One of my main worries when planning to study abroad was where I'd be staying. If I'll have roommates or not, if I'll share the bathrooms and kitchen. When applying for accommodation at the University of Roehampton, the option I chose included the sharing of bathrooms and a kitchen which I had no problem with. In addition to this, I'll have my bedroom which is what I wanted. It was also interesting to learn that it's uncommon in the UK for students to be sharing rooms with someone else. So, instead of having roommates, I had housemates. They are the people I shared multiple stalls bathrooms with and 2 kitchens that are on each floor. The type of Uni accommodation I lived in is classified as a shared bathroom. Where everyone has individual bedrooms coming off a corridor, and there are also bathrooms coming off the corridor - like bathrooms at home. Unless you’re in a single-sex hall (most universities offer at least one) this will be mixed-sex. However, I did wish that I lived in an en-suite because it would've been more convenient. For the en-suite, you have your bedroom, and you have an attached bathroom. Single occupancy bedroom and you’re the only one using the bathroom. The hall will generally be mixed-sex. All in all, having housemates wasn't as bad as expected. There were issues with the kitchen about people washing their dishes and cleaning up after themselves. But these were solved with flat meetings we had.
As I mentioned earlier, I liked my housemates and some ended up becoming some of my closest friends during my time there. I arrived at Roehampton on the 14th which is the arranged arrival date for international students. So, for the first 10 days, it was only international students in the flat. I remember walking into the kitchen and seeing a note and small brown gift bags. The note was from Anna who is an International student from Japan and she put some Japanese assortments in those bags for us. I found this gesture from her to be sweet and I loved the sweets too.
The bedroom was nice, it also included a sink and cabinet which was useful. I'm not sure how I had the strength to unpack the day I arrived but below are the before and after looks of the bedroom after I unpacked and arranged everything.
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