Following perhaps my most enjoyable term at Oxford, I’ve set out on a journey 6,000 miles away on what has so far been the most enlightening trip I’ve ever had. I’ve been asked on multiple occasions why on earth did I decide to go to China when I don’t speak Chinese and do a German degree? Dear reader, I asked myself that same question when I was being corralled through customs at Pudong Airport after a twelve-hour flight from Paris, following a sign that bared the rather un-PC name ‘foreigners’.

I’m visiting Shanghai, the largest city on earth (depending how you measure it), for eight weeks on an internship at a non-for-profit organisation supporting British businesses and their development. In the two weeks I’ve been here, my time has been highly enjoyable, from the enlightening, the amusing, to the downright bizarre.

My working day consists of me getting out of bed at the insane hour of 7am in weather so humid I feel like I’m in a swimming pool all day, before climbing aboard the whirlwind of death that is the Shanghai Metro. It’s a most un-British experience. Politeness and orderliness go to shreds when you’re squeezing your way onto a subway carriage where people are so amazed to see a blonde-haired person that they take photos of you on the morning commute. I then wander outside into the stifling heat, past the red flags, and into work. To be fair, you really don’t notice that China’s not a democracy except in glimpses like how Facebook and Twitter are officially blocked, although as OUSU’s ex-Returning Officer, the lack of elections is alarming.

My workplace is a British company, conveniently located above four floors of Marks and Spencer on the longest shopping street in the world (Nanjing Road). But it remains a culture shock when you step outside at lunchtime, struggling by through pointing, hand actions and saying ‘zhege’ (this one) and ‘xiexie’ (thank you) when ordering dumplings or noodles. Luckily, the cuisine is excellent, although I’ve eaten some unusual things like turtle.

Of course, it’s not all work and no play, as I’ve discovered from exploring Shanghai from a more tourist-y perspective on the weekend. First things first, I meet up with other interns and do what many students do best: get plastered. Only here, it’s a far cry from Wahoo or Plush. We start in taxi from Pudong (I admit the name is funny) passing the skyscrapers of Lujiazui, paying only about a quid each (taxis and food are dirt cheap here) to reach a rather claustrophobic dance floor. Occasionally, I find myself getting street food after (think Hussein’s or Hassan’s, only more noodles and fewer kebabs) out on the Bund, which is modelled on Liverpool’s waterfront, at 5am in the morning.

As it’s the biggest city in the world, there’s obviously plenty to see, from the quaint and green People’s Park to the department stores on Nanjing Road, which you wander past on your way to the Bund, being offered countless “massages” on the way there. Shanghai is a very westernised place by Chinese standards so there’s very little in the way of ‘traditional’ China here, although there are glimpses of it. During rush hour when I had a half hour to spare, I walked around the Jing’an Temple, a stone’s throw from my office, where the sound of people throwing coins into wells and the smell of burning incense drowned out the morning traffic and the occasional onslaught of pollution. There’s also the Yuyuan Gardens and the Old Town, where I hear there’s a market selling crickets and other insects.

It feels extraordinary to be in such an unusual, albeit exciting country, where the cultural contrast can be daunting but if taken light-heartedly, is astounding or at least hilarious. The dreaming spires of Oxford seems so far away, as does my Yorkshire home, although my memories of the latter certainly come out in the markets here where you barter for what you want, so the strategy and stinginess come to the fore.

Indeed, I might never truly understand what actually brought me here besides my own curiosity and dreams of experiencing the world, which I’ve chased all this way. Maybe I’m sounding a little too fascinated because when all’s said and done, it’s not like I’ve discovered another planet. Yet as someone who has only been out of Europe once, I’ve never experienced anything quite like this.

However, I’ve always held that you’ve got to experience what hasn’t been experienced, which is certainly what I’m trying to do here and am doing so successfully. I’ve made plans to visit the countryside beyond Shanghai and see the city from the top of one of those skyscrapers. But for now I’m playing out the dream I set out to live on my year abroad away from Oxford, a city I already miss so much. But so far, I’m astounded by what I’ve seen.

There is a question forming in the back of many students’ minds as they slowly adjust to the concept of no imminent deadlines or exams, and still others who are perplexed to find they actually miss those six am rowing starts (almost).  Whether you finally have the time to exercise, or have suddenly found yourself responsible for setting that time, a dilemma has presented itself.  Without the bounteous resources of Oxford’s college and university gyms, sports grounds, and organized and inclusive sports teams, how exactly do you keep (or get) fit over summer?

