My five exchange months spent in Porto are truly unforgettable. I arrived to Porto couple weeks before the school started to settle down before starting my academic journey. From the day one I really loved the city and my fellow house friends. Porto is lively city with many student associations that have events for every day. First weeks I focused to spend time with my new friends and explore the city, this time was so nice as the weather in September was still warm and sunny. As the school started, we had an orientation week which helped to soften the landing to completely different school system than what I was used to.
As the school started, I noticed I had to make arrangements to my learning agreement as some of the courses didn’t really match what I was expecting, however the changes were easy to make and at the end I was happy with my studies. The courses had all a similar structure, if you choose the option one it meant two mini exams and final presentation, but it required 75% attendance on the lessons. Or in the second option you could choose not to attend the classes at all and just do more difficult final exam at the end of the semester. As an Erasmus student I chose to have one out of the four courses as individual which gave me a little bit more spare time and that worked well for me. A tip for the next students going for exchange in Porto: The final exam is not as difficult as teachers say. Overall, the teaching level depended a lot on the teacher. As Portuguese people’s relation to time is different than Finnish people’s, don’t worry if your inquiries are not solved right away or if bus doesn’t arrive at all because there it is normal.
The best part of my exchange year was of course everything that I got to experience and the new people I got to meet. I chose to live in a shared house with 10 people and even at first, I was really stressed even thinking I would live with that many people, it turned out to be the best decision as in the end those were my closest friends almost like “a little” family. Together we made many day trips around the Portugal and of course spend time at the beach just chilling and surfing. The best part living at the house was that you were never alone and you had people to talk about even the difficult parts of the exchange and as they were in the same situation the peer support was always available. Erasmus Life Porto which is one of the associations that host events took care of that we also experienced Portugal’s night life.
During Erasmus I learned a lot about Portuguese culture and living with people from all around the Europe I also got to really learn about our similarities and differences. I am so happy I got this opportunity to experience this and I can really recommend Porto for exchange. Obrigada!
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