I attended the University of Oslo (UiO) in Oslo, Norway. Much like HKU, the University of Oslo is the oldest university in Norway, and is located in its capital. The campus is sprawling, vibrant, and green, and has a separate faculty for its law students. As a Government and Laws student, I had the pleasure of attending both campuses, and found their facilities to be clean, high-tech, and extremely sufficient for my needs.

At UiO, there is a decreased emphasis on contact hours and a focus on individual reading and coursework. There are fewer tutorials at UiO than at HKU, and students are expected to exercise self-discipline in applying themselves to their readings.

The course that I found the most fulfilling was KULH1003 – Witchcraft and Magic. As an amateur classicist with an interest in Greco-Roman magic, I was immediately attracted to and taken by this course offering, and in part applied for exchange to UiO due to the appeal of this course. The course covered various aspects of European magic and the witch trials, with a specific focus at times on Scandinavian magical practices and witch hunts. The professor was a highly knowledgeable man who answered questions raised by students with satisfactory and enlightening replies, and I was often left hanging onto his every word. I was so intrigued by this course that when I visited other parts of Norway, such as Bergen and Vardø, I was incentivised to visit the monuments of the witches who had been executed there, and investigated the history of what had happened in those places.

UiO also produced a highly satisfactory Orientation Week for international exchange students by assigning us two Norwegian buddies and arranging for us a week of wonderful activities, such as making Norwegian waffles, visiting the Munch Museum, and having a bonfire near a lake. By grouping different exchange students together during the first week of school, we had the opportunity to make many different friends from all over the world. Some of the closest friends I made during this exchange were met during UiO’s Orientation Week, and I am very thankful to the university for organising and facilitating such events. Aside from Orientation Week, UiO also organised multifarious activities for students to participate in, including bingo nights, student pub quizzes, and parties, which I attended throughout the semester.

The international students and professors I met in Oslo were very welcoming and eager to share their own culture with others. At UiO, I mostly interacted with students from the rest of Europe, including those from the Nordic countries, France, Germany, Romania, the Netherlands, and many others. I was also able to meet many exchange students from Japan. These other exchange students were suitably polite, proud of their own culture while willing to learn about others, and good ambassadors of their home universities and countries. This exchange experience allowed me to interact with cultures I had never experienced before by meeting a diverse group of people, and I am very grateful for this opportunity. It has broadened my horizons and my ability to communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds.

The most meaningful and personally insightful part of my exchange experience was being able to meet and form an LGBTQIA+ community among the exchange students of UiO. As a queer student in Hong Kong, I did not have any friends in the LGBT community, and rarely knew of other people who were openly queer. However, at UiO, I was able to meet and bond with a group of other queer students around my age, which helped me understand myself better. During then, I also attended a gender clinic in Oslo to start my transition, and was met with various highs and lows. While the clinic was able to give me the mental support and advice for transitioning that I needed, it was also sued while I was halfway through my paperwork, allegedly due to a professional dispute. Furthermore, there was a mass shooting in Oslo at a gay club on June 25, 2022, shortly before Oslo’s Pride Parade was to begin. As a result of the shooting, the terrorist threat level in Norway was raised to the highest alert. In that regard, I believe that there could have been more follow-up on behalf of the exchange team on situations such as this, even if it was simply an email to update students in the area regarding the situation and to confirm that we are safe. I understand it may be difficult for the exchange team to monitor the world’s major events and how it may affect its students, but other exchange students from Hong Kong received emails concerning the shooting from their home university. I was also personally affected by the matter, and am now receiving counselling in Hong Kong as a result of the mass shooting.

My advice to students attending future exchange programmes is that one should reach out to people from different cultures, and not only interact with other exchange students from Hong Kong. It is tempting to seek out what one is familiar with, but I found that by both befriending exchange students from home, as well as international students from overseas, I was able to have a richer cultural experience as well as share the pride and joys of being a student from Hong Kong with other people. I found that by sharing Hong Kong’s cuisine such as dim sum and celebrating festivals such as Chinese New Year with international students, I was able to delve deeper into my connection with my own culture, while also informing others about what Hong Kong is like and our way of life.