For many years when I was studying in Iran, I was planning to travel abroad.

I am doing my Master research degree on Physics education; the theme of my project is to make the physics accessible. A human being is a human being with all the problems, obstacles, imperfections and complexes that affects them, it’s not related to where in the world you are. I understood this when I came here, because Iranians do not usually believe in themselves and think all the problem of the world stay with them.

But apart from this fact I experienced a new life, which helped me to develop myself in many aspects, to become stronger and more confident, to solve my problems alone, try to think from different views. I explored the many different ways people look at the same issue. We developed these skills through discussions as we live with different nationalities and communicate with many people with different lifestyles. It’s very surprising that in our flat we are from five different nationalities, we all had very different lifestyles and backgrounds, but we all are in peace and happy with each other, as we all like to communicate and know about our different cultures.

Here I feel safer, I can more trust people, I feel people educated in a way to care about each other. For example; I am sure that they really want the customer to be happy, or I am sure that my supervisors are doing all their best for me and I don’t need to be worry for the case that somebody is not doing his or her duty well. In this way the system becomes well organized, I can receive any article that I order in a few weeks. But still sometimes we need to queue for computers in the library and I did not expect to see outdated computers here.

Scotland has many places to visit related to my project. I enjoyed the creative ideas and many facilities for having a fruitful academic life. One of my entertainments is attending the social events that both the British Council and the University usually arrange for us. For example we visited New Lanark, a cotton mill village near the Glasgow. The history of the village goes back to 18th century. It was so exciting watching the story of the village through a dark ride visual tour. The people here are friendly as already they have invited me and treated me as a member of their family.

The medical system here is different. You can take advantage of free medication, but if you need a specialist you should wait a few months in a waiting list. I believe the medical system is one of the obstacles here that is really near to collapse.

Here the life is healthier as we have time for doing sports and we have to walk around 1.5 hours every day. There is no traffic and you can enjoy the green city, but people miss the sun, and sunny days are days to remember. It’s a strange world, some parts of the world people don’t have the sun and for the rest, can’t have the sun.

And finally I became a good cook, and now I can make different dishes from different countries.