Greetings from Vancouver! I have moved in to my room and things are interesting to say the least.
I am living in Downtown Vancouver so I am far away from a typical University campus and instead surrounded by drunk/high people who like to scream through the night. If you travel a few blocks east of where I live you are faced with the homeless population of Vancouver just lining the streets. It's incredibly sad and adds to the feeling that danger surrounds me. I don't feel safe being outside once the sun starts to set.
I have a room mate who seems very nice. Her English isn't great so we haven't had many conversations and when we have spoken it's been quick and with few words.
We do seem to have very different ideas of what is an acceptable cleanliness standard. She is very messy. Today I washed the floors 3 times, first with the mop, then with a sponge on my hands and knees, and then again with the mop. The floors were disgusting and sticky. This is also after I had already cleaned the floors when I was moving in just a little over a week ago.
I am enjoying my classes and my classmates all seem to be really nice and I've started to kind of make friends, so that's awesome.
One thing that I was unprepared for was the level of homesickness that I am experiencing. I've gotten very busy with classes already, but even with homework to distract me I still really miss home. It doesn't help that I don't get to go home very often. I'll be home for Christmas and reading week (probably), but after reading week I'm not sure if I'll be able to come home until September, which is a really long time.
Time zones make me feel very isolated also. It's only 2 hours difference, but those 2 hours feel significant when I start to feel homesick just before bed and I can't text anyone from home because they're already all in bed. It makes me feel like I'm alone in this city.
Things will certainly take some getting used to.
I hear ya on the timezones front, drives me nuts even with only 1 hour. Too many earlybirds sleeping at like 10pm lol.
ReplyDeleteAlso you needed to wash the floor 3 times? Dang. Hopefully your roommate isn't a slob, they're headaches to live with...
Oh man, I relate to this so hard lol. Sorry to hear about your living situation, hopefully you aren't being kept up all night, if it gets to be a problem get some earplugs. My tip to feel safer at night is just walk confidently like you have a purpose, and don't wear headphones or use your phone when you're walking on the street. Just be aware of your surroundings and you should be okay.
ReplyDeleteAs for your gross room mate, my advice is to I guess try talking to her about it but honestly people don't usually change their habits lol, so if floors are sticky, don't stress about it and buy slippers instead. If they don't wash dishes, have your own stash in your room and wash them right away so you always have something to use. Hopefully it doesn't get too too bad.
As for homesickness, I was so there with you!! Generally distractions are the way to go, as you said, though it won't fix everything. A few things I did was Skype Eric every night before bed, go exploring even though it was on my own and try new things, I also had a photo book of Manitoba I looked at a lot, and I did a lot of reading too. The other thing that helped me a lot was making a countdown to when I could go home again. YMMV as it could make you feel sad if the number is big I guess, but for me seeing the number go down every day helped a lot.
Good luck! Feel free to text me any time if you're feeling lonely :)