University of Nebraska–Lincoln

College of Engineering

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Charles W. Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction Study abroad Blog:

Have you ever wondered what architectural engineering students study in England? How about construction courses in Spain? The Durham School has several study abroad opportunities with new locations being added every year.

In Spring 2009, four students from the Omaha campus are embarking on a journey for one semester to study engineering in England and Spain. Caitlin Brow, Spencer Gaskell, and James Dougherty are Architectural Engineering students studying at Leeds University in Leeds, England. Anayeli Martinez-Real is a Construction Engineering student spending the semester at the University of Castilla-La Mancha on their Ciudad Real campus. The students have been asked to keep a journal and share through their blogs. Please visit this site frequently during the semester as the students share photos, experiences and memories of their semester abroad.


Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Easter Vacation

The University of Leeds had a four week Easter Vacation. Being used to only a week long spring break, I didn't know what to do with myself at first, but then I decided that I could use this as an opportunity to see more of Europe. When I first created a list of all of the places I wanted to go, I realized that I didn't have the time or money. In the end, I narrowed down my list, and started looking into booking travel and accommodation. Halfway through the process I realized that I was not going to have enough time in each location to enjoy myself, so I narrowed down the list even further.

In the end, I went to Italy for almost two weeks. I started out in Venice for three days, which was amazing. I was lucky because I got there just before tourist season, so I didn't have to deal with as big of crowds (not to say that it wasn't crowded a lot of the time.)

























After my three days in Venice, I went on my way (much to my dislike). I jumped on a train and traveled to Florence. Once I found the hostel I was staying at, I was greeted very warmly. The hostel I stayed at in Florence was by far the best of all the hostels I stayed at. Florence is a beautiful city, full of rich history. The first evening I was there I was lucky enough to catch the sunset near the Ponte Vecchio. I was also in Florence for three days, however the last day it was raining almost all day, which was disappointing, but I was able to enjoy myself due to the very hospitable hostel workers. Another highlight of my stay in Florence was the fact that one of the hostel workers cooked dinner each night, so I was able to enjoy Italian at its finest...with the company of others.







































After Florence, I went to Genoa and then Milan, which in my opinion was a waste of time. Don't get me wrong, there is neat stuff to see, but nothing as great as Venice or Florence. After that, I went off to Rome for three days. Rome was packed, and it got super hot for the 3 days I was there...but I was able to see many things I never thought I would have the opportunity to see.























After my twelve days in Italy, I flew back to the UK and spent 6 days in London. London itself was great, but dealing with the people was not a lot of fun. It was always packed, and the people there were not as friendly. In London I saw: St Paul's Cathedral, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Parliament building and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, walked over Millennium Bridge a few times (this was the bridge that was featured in the opening of the new Harry Potter film), among many other things. I also spent a half day in Greenwich (pronounced Gren-ich) and saw the Prime Meridian. The highlight of my stay in London was not a location, landmark, or building. My favorite part London was theatre. While there I saw two shows...Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Phantom of the Opera. Both shows were excellent, and I am so glad that I was able to experience London's West End.





After London, I went back to Leeds for Easter...but then it was off again for a bit more traveling. After Easter, I flew to Prague for a few days. Prague was not what I expected, but I still enjoyed myself. Prague has a very interesting mix of architecture, and it was really neat to see it all. I was also able to see the Nationale-Nederlanden building (more commonly refered to as the Fred and Ginger building, or Dancing House). It was amazing to me to be able to see up close a building that was talked about so much in so many of my classes.




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posted by Spencer at 1:09 PM 0 comments



School and Exams

The biggest part of studying abroad is of course the studying. The University of Leeds has a very good engineering department. The campus itself is quite large, and had buildings of many different architecture types.

While in Leeds, I took five classes. Through the University of Leeds I took four modules: Thermodynamics, Structures & Stress Analysis, Psychology & the Media, and Differential Equations. I also took Dynamics via correspondence through UNO.

Classes in England are set up much differently than here. My two engineering classes and math class all met 2 times a week for an hour each lecture. The psychology class only met once a week for an hour long lecture. Because of this, the professors obviously had less time to teach the material, and therefore did way fewer examples in class. This meant that a lot more of the learning is done outside of the classroom. In my experiences here at UNO, most of my outside work for classes was review and homework problems. While I was in England, I spent a lot of time comprehending and learning material. For me, this was a difficult change, as I learn very well from worked out examples.

