy to post as much as I'd have liked while I was in Tanzania, while I also struggled to add photos to this site. Nevertheless, now I'm back - here's some images to go along with the stories!  The view from the hotel Mafiga, the other WiA school  The Uluguru mountains from the school  Trees planted at the school when it was built 10 years ago View behind the school buildings Our typical lunch! Yoghurt and doughnuts!  The main courtyard of the school  Teaching in Action! Some of the students after lesson time Myself and Laura with some of our students! Elephant spotted on safari Typical Safari view out of the car at Mikumi   Teacher conference run by WiA in Morogoro Over 50 local maths teachers working together! I believe I was explained trade tariffs here! Standard of the classroom and desks ...

The first few weekends here gave us a chance to see some of the best sights of Tanzania. We started with Mikumi National Park, the 4th biggest game reserve in Tanzania and covered over 3000km in area. Luckily it wasn't too far away to go on our first weekend, just a 90 minute car journey from Morogoro to reach the park entrance. Nevertheless we were told to wake up early at 5 am to reach the park in time to see the animals before queues start forming and we managed to make it to the park and in the open safari vechile by 8am. Over the next 8 hours, we saw elephants, wilder beasts, giraffes, gaezelles, hippos, crocodiles and even monkeys! It was incredible to be so close to them and I'll be posting photos as soon as I can transfer them onto this blog. Seeing the animals so at ease was such a pleasure, as they appeared so relaxed and free in their natural environment, plus another good thing about Mikumi is that large sections of the nature reserve are not accesible by tr...