By: Alexander Kashpir

Hey Waikato, my name is Alexander Kashpir, and I have just come back from an exchange to the University of Alicante in Spain. Life in the Spanish beach town of Alicante has been a distinct and vivid chapter of my life that has now come to a close, leaving me unforgettable lessons and fond memories. Let me share a few of them.

I really enjoyed swimming in the Mediterranean, the sea that cradled ancient civilisations and now lures people from all over the world with its clear, warm waters that are rich in marine life. It was also awesome to visit London, a place that I have seen on the screen so many times before, heard so much about and from where so many stories have come from; just to wander through St James’s Park, see Big Ben and walk across the Tower Bridge was all I could have asked for in that epicentre of Englishness. Lastly, as I was hoping for, learning Spanish has been very interesting and rewarding. Tengo mucho que puedo aprender, y creo que ahora sera dificil cuando vivo donde la gente no habla Español, pero estoy contento con la parte de este idioma que he aprendido.

Probably one of the biggest challenges for me in Alicante had been the university. As I have come to conclude, after conversations with other international students there, the teaching approach in most of the courses we took inhibited learning. The curriculums were designed to fit in as much information as possible into the semester, a lot of unnecessary information in my opinion, so that we the students did not have the time nor the capacity to comprehend it all. This meant that for exams, most of us just temporarily memorised the information and were left feeling like we had not learned much by the end. 

From this experience, I think I have learned to speak to people more and discovered how much of life is just a simple conversation away. This is largely because I was motivated to make connections while being so far from everyone I have ever known, but I think I can carry this through into my life back home. I have also learned to be more confident and productive, skills that were essential during my time in a foreign country, so now I feel more comfortable than ever jumping back into normal life here in New Zealand. 

Talking about New Zealand, time overseas has given me a new appreciation for the beauty and integrity of our nature, as well as the unique, organised yet easy going, lifestyle in Aotearoa. More than anything, going forward I think my time overseas will help me to be more grateful for my life in New Zealand. Like my high school teacher suggested before I left for Spain, now that I have left the town I grew up in, I can come back to this town with a new appreciation for it, making the deliberate choice to stay here while knowing what is out there in the world.