My first days of Erasmus

Five months ago, February 12^th I walked through the great gate of Viale Romania. I was a bit nervous – was I on time? Would I find the right classroom? Luckily it wasn’t my first time at LUISS because I had visited the campus the previous week with my Erasmus buddy Antonio. He showed me around the place so the campus wasn’t completely strange to me. I managed to find my way into the right classroom, there was excitement in the air. So many different nationalities were packed in the same room. I could hear many different languages and when speaking English with people I encountered so many different accents. Everything was still uncertain – would I find friends here? Would we all find our small groups or hang out as one big Erasmus family?

Next day we had a campus tour with few people from the ESN-staff as our guides. At the law campus a girl came to talk to me and asked if I were from Finland (apparently she heard it from my accent). I found out that not only she is finnish as well – she’s from the same university as me. We had never met before! Little did I know at the time that that girl would turn out to be one of my closest friends here, a proper Erasmus sister.

I have made lots of friends here and few of them I can call close ones. It’s funny how acquaintances turn into friends – recently I’ve been thinking about that process quite a lot. I still haven’t quite figured out the paradigm of how friend groups develop. Anyhow, I’m very happy about all the people I’ve met here. Every person has taught me something new about the world – about different cultures, mind-sets, perspectives etc. and I’m so grateful for that.

Sonja Kärkkäinen