First day of school was very exciting. Regardless of me getting lost in the city and not knowing where I should go, I was amazed by the style of the academic buildings. Some of them are very traditional old buildings and some of them are new and modern. In both cases, they were all clean, well furnitured, and taken care of. We had a nice day of orientation where we got introduced to the different logistics and regulations. During that day, I met a lot of international students, because we all share the same case, which is studying abroad for one or two semesters.

At a later time of that day, the international society made a nice dinner/party for all exchange students, and it was a blast. I met people from all over the world, and the overall atmosphere was very friendly.

I will not bore you with the difficulties I faced during the first week, because when you have 80,000 students to register in the same time, it’s not a very pleasant experience. I decided the courses and met with the advisor to approve them. I had 4 courses; advanced algorithms, concurrency engineering, artificial intelligence programming, and employment and organization. I enjoyed these classes, but the tricky thing was there was no course work. The 100% of your grade depends on the two-hour exam at the end of the semester. This could be good and bad, good because you get to spend a lot of time having fun, and bad because if you don’t prepare well you lose everything.

Manchester is a rich city of everything. You find history, industry, entertainment, sports, trips, restaurants, diversity, and a lot of other things. In addition to Manchester I had the chance to travel and visit most of the important cities in UK. Starting with Oxford and its amazing university, then London with its very famous museums and clock, and the beautiful nature in the highlands and Wales, then Scotland with its intense history and stories, and many other cities and destinations I was lucky enough to visit. What is a good trip without good friends? I was also lucky to have great friends during these trips and we had so much fun.

After so much traveling, the time came for the final exams. That means if you were not preparing during the whole semester, you should lock your door a month earlier and study and that’s what I did. One month was full of books, papers, and notes and Al hamduallah I managed to do well in my exams. I had also few days after the exam to enjoy which I used to travel around a bit again. It was very sad to say goodbye to everyone I knew there, because I made a lot of good friends that I will always miss. But hey, there always has to be a goodbye sometime. To sum it up, before I go to UK I had a shock related to my placement, and I was not very happy with UK placement, but to tell the truth, I enjoyed a lot and learned a lot. My UK experience was a very enriching and enlightening one and I thank God first then everyone else who worked hard to give me this opportunity including (not only) my scholarship advisors Iffat Saadeh and Victoria Hayes.

Note: If anyone is interested in visiting UK and has any questions about where to go or what to do, please don’t hesitate to contact me mostafa815@gmail.com, and I will be more than happy to assist with what I can. Cheers Mates