Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We are a couple of hipsters studying industrial design in Kuopio Academy of Design, Savonia UAS, Finland. Our destination is Guangzhou, P.R.Chinas 3rd largest city in Southern China, "Canton" or Guangdong province. We are going to study abroad in Guangzhou University via Asia Exchange program. Right now we are in a train to the Helsinki airport. We are an open-minded and inventive geeky couple, excited about our trip to China.
What makes our trip special is that we are travelling with our two-year-old daughter. Travelling with a child might sound like a challenge, and we also thought that in the beginning. It isn't. You just need more time for all the preparations.
It's been an intensive 5 months of preparation to this moment. So intensive that you'll need to take a nice posture on your seat now!
Budget
In the beginning we roughly calculated that the trip would cost 10000€. The most expensive points were university tuition fees (1150€ x 2), plane tickets (700€ x 4) and surprisingly the vaccines (about 500€ x 3). We studied the days, and one of us worked in the evenings to cut the expenses. Be aware of your expenses and write them down. It's also easier to get scholarships when you can show what expenses you are covering with their money when you have a clear budget. We kept track with our budget by writing all costs and incomes in Excel. There are surprisingly many small expenses that together form a big amount of money. All small costs are good to be written down so you can get the real price for your trip.
Scholarships
First of all, as a student you need to apply for every scholarship you can get. We were a bit late on the best applying time so we could only apply for few scholarships. For example you can apply for your schools exchange scholarship. In our situation the second convenient choice was the Asia Exchange programs scholarship. Always check what your field of study has to offer. In our case there were few Finnish design associations. In the late April there was only one we could get so we wrote a MOTIVATION LETTER. In motivation letter you introduce yourself and the reasons for your study / trip abroad. Think what suits which association the best. What can you offer for them so they could 'Show you the money'? Scholarships are public information, so you can learn from the database for which kind of purposes and trips the scholarship has been given before.
Vaccination
When travelling to places where vaccination is needed it is very important to contact a doctor as soon as possible after booking flights. It can take quite a lot of time and effort. We contacted our vaccination center about three months before our flight and still it got a little bit too close with our d-day. Especially vaccinations for child under three-years-old will take time to get, because in Finland some of those need a special license that will be delivered from your doctor to the pharmacy, to get the vaccination. For us that took an extra week and delayed our vaccination program. Not quite a big delay for one, but it is good to notice that there are also many others that are travelling, or babies etc. who need their vaccinations as well, so don´ t expect to get new appointments for the next day or in some cases for the next week.
You should take every vaccine that is recommended. Remember to tell your travel plans so the doctor can decide the best suitable for you. For our child-caring person only few basic vaccines were recommended in the first place, because the doctor thought he was only going to the city area.
For us it looked for a moment that we weren´t able to get all the vaccinations in time, but fortunately it is possible to get some in fast pace. Vaccinations also cost quite a lot of money, at least in Finland, so it´s good to be prepared for that. For the three of us all the total vaccination costs where about 1500€.
Other drugs that may be needed
It is important to make sure that, if the destination where you are going differs in healthcare from your country, you have all the drugs you might need and some for just in case: for headache, fever, diarrhea, etc. You can't have too much disinfectant, we took 5 100ml bottles. A thermometer, UV protection emulsion, mosquito repellant and cortisone are useful too. Our local healthcare center advised us to place all the drugs that are not needed during flights to the cargo. We also attached the recipes for each medicine to the medicine package with a rubber band. For a child it is useful to get antibiotics, just in case. We realized that just days before leaving. Fortunately we have relatives who are doctors so it was easy to get the recipe in short notice.
Visa
The visa application form was pretty simple to fill. But remember if you are a student not to send it before having the invitation letter from your foreign school. And remember to sign the invitation letter, it will be easier. For us the applications came back because we forgot to sign the damn thing. Not a big problem, if you are in time with sending the form. We were kinda on the edge with that because of the delay caused from moving our stuff to another city. So the thing was that we only had couple weeks to get the visas right and already those came back for us unsigned. Very stressful. And on top of that we had to write invitation letters for our child and our child carer, so that they could have long tourist visas. For all this we had to call the embassy a few times, and in the end it was pretty easy to get the visas. Our advice is that don´t go to the internet forums to get any information, it will only scare you. Call straight to the embassy if you have difficulties or you don´t understand what you are requested for. Take notice that 4 business days of processing time of the application took 15 days including weekends in reality, so send the application on time!
What do you leave behind?
We had lived in the same rental apartment for 3 years. We also had a plenty of stuff. There are few major solutions for your belongings: sub-rent the apartment, pay the rent for the whole semester or sell everything and move your mail to your parents. We had to examine our motives and values a couple of times until we chose the last option. We sold our car, sofa, bed, tv and some clothes on the second hand market. The most important belongings we moved to our parent's houses. You can also rent a warehouse space. They aren't that expensive. All and all it took an extra effort and was probably the hardest one of given solutions, but in the end it gave us many benefits. We are free to move anywhere we want, when we want. Our choices are not chained to a rental apartment. We don't have to stress about too many expensive items or pieces of furniture because there aren't any. It's also ethical to put stuff to circulation, for people who need the stuff more than you.
Please comment or contact us if you have questions. In the next post we will write of the flight trip, how to cope with children and the arrival in China!
- comments
Juho Interesting blog and it is great to see that people can and have the courage to do these things even with a young child. About that budget thing, it is good to know that one gets full student allowance, bigger loans and bigger living allowance for the months one studies abroad. Also most universities offers varying amount of money for exchange students. Asia is great place to go, it is totally different so one learns so much more than just by studying. Everyday life gives loads of new thing everyday. Other good thin is that Asia is cheap to live in. One has nice life with the allowances. I was 3 months in Shanghai studying in spring 2012. Hope you have a great and safe trip! PS. Health care is very good in there, if you have good insurance.
Raisa I was so happy and proud of you by reading this, because this will encourage and help other students thinking to go abroad. Secondly it tells about systematic attitude.I´m curious to read next experiences. All the best!