Fortunately, the language spoken was English. On the west coast, especially in Vancouver, almost half of the population is Asian. In some classes I was the only Caucasian girl. Between the exchange students on Burnaby campus who mainly lived in the Townhouses and which we had activities with and Asian people in my classes, I rarely met any ‘genuine’ Canadians. I thought that was a pity.

This was a very intense semester with working days of 14 hours, which meant not a lot of free time. The free time I had I wanted to invest in hiking trips to places as Garibaldi lake, Joffre lake, the Chief etcetra.

When I finished my semester, I fortunately had time to travel with my boyfriend who came to visit me. First we stayed ten days in Vancouver, which is near Burnaby. Then we went to Victoria on Vancouver Island, a day later than planned due to bad weather. After two days we tried to get to Tofino which is North on Vancouver Island; however, due to the worst storm in 20 years we were not able to reach it and had to turn around at Nanaimo. We then decided to go a few days earlier than planned to Seattle, and then travelled to Portland for another five days.

My best experience during my exchange was a insanely short inbetween trip, which entailed 2200 km of driving which was way to much for a 4 day trip haha, to Banff. The trip was so beautiful and Lake Louise was a winter wonderland fairytale.

Thanks to this experience, I am in a way happier place as when I left Eindhoven. I am very thankful for that.