Once an Erasmus, always an Erasmus
Answering in a study of Erasmus bloggers:
- Why did you decide to keep a blog while being an exchange student?
Well, when I first got to Sweden, I didn’t have in mind about keeping a blog. This idea came after one month, when I realized how awesome the Erasmus was and I wanted to find a way to express it to other people! In the beginning I was trying to keep a diary in a doc file, but after a week I stopped it, I was busy enough with other stuff there! So I decided instead of writing in a doc file, to write my experiences somewhere so other people can see and provide them with useful information about the Erasmus in Karlskrona.
- Did you have a blog before? If so, did you create a new one specifically for your Erasmus experience
or do you post Erasmus-related entries in your previous blog?
No, I did not have a blog before, but it was a thing I was always thinking of. The problem was that I didn’t really know what to write in a blog, I didn’t have a specific subject. So I never tried it before. But one day after a month in Sweden, a beloved friend of mine was reading a blog on WordPress and I had the idea! Erasmus was a very good opportunity to start my own blog! I had a lot of material to work with, and a lot of free time to update it.
- Who is your intended audience? (Family, friends back home, other Erasmus / people you meet during your Erasmus…). Has this evolved over time?
In the beginning I thought that writing a blog about my time in Sweden would be a nice way to keep my people back home informed about how and what I am doing. I am talking about family basically, but also friends. That’s why my first entries are all in Greek! But over time, my friendships with the Erasmus students made me change that tactic and I started writing my entries in English, some of them in both languages. Everybody was living the same experiences there and I thought it would be nice writing my entries in a language that everybody could understand without the need of Google-Translator!
- Which topics do you talk about the most?
Basically I talk the most about events and activities, like the hockey game, or the Lucia night on Christmas, but also many posts of mine are just thoughts. Thoughts about how is it going to be back home, thought about the great time I am having, feelings, emotions, calling all the other people who haven’t been in Erasmus yet, to give it a try, because after all, it is definitely worth!
- What kinds of media do you use in your blog? (Photography, video, etc)
As you correctly said, a lot of photographs and in some cases videos. I use to upload them on my youtube account, with a signature of my blog in the left bottom corner of the video. But the photographs are the main media I used. I think it’s nice when someone can not only imagine, but also see what you mean with all the things you are writing! After all, a picture is a thousand words right?!
- How does your activity in social media sites, for example Facebook, affect your blogging?
As we all know, facebook in contemporary times is the most popular social media site! Almost everybody has an account there. So, in my attempt to make my blog known to my friends, instead of telling them all the time: “Hey, you know, I wrote a new entry on my blog, you can check it out, the address is…” it was much easier to just connect my wordpress account to my facebook one, and every time I publish a new entry, it is automatically on my wall on facebook, so everybody I know can check it out with just one click. I also used facebook to provide my blog with some photos, when I wanted to upload many of them, I just wrote the link for my facebook album. This was not really smart, cause not all of the people have facebook, that’s why I keep on uploading photos on my blog!
- Do you intend to continue, or (if you have already ended your stay) have you continued with the Erasmus blog after coming back home?
Since I am home I wrote some entries with feelings and conclusions about my experiences during my Erasmus. But now I have found another, bigger subject for my blog. I changed the title of it, from “Sverige 2010, Erasmus in Karlskrona of Sweden” to “ The trips of young Ilia”. My intense from now on is to write about all the trips I do in the European countries where I am gonna meet my Erasmus friends and not only! The Erasmus posts are now in their own category and there will be many more categories for the cities I visited in Sweden and all the other countries during my Erasmus and from now on. I can add now the Poland trip, in the category of Poland! But you know, the feelings about Sweden and the memories of Karlskrona will never stop existing in my heart, so I cannot promise that I won’t write any post about Erasmus again! One good friend that I shared my Erasmus with, once said: I have lived things there, that are not in text books. And this is really true..
