Frances Solomon tells us about her time spent at Bishops University, Lennoxville, Canada, in 2012.

When you scroll through all the different foreign Universities when planning an exchange, you might come across a Canadian university by the name of Bishops. From the write up and the images presented to you, you might assume Bishops to be a quaint or even nondescript small town university in French-Canada. This is a total misperception.

Whilst Bishops is small (between 2000-3000 students attending), and situated in a town which is smaller than Grahamstown, it is not an out-of-the-way or quiet place. The university itself is a beautiful site, which has incredible facilities, is close to a major city (with transport to and from different nearby places), is on a South African scale virtually crime free and has an amazing variety of semesterised courses. Small classes meant that as a student I had more contact with my lecturers and it also meant that I didn’t have tutorials – which left me with a lot of time not only to study, but to get involved with sport, watch plays held by the university, to travel around Quebec, to go skiing, to  go to the famous winter snow festival in Quebec city, to visit the legendary New York on a long weekend, to go wonder at Niagara falls and to take a road trip to the West and see the Rockies and Vancouver. Canada and the United States, in either winter or summer, offer so many places to see and experience. Other places a few of my Bishops friends visited included San Francisco, Mexico, Vegas and California.

The thing that makes Bishops stand a part however, is its amazing student culture. The small student population means that there is sense of community second to none. A large percentage of these students are also on exchange, which means you meet so many people from other different countries all excited to travel and make the most of their time in Canada. The international group and Bishops students arranged house parties, ‘make your

own sushi nights’, snow fights, movie evenings in the city, an all weekend concert, St. Paddy’s day events, (which I must say – a bit disloyally – rival even Rhodes’s St. Paddy celebrations).

However, if none of this has sold you on one of the greatest places I’ve ever had the privilege of staying at, I can only say from one Rhodes Res inmate to another: The Food. The food was out of this world. Waffles, omelets, salad bar, freshly made pasta and stir-fry to order, a fast food bar, cereal, ice cream, freshly baked cookies, a deli, hot meals etc. – all from 7:00 am to 11 pm every day and this is their standard res food! What can I say? It made an impact, I’m not sure I even get fed that well at home. But jokes apart, I met great people, saw new places and had such brilliant experiences at Bishops, the memories of which I will honestly keep with me forever.