Yesterday I finally got round to booking my flights to 中国 (China). I probably should have done it earlier but I wanted to get my visa first to make sure I would be able to get into the country. The last couple of times I've been to China I've flown with China Southern/KLM and it turned out that they were still the cheapest. I rang a couple of travel agents to see if they could find me a cheaper deal but they didn't so I decided to go ahead and book it before it got any more expensive!
I leave from Manchester on Friday 13th September, not the luckiest of days! My flight to Amsterdam with KLM is bright an early at 9:15am. I then have to wait about an hour and a half before my China Southern flight to Guangzhou, southern China. Unfortunately my wait in Guangzhou is a bit longer, 5 hours, before my final flight to Xiamen. The whole journey will take about 24 hours with getting to the aiport early before I fly and getting to the campus in Xiamen. I will be exhausted when I finally get there!I booked a return flight as well as I'm not sure whether I need it for my residence permit or not but it's probably better to have one booked. Surprisingly, it was actually cheaper to book a return than a one-way ticket anyway.
It cost me £818 so at the moment I'm feeling quite poor... Looking forward to student loan next week! As I'm going abroad as part of my course I'm entitled to a bigger maintenance loan, the first instalment of which comes at the end of August to help with year abroad costs such as travel.
I found out something about my 4th year in Southampton yesterday too: my brother's going to be there! He received his results and found out he's been accepted by Southampton to study BA Modern Languages, the same course as me. It was already going to be strange going back in 4th year. As most degrees are 3 years, a lot of my friends will have already left. I will still have some friends there with other linguists, engineers and medics having longer courses and of course, I'll have swim team, but it won't quite be the same, particularly as I'll be bumping into my brother at Avenue campus and at swim training and socials! That's right, not only is he doing the same degree but he'll be joining the swim team as well. Now all he needs to do to completely follow in my footsteps is live in Connaught halls for his first year and study Chinese as his third language! He hasn't yet decided what his third language after French and Spanish will be but is having a gap year so will have plenty of time to decide. I suppose this means that if I'm bored of life as a 4th year I can go and party with my fresher brother!
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