Hi, my name is Sophie and I’m currently on my year abroad at the University of Arizona in Tucson. If you’ve never heard of Tucson before, neither had I! I expected to arrive and it look like a desert with a few cacti… I was so wrong. Tucson is much greener than I expected, it’s surrounded by 4 mountain ranges on each side of the city (and some amazing hiking trails) and unbelievably good Mexican food because we’re so close to the Mexican border.
My friends in Nottingham and here in Arizona all ask me, why Arizona? The simple answer is sunshine! Tucson gets over 350 days of sunshine a year and I can’t tell you how nice it is to wake up to blue (instead of rainy grey) skies everyday. I also wanted to experience college life in America and having been here for two months now it is exactly like the films!
The campus is huge and lined with palm trees, there’s an entire road full of sorority and fraternity houses called Greek Row, there are balconies and lounge chairs in lots of lecture buildings, there’s even protein shake and açai bowl cafes inside the multiple gyms here. A personal favourite of mine is the swimming pool at SouthRec gym where lots of students go between classes, there are loads of sun loungers on the side (and in the pool!) so you can bake in the 40°C heat
I applied through the University-wide exchange programme for a full year abroad. That process started in my second year at Nottingham, and we heard back in March of 2nd year. I knew I wanted to go to America so I put down the 3 American options as my top 3 choices, but there are so many cool places you could go so I would recommend going through the subject-specific university exchange page so you can see your options and where would be a good fit for you!
It is so difficult to try to picture yourself living and studying somewhere you’ve never been, so my top tip would be to go on google maps and drop yourself somewhere on campus and downtown and explore to try and get a feel for the school.
My favourite part of coming to the UofA so far has been the opportunity to travel outside of university. So far I’ve been to New Mexico, San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, Sedona, Flagstaff, Bryce Canyon and Monument Valley and remote Utah to watch the eclipse.
A huge part of being able to travel so much for me was joining the International Friends Programme through the International student centre at UofA. I got matched to a host family who live in Tucson, I don’t live with them, but they have invited me to travel with them on weekends and go for dinner on weeknights which was so helpful when trying to adjust to a completely new city and culture.
It’s also nice to be able to escape from campus sometimes, public transport in the US is notoriously bad and without a car it is really difficult to get around here because everything is so big and spread out. The other English students I’ve met also doing a year abroad here are also in the International Friends Programme and their host families have picked them up from the airport and helped them move into the dorms, invited them to Mexico for Independence celebrations. I cannot recommend signing up for a programme like that enough, it has helped me settle in here so much because it’s hard to move away from family and friends, especially with a large time difference (8 hours here). Here are some of my favourite memories so far:
uonstudyabroad.com 
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