Fleur de Geus
Study: BSc Tourism.
Destination: Istanbul.
Exchange student.
Hi everyone!
My name is Fleur. I am 21 and I am following my minor in Istanbul. The upcoming months you can follow my adventures at this page. You can also follow me (@fleurdegeus) and other WURldexplorers on Instagram: search for #WURldexplorers !
Introduction
Hi everyone! I’m Fleur de Geus and I study the Bachelor Tourism, a joint study between the NHTV University of Applied Sciences in Breda and Wageningen University. I am currently about to start my third and last year in one of the biggest cities in the world; Istanbul! I am offered the opportunity to be an exchange student for this fall semester at Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, a 150 year old institution. Boğaziçi’s vision is ‘achieving international excellence in education and research and becoming a “green”, sustainable university’. This fits together well with the focus of Wageningen.
Visiting the Ortaköy Mosque
One week passed by, the first week of my exchange has been a lot of ‘getting-to-know’ the place and see how things are done here. My room is perfect and my roommates are very nice. I feel lucky to have ended up here. Since there are literally no biking possibilities, I had to get a public transport card to be able to start exploring the area. I immediately began a beginners mistake by charging the card with 100 TL, which is about 50x of taking a bus. The machine did not change my money.. I also got a Turkish simcard to be able to reach people. Believe me, these two things only took up about two days.
Bureaucracy in the Netherlands...?!
Hi everyone! My second week of adventure in Istanbul has started! Since my last update, I have made a lot of progression in getting to know the university. Registration and orientation are done, the stressful course selection (I'd better name it 'Attempts to make the lecturers feel sorry for you so they let you attend their class') is almost over and the final free weekend is coming up. It's all looking good!
Biking
Hi! I have been in Istanbul for almost a month and classes have finally started. It might seem weird, but it's actually nice to be in some sort of daily rhythm again. After a lot of hassle I have been able to deal with the residence permit ánd I have consent for all of my courses. No more bureaucratic nonsense to be dealing with!
Bayram
Hello! I believe it is time for another update! The last couple of weeks have been a crazy rollercoaster ride that has brought me to so many nice places and encounters.
Update!
Hi all! With only 5,5 weeks left I am starting to feel the end of my exchange coming. Classes are finishing in 1,5 week, finals for me are starting during Christmas (yes.. they don’t celebrate Christmas here..), and I am already flying back on January 21st ! Crazy..
Snow!
It’s all done! The entire semester has finished. All exams are over and it feels so good. The last couple of weeks were all about locking myself up in the library and really only getting out for lunch or dinner at the campus canteen. But it paid off! I expect to have passed on my courses and not have any resits, which means I have 1,5 weeks of holiday until I go home. Perfect opportunity to still do many things that I didn’t have time for before.
Back home
I’m home again! Four days ago I flew back from Istanbul to Amsterdam which was six days earlier than everyone expected. My family picked me up from the airport and dropped me off at my boyfriend. It was a huge surprise for him and he was just flabbergasted.