The obvious answer is to join a gym – but this process isn’t always as simple as it first appears. Even finding one a reasonable distance away may be too much for some more rural students, and not all will offer an honest, easily escaped no-contract membership, leaving you trapped paying for at least a year.  Even if you do only end up paying for the time you’re using it, gyms are pricey and tend to hike up fees for non-contract members.  You often find yourself paying more than the monthly fee: many gyms will charge extra for sundry deposits and administrative fees, for essential “extras” like lockers, showers and towels to wipe down equipment, and for classes and equipment training.  Although keeping up with gym routines from Oxford or using ones you found on YouTube might work for some, others may want to try something else.

Running, the poor man’s treadmill, presents itself as a cheaper, and less community-dependent, option.  It requires no passes or payment or parking and the only equipment you need is a pair of good trainers (and possibly a sports bra).  It forces you outside and gives you an (optimistically) daily dose of nature and vitamin D.  However, the monotony of the movement isn’t for everyone and the self-motivation required may be too much.  It certainly was for me, who, inspired by Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook, tossed on my trainers and a binbag and got as far as the newsagents down the street before I got heckled by some lads outside a pub and decided that I was too lazy and embarrassed for anything this public.

This led me first to Zumba classes in a local primary school gym hall.  It’s ideal for people as lazy as me, as you can’t put your hour a week off if the exact time is set for you and when you get there the threat of mild social embarrassment and a vague sense of competition with the middle aged women around you will keep you going till the endorphins kick in.  Most of the moves are standard aerobics so you can copy fairly easily, but the occasional booty shake or jazz hands lets anyone who was the least coordinated kid in their age 6-8 ballet class pretend they can dance (so long as there aren’t any mirrors around).

But if shakin’, or more likely squattin’, your moneymaker isn’t your cup of tea, I’d recommend my new favourite pastime: swimming.  Ideal for full body toning, strength and flexibility, swimming is recommended by health professionals to everyone, from practicing athletes to doddering grannies.  I was previously partially put off around age thirteen by the same reason as many pubescent girls: body self-consciousness.  But, when for the first time in years I stood by my local pool in the brand new swimsuit I’d spent almost an hour choosing, I had the shocking revelation that no one was actually looking at me.  Filled largely with a combination of kids aged eleven and under, pensioners, and tired looking parents, the pool was teeming with bodies with their own problem areas and wobbly bits, and amongst them I didn’t stand out at all.  Standing there with my legs artfully crossed to hide my cellulite, I suddenly felt like a bit of an idiot for putting this off so long.  Thankfully, I don’t think anyone gave a shit.

The bells of St Mary’s toll and all too soon tenth week is upon us. And before the chimes can even ring out, I’m reaching for the chocolates and wine whilst indulging in a soppy film about romances that never can be, musing about my past conquests and flings of (insert week of particularly heightened moral decay)^th week’s past. There are no two ways about it: Oxford is an environment which makes love hard. Endlessly scanning JSTOR articles and mindlessly thrashing a few sentences upon a page you hope make sense in the dead of night whilst your pull still languishes in your bed/pit is hardly conducive to a life-spanning romance. The best you can expect from your pull after that oh-so-wise mid-essay trip to cellar you decided to take is a fuck that doesn’t end with you being kicked out at 6am into the dark Oxford night, cursing the fact you live in North Oxford.

The question about love in the Ox that I still can’t answer at this point in my degree is this: why have romance when you can also have fun? I don’t mean (on the whole) ‘no strings attached’ shags. I mean something more akin to a rom-com; but without the shitness that comes with that deplorable genre of cinema.

The hopeless romantic within us (or at least us Humanities students) longs for the day someone pidges you a freshly written Petrarchan sonnet, complete with a bouquet of roses and marriage proposal written in beautiful calligraphy. But do you really want to live like a literary character? You may appreciate the heightened romanticism Flaubert crafts of the unfulfilled/disappointed love. But do you really want to work into the small hours searching hopelessly for a dissertation title, to be rewarded with nothing but a suggestive hand touch and furtive glances from across the Rad Cam like the readers of Madame Bovary? With but nine terms to find Mr/Ms/Dr right – I think not.

