Hi! My name is Hayat Odaci and I am 20 years old. I am from Hengelo, which is a small city in the east of The Netherlands. Since I am going to Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences I had to move to Rotterdam. Rotterdam is a big city and it was my first time away from home. I moved to Rotterdam when I was 17 and was excited to start my journey.

I am a person that is not tied to one place, I like discovering new opportunities to develop myself as a person, so when I heard that there was a program where I could get the opportunity to go overseas, I was immediately interested and enrolled for International Business Asia.

I have various interest but one thing that I really enjoy doing is learning new languages. That is why I enrolled for an all English program at my university. Apart from Dutch, I learned English almost all my life and I really improved my pronunciation over the years, which I am really proud of. Furthermore, I did some self- studying on Korean and took two electives at my university. I am able to read Korean, but I forgot most of what I had studied, because my focus was on Japanese. I have been studying Japanese for three years and I really love it. Holding a conversation is so difficult for me but I really want to become fluent.

Additionally, I am a creative person. I love drawing, reading books, music, writing and I really love fashion. For me, there are a lot of interesting things in the world, and when I explore them, I realize that I don’t keep up with all of them. For example, I loved playing the piano, but when I got older, other things sparked my interest more, so I left playing the piano on the side. Another example is that I wrote a lot of small stories when I was little and I really enjoyed it, and eventually I was aspired to write a book, but when I got older that feeling faded away too. When it comes to fashion, I am all in for self-expression and being authentic, and I believe that through fashion, you can express yourself in a every way. So when it comes to my interests, I have a lot and I have from everything a piece that I kept.

I am going to start my internship in Osaka and I am really excited, because even though my internship has a lot of English stuff that I need to do, I really want to improve my Japanese and be able to speak more, because I do understand quite a lot, but holding a conversation is difficult for me. I hope I’ll be better at the end of this internship and I will share all the interesting moments I experienced here!

Hayat Odaci