Exploring Parks and Garden in Sheffield.

There are few parks and gardens in Sheffield, but due to time and distance constraint, we didn't get to explore all of them. One of the nearest park to our accommodation is Norfolk Park where it is located at the south of Sheffield city centre. There's nothing much can be introduced about the park, what I can say is, it's a very great spot for photo-shooting! So, let the pictures tell the story!

Road that direct us to the grassy field of Norfolk Park

Dandelion! A very common "flower" that you can find on summer.

A group selfie on the greenie field is a must! Haha

Relaxing selfie with my best mate

Another park or they called it Sheffield Botanical Garden is located a little far from city centre, it take us more than half an hour to get there by walking. As compare to Norfolk Park, Sheffield Botanical Garden is a great place for people to see all the various types of flowers and plants. There's a glass house located in the garden called Glass Pavilion where people can hold their wedding ceremonies here.

The Glass Pavilion

Happy exploring the garden!

So, there's this squirrel pop out of nowhere and keep following us, it's so cute that I keep lure it and play with it. Hahaha.

Pretty boy with his cute squirrel friend. Lol!

On the way back to our accommodation, we met a couple with a pair of huge and beautiful Husky! All of the sudden, I'm so excited and  I did approach the couple and of course played with the two huge fluffy cotton huskies! It's sooooooo fluffy, I'm gonna dieee! Lol...

Look at me, I'm so happy! haha

Little things we did in United Kingdom.

Sweet memories are always made by adding up all the little things...!

When we were in Sheffield, we were looking forward for every weekend we had there as we would go for day trips to explore other interesting cities in UK the weekends! Of course, these day trips are organized by both our university and also the travel agency - Tong Hang, so we had to pay for them. I'm kinda regreted that I missed out one or two interesting places such as Stonehenge, but still the other places were awesome too!

Day trip tickets

There's a fun thing that I did during every city exploring trip, I would buy the local postcards and send them to some of my friends who's in Malaysia. I actually played a postcard-sending game with my besties who's in Melbourne, we would send each other postcard. It may sounds silly but it's very fun! Open up the mailbox, and found a postcard that fly all over the places can be very exciting and it'll definitely made up your day! So, start sending postcards today! Haha...

Postcard from my bestie in Australia

A postcard that I bought from York

Do any of you guys still remember the little yellow banana thingy? Yes, The minions from Despicable Me! It was quite "trendy" that time, MacDonald was actually giving out these toys along with the purchase of Happy Meal, but in UK, you can just buy the the toy for 1£. They have different type of minion every week, so we actually went to MacDonald very often to check out the latest minion. Collecting minion toys, sounds very childish isn't it? But we had a lot of fun with it.Haha...

Banana or Potato?

There's another thing that everyone will collect when they are in UK, the coins! You will be surprised that the coins can have so many different patterns on them, and it's very exciting when you get those rare coins. One of the most common collection will be the series of coins that can be arranged in such a way that the patterns combined to be come a shield.

Royal Shield from the UK coins

Coffee shops are very common in UK, it's a very nice place to hangout on a the summer, so instead of Starbucks, we decided to try something new, Caffe Nero. If you're ordering a Frappucino you just grab it from the rack and give it to the counter where the Barista will process it for you!

Coconut and Chocolate Frappe Creme

School days! Orientation, classes, assignments, meetings...!

It's the first day of our school so orientation day was held to give a general briefing about our summer programme in Sheffield Hallam University. The lecture hall is filled with international students (some of them from India and China) from various courses.

Selfie before the briefing started!

How study life looks like in UK? It's actually nothing much different, except that we prepare our lunch in the morning, and had it on the beautiful grass near the university under the sunshine! Haha... Sounds enjoyable isn't it? No it's not! Imagine your lunch is ice cold and doesn't taste like how it should be, that's bloody awful! Ewww... But hey, that's how poor students like us survive in Sheffield alright? Of course, sometimes we're still eating out to pamper ourselves a little! =)

Sitting on the grass is a must when you're in western country! Lol

My little lunch box with fried Maggie inside.. Yum!

The study culture is different from what we used to have back in Malaysia, in UK, instead of spoon-feeding, they encourage us to get the answers by doing some researches and understanding. So, when we were doing our assignments, we have to find out our answers through Student's Best Friend - Google! I can say it's quite stress and frustrating when we were doing our assignments, but yea, you will be very satisfied with the effort you put in! I can only say, what you get is based on how much you did.

My engineering drawing for the car suspension system. (It's manual drawings!)

Being a course representative, I had to attend meetings organized by the Student Union, the main purpose of the meeting is to get feedback from students and convey them to the university lecturers and staffs. I remembered the first meeting was an internal meeting with our course leader to talk about our comments on the current course structure, schedule and also lecturers. The second meeting, where all the course representatives from all the courses gathered here together to talk about all types of issues, from accommodation, courses, facilities and etc. The second meeting is very interesting as you get to meet all the course rep. and also involved in some debating. Conclusion, the meeting session was quite fun! haha...

Relaxing meeting session with refreshment.

Of course, before we're leaving the university we had some photo sessions with our lecturers! Here you go.

Class photo with our Engineering Drawing lecturer - Mr. Ian

Selfie with our beloved Wolverine~! haha...

Exploring Sheffield

What would you do when you arrived at a completely new place?
Explore it!

So we did a little explorations on the following days ,and of course some grocery shopping. Since, we are so new to Sheffield, we got a map from Trigon (our student accommodation). However, the map is so confusing that we can't read it, so we abandoned the map and decided to explore the city by walking around.

