Just like I have always loved travelling, I also wanted to study abroad for once. When I found out that my university was giving the opportunity to study abroad for the minor, I knew that I was going to do it. It doesnt matter where I would go, as long as I can leave the country I thought.

After seeing the list with universities/places that I could visit I quickly knew that I did not want to travel too far, because I figured the flights would be too expensive and then my mother and brother would not be able to visit me too. Also, I am a broke student. Since I love good weather, I wanted to go either to Istanbul in Turkey or Zaragoza in Spain.

Because of the circumstances in Turkey, I was not allowed to there, so I figured, Spain it is! Well, I got disappointed. The university of Zaragoza could not offer me enough subjects in English. So that was not an option anymore.

I can be very lazy sometimes, so normally, I would think, oke, well **** it then. I’ll just do something else, something easy. But I really wanted to go on this trip, I want to see more of the world, meet new people, do new things, develop myself.

My friends laughed when I told them that I was planning to go to Spain anyways. ‘’You always want things even more when you can’t get it, even with boys’’. Could be.. Nothing wrong with setting up higher goals, right?

First I wanted to go to Zaragoza, take a few subjects and combine it with another minor. I was told that it would be too difficult. The other option was to find an university and ask if I could study there. The only thing was, I would have to pay college fees here, and there at the same time. But how expensive could it be? In Spain everything is cheap, so paying 500 euros more and be somewhere where I actually want to be was fair enough for me.

I did not know where to begin or how. But I thought, if I am going to pay for college in Spain, I might as well pick out a city I like. I did not want to be in the North because it did not attract be, neither did I want to be in the South because it would be too far from everything, I wanted a big city, but not Madrid or Barcelona because that was too basic. So I choose Valencia, it is located in the middle/east of Spain, there is a beach, it has a mix of old and new buildings. From medieval castles and towers to modernist and art deco architecture. Also, I visited Valencia before with a good friend of mine and we both loved it. The only problem was that all the universities in other cities (just in case Valencia was not possible) accepted me as a visiting student, but the universities in Valencia didn’t. There was one university who was glad to have me, but it was a privet university.

College tuition in the Netherlands ánd in Spain at the same time, without a scholarship ánd I had to pay for monthly expenses in both countries. I started asking my friends if it was really worth it. Most of my friends told me to do it. ''Don’t let money be the reason for you to not follow your dream''. It will be cheaper now then if I do it after my graduation and also, working in another country is not the same as studying there. So I had enough reasons to just go for it. And to be honest, my mother still doesn’t know that I am a visiting student instead of an Erasmus student.