Real life in Glasgow
Hiya! I’m Yushi Yamada. I’m a third year student and a member of Abe’s laboratory from last September. I have been studying at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow for three months and I’ll stay here until the upcoming June. I’d like to introduce what I’m doing here this time.
University of Strathclyde 
The University of Strathclyde is located in the center of Glasgow. There are a lot of people from all over the world. Actually, I met people from more than 35 countries and had a lot of conversation with them about the difference of the cultures or how we found Glasgow so far and so on. Surprisingly, many people are interested in Japanese culture such as comic, anime. However, I’m not familiar with them so I regret I should have learned these culture a bit. Anyway, it’s very good to put myself in the international community because I can gain the time to think about the situations of other countries. For instance, there was some Paris attacks a few weeks ago. If I’m in Japan, I wouldn’t consider how serious the terrorism is. However, since I’m in Europe and I have many French people here, I couldn’t feel this was no concern of mine.
Basically, people in this university are bilingual and it’s not rare to find some multilingual because two languages are regarded as its mother tongue in some countries. I was really impressed with their attitude toward studying. They always try to learn something new even though it is useless. It’s obvious they cannot remember what I said but they still continue to ask me what I said in Japanese. I’m very glad to notice they’re interested in Japanese language and at the same time, I noticed I should be interested in other culture and language.
Glasgow
Glasgow is one of the biggest cities in UK. It’s located in Scotland which is northern part of UK
- Weather
Glasgow is a very good city except the “lovely” whether. The weather is very capricious and it always rains here. Since I wanted to know the weather of the following day, I checked a weather forecast. I was very surprised to see it because the probability rain was around 50% for each hour. It didn’t predict anything. After raining, there are a lot of swimming pools in Glasgow.
When cars pass on the swimming pool, cars can be a kind of attractions like this.
Maybe, some of you think you have a lot of opportunities to share one umbrella with a girl or boy. Unfortunately, it often rains so nobody has an umbrella here basically. Of course, I have never been together under one umbrella…
Now, I think you can imagine how “lovely” the weather in Glasgow is easily.
- Music
European people really love music. You can listen to music wherever you go. If you go through the center street, you can encounter some people who is playing some instruments.
If you go to bars or flat parties, the music sometimes is too noisy for me to chat with my friends. They love music anyway.
Class
I’m registered as a first year student here so the content of classes are not so difficult for me that I can focus on listening to English much more for it. I’d like to introduce one of the hardest classes for me “so far”.
- Civil Engineering Design Project
I needed to make a group presentation about the architecture of the Queen Street Station. My co-workers were very nice so I could manage to make it. When I make a presentation of my part, I have to do it by heart. The most difficult point is a pot of Q and A. I couldn’t pick up what the question is. Moreover, I need to answer it in English;(
- Civil Engineering and the Environment
I had two homework. One is to summarize one book about the history of the St Pancras station. The other is to summarize 6 short videos about architecture. In both tasks, I need to both input and the knowledge in English. I don’t like to read and listen to stuffs in English so it was really hard time for me.
Additionally, I’m taking English classes to improve my English skills. The classes are really interesting because I can learn the difference between the same meaning words like “affect” and “effect”.
Afterschool
Fortunately, I got a lot of nice friends here. I live in the dormitory of the Strathclyde. I have 5 flatmates from Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Finland and Singapore. We sometimes made dinner such as burritos and hamburgers together, watch movies or have some chat. These were really good memories.
If we want to do something at night, we throw a flat party at our place or go to bars or other flat parties. When I visit other flat parties, I really get tired because I consume my physical and mental strength. I need to concentrate on understanding what the other is saying continuously. However, this is also good English exercise for me because studying English in Japan is very boring. Study English in Japan is reading articles, listening to CD and so on… I don’t like studying English. On the contrary, the aim to study English is different here. I’m motivated because I want to have communication with people (or with cute girls) who have the knowledge or different background
I’m enjoying life in Glasgow. If some of you want to study at the University of Strathclyde, I definitely recommend to study here.
Cheers!
Yushi Yamada