Interpreting the given map

Fortunately, Sheffield is not a very big city, so we get to explore it even without the map. Instead of having Jusco, Giant and Carefour, in Sheffield we did our grocery shopping in Aldi, Asda, Tesco, and of course the  castle market.

So, this is how Aldi looks like, it's actually the place we went almost every week to get most of our food supplies. Why Aldi? Because it's the nearest store to our student accommodation! Aldi will charge for plastic bags, so we use our own recycled bags. Unlike in Malaysia, we have to pack everything into the bags ourselves in Aldi, so we have to be real quick so that we won't jam the line! (It's actually quite stress to shop in Aldi...) Tips to enhance the speed? Pay with card instead of cash, this will save your time of counting the money.

Aldi in Sheffield

Sheffield town hall, the place where many of them will enjoy their beautiful summer here. You will see lots of kids running around topless playing with the fountain, adult wearing sunglasses leaning on the grass to enjoy the sunshine, and of course some of them will have a little coffee session with friends and families. =)

Local happy kids joined our group photo at Sheffield Town Hall

Sheffield City Hall is another place to visit if you're in Sheffield, you will also see a war's memorial in front of the city hall. We didn't get inside to see how's the hall looks like, but you can always google for it! haha...

Sheffield City Hall

Sheffield War's Memorial

As the briefing on Europe trip by Tong Hang is held at Sheffield United F.C. Stadium, we had a chance to enter the stadium, they were replacing the field grass that time, so you don't see green but a brownish field... Lol...

Sheffield United F.C. Stadium

Finally......... Sheffield Hallam University! The place where I completed my summer degree programme. Instead of having all the university buildings to be surrounded by a wall, SHU tend to scattered around the city and this is why it's called City Campus.

Main Entrance of Sheffield Hallam University

Journey to Sheffield...!

Journeys are made by the people you traveled with....!

So, here it goes, my very first post of my travel experiences. Let's start with the most exciting experience I had now - my summer studies in Sheffield, UK~! Since, it's the first time that I had to stay so far away from home for few months, I brought quite a lot personal items with me including some can foods!

My Luggage!

Well well... Let's talk about the trip to Sheffield...!

On 31st May 2013, the day we left home and went to UK. We booked our flight with Emirates (2013 World's Best Airline), and by that, it means that we will have to do a transit in Dubai as Emirates is based in Dubai. So, it's a 7 hours flight from KLIA to Dubai, with 4 hours transiting time, plus another 8 hours flight from Dubai to Manchester, and not forget about the one hour bus journey from Manchester airport to Sheffield... It's very tiring yet exciting as we were traveling in group.

Group picture before getting into the departure hall!

It's always exciting to discover what flight am I flying with, and this time, I'm flying to Dubai with Emirate A380, the largest bird I ever fly with...! Too bad I can't find a good spot to capture the beauty of the great plane, but nevermind, I managed to capture a model of it... haha...

Emirates A380 Model

It's time to go and say goodbye to Malaysia for few months! (Opps.. am already in Malaysia now)

We enjoyed the in-flight entertainment and also the meal provided by Emirates, of course its services too! They did provide us some hot towel to clean and moisture our face, as you know it's very DRY up in the air. (Remember to bring along moisturizer and lip balm if you're flying for long hours)

It's selfie time!

It's an international flight so....... do not waste the opportunity to order the alcohol! So, I ask for a small bottle of white wine, it was not too bad. Lol...

After enjoying our dinner..... hmmm.... supper? Kind of confuse with the time since we're travel across the horizon...! Whatever, so after filling my little stomach, I put myself to sleep until I've finally arrived at Dubai International Airport in a trolley. What?!

Enjoy a bit while waiting for the next flight!

Upon reaching at Dubai after a long day, my body starts to dehydrate a bit and am not feeling comfortable with it that I wanna take a shower desperately! Guess what? There are bathrooms in the airport which allow you to take a shower, but of course you need to have your own towel. So I get my self a refreshing shower in the airport for the first time of my life!

Trying to take a quick rest before the next flight to Manchester.

Somehow, the flight from Dubai to Manchester is not A380 anymore but Boeing 777... Instead of getting the side seats, we're sitting in the middle row of 4, which is quite disappointing.

Boeing 777 from behind.

I must say this is the best in-flight breakfast that I ever had - omelet served with cheese. It's so tasty that I would like to have another few sets of it before leaving the plane. (I'm starved! Lol...) The Croissant served is very nice too that had another few more since it's "refillable"...! It's a very wonderful breakfast session in the flight!

5 Stars in-flight breakfast!

After flying for like 15 hours, we're finally approaching our destination - Manchester International Airport. Great weather, clear sky, and sunny day! It looks very warm from the inside, but when I stepped outside the airport, I shivered and quickly put on my sweater.

Reaching United Kingdom!

Due to the long hour of flying, I'm quite exhausted, so I didn't really enjoy the journey from Manchester airport to Sheffield... Finally! I mean really... we've reached our Home for the next three month... Trigon!

Our student accommodation for the summer.

My Room!

So that's how my room looks like, a bed, a long study table, a wall rack... and yes! I brought my own blanket, it always follows me no matter where I go... haha.. Oh ya, there's bathroom in every room too! We got free cleaning services for our room and the kitchen every week!

View from our kitchen (It's actually 9pm at night!)

So this is it... my long journey from Malaysia to United Kingdom!