Because of this difference, I spent quite a bit of time in the library. The library was always quite full of students studying. It had a few rooms for group study, which was nice for when I needed to discuss coursework with others. Also, the library had a computer cluster (computer lab) on almost every floor. These clusters were always full when I was there, leading me to believe that fewer students in the UK have computers of their own, which was surprising to me, especially since I live in Scott Hall where everyone seems to have at least one computer.

Exams were also much different in England. Instead of cramming all of the finals into one week like we do, the exams were spread out over a 3-4 week period. This gave more time to study, but also a lot more time to freak out. The exams were not held in the lecture halls, but rather in the gym, or other large auditoriums and meeting places. Each room had multiple exams being taken at once, and the professor of the class was not around (just the exam proctors). The exams were strictly timed, and there were many rules for when you could leave the room. Another thing about the exams was that they were most of your grade for the class. For Structures and Differential Equations, we had had 4 or 5 assignments and the exam. Thermodynamics was based on two lab reports and the exam. My psychology class was based only on the final exam.

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posted by Spencer at 1:08 PM 0 comments



Travel

Sightseeing within England was a great experience. First of all, no matter where I went there was a lot of history. It was interesting to see new, modern buildings mixed in with the many old, historic ones. It was also a very special experience to be able to see some of the very old architecture up close and personal.

Public transportation is excellent in the UK, whether it be by bus or by train. I did not use the bus system much at all, but from what I could see it was very efficient. The mode of transportation I used most was the train. The Leeds Rail Station was about a twenty minute walk from my accommodation at the University of Leeds, and from there I could go just about anywhere I wanted. A couple of times I traveled by coach (coach bus), as this was sometimes a cheaper option (at the cost of an extra hour or two of travel time).

I took advantage of every opportunity I had to travel.

I went places such as:
-Cambridge
-Liverpool
-London
-Manchester
-Newcastle
-Snowdonia National Park, Northern Wales
-Tynemouth
-York

Here is an example of what a day of travel was like (this is from my trip to Manchester):



Saturday, we went to Manchester for the day. Manchester has a lot of free,
tourist type places, so all we had to pay for was the train fare and lunch. We
went to the Manchester City Art museum, saw the Chinese arch and wandered around
Chinatown a bit before going to lunch. We went to The Piccadilly (a pub) and
took advantage of their 2 meals for 5 quid. After lunch, we went to the Ubris
center, which had an exhibit that featured pictures from areas of Manchester
that most people didn't even know existed. There was also a Black Panther
exhibit. After that, we visited the Manchester Cathedral. Then we hopped on a
free city bus and went to the Museum of Science and Industry. From there we got
back on a bus with the intention of going to the market to look around, but on
the way we went past the John Rylands library and it looked neat, so we got off
the bus and went there first. Then we went to the market to look around. Then we
walked back to the train station and journeyed back to Leeds.


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posted by Spencer at 1:01 PM 0 comments



Adjustment



For me, getting used to the culture seemed to go fairly easy. I suppose that it helped that they speak English, but other than that, the English culture is quite different.

The people in and around Leeds were quite nice. As I gained more travel experience in England I came to learn that the people from Yorkshire and the more northern region of England are all for the most part nice and friendly. As you travel south, you find that this is less true, especially in London. In London, people are always hurrying to get places and will most likely not stop to see if you are okay, even if they bump into you.

There are quite a few phrases that were used that I had to adjust to...
Some examples include:
Are you all right? = Are you doing well?
brilliant = cool, awesome
cheers = thank you, goodbye (depends on context)
lift = elevator
pound = UK's currency
quid = slang for pound
rubbish = trash, garbage (sometimes used for slang as we might use garbage as slang)
skive = to evade, skip out on something
smart = sharp, dressed well (as in 'You look smart tonight')
Uni = short for university (as in 'How was Uni this week?')
Zed = the last letter of the alphabet

Another thing that was strange to me was the way they reacted to the snow storm we had. Here is a snippet of what I thought about it at the time:



Yesterday it snowed almost all day here, and today it was snowing on and off.
It was hard to find a spot where the snow hadn't been trampled (everyone here
seemed rather [over]excited about the snow), but I think the total snowfall was
close to 2 inches.


