It’s built like a maze, where you walk through and follow the arrows on the ground so you don’t get lost. Then you bring your cart back down on a CART ESCALATOR (those exist?!) and check out. I bought a ton of stuff.
On the bus back to the flat, I realized that I was standing next to someone with a lot of Ikea bags too. We started talking, and it turned out she was a student at Trinity Laban Conservatoire too! She’s a singer from Poland. And the more we got talking, we soon found out…we were neighbors! What were the odds? We then got off the bus at the same stop and walked up to our flat together.
Since that first week and starting school, I feel much more comfortable here. It was tricky understanding all the different accents and names that are unfamiliar to me--so many people are from all over Europe and speak many different languages. For many weeks, I felt separate, kind of like that feeling going from elementary school to middle school, or middle to high school.
To distract myself, I kept myself busy with homework, practicing the piano and going to lots of music concerts. But my desire to keep busy eventually made me get headaches, which made it hard to focus. I realized that I needed to slow down, exercise and take care of myself. It also reminded me to be thankful for this new adventure and not to forget to keep talking to new people!
This journey has been full of high and low moments from the very start.