Being one of the many who have loved and lost, I can attest first-hand: being serious and forgetting the fun that can be had cannot go hand in hand if you wish for things to work. The advice I would give to incoming freshers is simple: university romance is a serious occurrence, but one that needn’t been taken so seriously. Who the fuck cares how long you’ll stay together, whether you will marry or the dowry arrangements the in-laws may be plotting in the background. We are young and living in the Oxford bubble. I want someone who will laugh at my terrible jokes and push me off my punt before grabbing me back and kissing me hard. I want to not feel my relationship is as serious as the crippling silence echoing around the Rad Cam in finals-season. There’s a time and place when love and bank statements meet; but uni is not that. Make loving fun and carefree whilst you still can.

A few months ago, intimidated by competitive chat about Goldman and BAML and online maths tests, I decided I wanted to do an internship in India.  I set about finding something CV-worthy and out-of-the-box, lucrative and cultural. The best of both worlds, I thought. And so I found myself an internship at a well-regarded international publishing company with offices just outside Delhi. They would send me to one of their luxury eco-lodges in the Himalayas for a long weekend, and then give me the project of writing and designing a website to market their properties to western holiday-makers. The dream, I thought smugly, a free mountain holiday and a few weeks in Delhi while my friends are all working in banks. #Winning!

As it turned out, things have been a little different than what I expected. Working in India, needless to say, is not a normal internship ‘experience’. Every morning, the all-male work force of my ‘family-run’ guesthouse makes me sweet, spicy chai and aloo paratha, an amazing sort of deep-fried potato cake served with curd. Then, at some point between 8.30 and 10, with no warning, I’ll hear a series of crazy honks as my driver, the office secretary, comes to pick me up for work. In the car, we chat about the ridiculous traffic, Bollywood movies, and how she doesn’t agree with her family’s obsession with arranged marriage. In our air-conditioned car, we weave around cows and tuk-tuks, and try to ignore the street children’s faces in the window as they offer us flowers or bubble-guns. When we get to the office, everyone jumps up to shake my hand. At lunch, instead of a trip to Prêt A Manger, a delicious feast of thalis and idlis, dosas and chapatti, invariably cooked by aunts or sisters, is unwrapped and shared out. In the evenings, rather than heading to a funky bar in Shoreditch, I wander round a temple or write my diary. 

One of the most important things to know about interning abroad is that it can be incredibly lonely. That’s not to say the people I’ve met in India aren’t crazily friendly; They’ve gone out of their way to let me join in with their family worship, teach me how to make chapattis in the kitchen and laugh when I set them on fire, and take me on terrifying helmetless motorbike rides to buy mangoes. It’s easy to make friends in India, and from the first day I knew all the office gossip, had invitations to dinner, and loved chatting to people in the colourful markets. Being the only foreign girl automatically made me the centre of attention; I was constantly offered chai, subjected to questions like ‘why aren’t you married?’, and the target of random hair stroking. Speaking English is also an automatic commodity in the office, and reduces your chances of being given pointless, mundane tasks. In this way, it’s incredibly sociable and rewarding working abroad.

But I’d underestimated how far from home, in both in amazing and daunting ways, living and working in India would make me feel. The loneliness comes from a total lack of familiarity, something I had been warned about but to which I thought I would be immune. When you know you’ve been massively ripped off by a tuk-tuk driver, when groups of men glare at you in the street, when you see a dead dog on the pavement, or when the cook thinks you’re a superfreak because you don’t know what ‘poha’ is, you start to realize you’re all alone in a subcontinent where, despite your best efforts, you really don’t belong. Last night, as I was lying in bed in the middle of the rainy Himalayas with no phone signal, no air-con, and a massive cockroach hiding somewhere in my room ready to pounce (I didn’t realize they don’t bite!), it was was easy to question what the hell I was doing here.

But then I remembered, being in India is actually an amazing adventure. As I go about my day-to-day life, it is impossible not to appreciate what an amazing place this is. Today, I picked the juiciest mangos I’ve ever tasted from a tree in the garden. Yesterday, I had the meaning of life explained to me while I waited for a train, and the day before, I stared straight at the glowing red sun without hurting my eyes because the smog is so thick in Delhi. Last Tuesday, the guy who sits opposite me in the office told me he wasn’t allowed to marry the love of his life because her parents had threatened to disown her, and I suddenly realized how incredibly lucky I am to choose who I end up marrying. I may not have found what I was looking for in India, but maybe that’s not what it’s all about.

Whilst doing an internship abroad has its low moments, I would completely recommend it if you want to throw yourself out of your comfort zone and learn about yourself. The experiences you do gain, beyond the cockroaches, calories and the reluctant realization that you might have culture shock, are, as corny as it sounds, invaluable and life-changing in their own way.