If I remember correctly, some classes were even cancelled due to the snow.


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posted by Spencer at 12:55 PM 0 comments



Arrival

Let me tell you about my travel experiences...

The original plan was to fly out of Rochester, MN at 12:30 CST to Chicago, IL. From Chicago, I would get on a plane to Manchester at 5:35 CST. Once in Manchester, I would get on a train to Leeds at 9:35 am GMT.
So, I got to the airport at about 11:00, got my boarding passes and gave them my luggage, no problems so far. Then I went through security, also no problems. I boarded the plane to Chicago (a little puddle jumper). That plane left on time and also arrived on time. Then I found the gate that my next flight left from, wandered around the airport for a while, and then had lunch. As I was finishing up my food, Jimmy showed up at the gate as he had just arrived from Omaha. Around 3:30 Caitlin arrived from her flight from Kansas City. About that time, we heard that our flight to Manchester was canceled. About 10 minutes later, they made the announcement that our flight was indeed canceled. Next we went to a different gate to wait in line for them to rebook our flights. Our new plans were to leave Chicago at 7:20 for Dublin, Ireland. We would then get on a plane from there to Manchester, and then get on a train. So, we waited in the airport a while longer and then got on the plane to Ireland, which was very large...it all went smoothly. Once we arrived in Ireland we waited in line to show our passports. We had about a 2 hour layover in Dublin. As we were waiting for the flight they made an announcement that the flight would be delayed, but this was only because the plane needed to be fueled and serviced. We got on the plane to Manchester and left only about 10 min behind schedule. About 35 minutes later, we finally made it to Manchester. Once we got to Manchester, we met a girl named Emily that was also going to Leeds (from the University of Illinois) as we were waiting for our luggage. The four of us pushed our carts of luggage (nobody had any missing bags!) to the train station. Since our original flight was cancelled, we waited in line at the train station to get our tickets changed. It turned out the grace period for changing train times was 3 hours. We missed that time period by 4 minutes... So, we bought new train tickets and then waited for about 20 min for that train to board. We managed to get all of our stuff on the train and placed it wherever we could find room. The train made 3 other stops before arriving in Leeds where we got a taxi to the University of Leeds. We found each of our residences, eventually, and got settled in a little. After that we ate at the Refectory (Uni of Leeds cafeteria), did a little wandering around the University and met a few people.

So, it may have been a little hectic, but I finally made it to Leeds.

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posted by Spencer at 12:45 PM 0 comments



Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Spencer's Study Abroad Experiences





Hi, my name is Spencer. I am from Rochester, MN and am a junior in the Architectural Engineering program. I, like Caitlin, spent the Spring 2009 semester at the University of Leeds in Leeds, England.

The following posts of mine will hopefully give you insight on what it is like to study abroad.

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posted by Spencer at 6:32 PM 0 comments



Sunday, August 23, 2009

What were my least favorite things from Spain?

If I had to say a few of my least favorite things about Spain, one of them would be that in general they don't have a rich diversity of people or food, compared to the United States. I'm a big fan of different types of foods and being around a diverse group of people, so I was shocked when I was in Spain and realized their restaurant selection were pretty limited and the there wasn't a lot of diversity with the Spain residents.

Spaniards are laid back, this is a good thing and a bad thing.
Bad thing in the sense that I'm not used to people taking everything that comes to them with so much tranquility. Which was completely different from my lifestyle in the states, so I was a little frustrated at the beginning about how laid back they were. The first time I went to the grocery store, while I was standing in line to pay my groceries the cashier all of a sudden stopped ringing things up and started talking to one of her relatives that walked in to the store. They were talking about their family members, their children, and loved ones. Then the most shocking part was that then the people in line started getting into there conversation because they also knew the people they were talking about. I couldn't believe this was happening let alone that it was
acceptable. That day I realized I was definitely not in the states anymore.

Good thing because later on I found out that they have a longer life span, I wasn't 100% sure why until I really got to interact with them a little more. They are very laid back, because they have the big picture in mind so they don't sweat the little things. In their eyes everything is okay as long as everyone in the country prospers, because they understand that if everyone in there country is doing well then that means the country itself is also doing well.

Lesson Learned:

Cultures and Customs are not "weird" they are different and we have to learn to at least learn to respect them.

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posted by Anayeli at 7:30 PM 0 comments



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