Sheffield is nothing like I thought it would be.

So we have now been here for a week and Sheffield is nothing like I thought it would be. I pictured steel buildings that hadn’t been used in years and a lot of grey. Instead Sheffield is a thriving community full of colour and life. There are plants everywhere and shops all around. The people appear busy and there is so much to see and do. One thing I did get right is the Park Hill estate. No matter where I am on this side of the city I can see the estate up on the hill. Some of it looks like slums as the readings we had to do described and the parts that have been renovated look like the type of apartment building you would see in Melbourne. Since I plan to do my individual essay on the Estate I’m hoping to be able to get a better look into the place and talk to people who both live there and don’t to see what their views are on the estate and how they interact with it.

We have travelled around a fair bit this past week and seeing the differences from one place to another is amazing. Sheffield is completely different form York. The basic culture is the same but the scenery is different. York is a lot more picturesque than Sheffield. It looks like the places you see in travel guides. Sheffield doesn’t appear to advertise itself for travel much, I think it might be something to look into to see why they don’t seem to try and attract tourists.

We had a really interesting lecture on the music industry here today. It’s amazing how they managed to come up with this new and distinguished sound by using the basic underlay of the forge work sounds before adding in a bass and drums. The history of playing shows was interesting as well. England is so different from Dubai as well. Dubai was hot, bearable but hot and you always knew what weather you were going to get. Sheffield can go from freezing in the morning to being hot in the afternoon. It’s so much like Melbourne in that regard that I never know what to wear and always have to have a spare jumper I can throw on if I get to cold.

Only one week down and I’m still constantly amazed by all the new things I’m learning here in Sheffield, it’s so hard to put it all down but learning from so many perspectives for this inter-disciplinary course is an amazing experience and I love getting to see things from another perspective I never would have thought of in my own discipline. It’s great being able to learn from not only the lecturers but the students as well as they have so much to teach on their own disciplines and it's just another part of what makes this trip so enjoyable.

Signing off for now

- Nicole Riley (Bachelor of Arts)