Apartments, Decor & Orientation // Exchange Post #3
- 10-15 min read
- Aug 19, 2017
- 3 min read
I am in America and I am ready to start my university exchange adventures! First, I need to buy apartment items, see my apartment, go to orientation and make my apartment decorations. This is my favorite step of my exchange semester adventures so far! For those of you that know me well, know that I am obsessed with interior designing and buying decorations from Target. If there were a Target in Finland then I probably wouldn't even want to move to America (kidding)!
To start, I looked at many decorating videos for dorms and student apartments. I knew I wanted to have a theme throughout my room so that I would feel at home in my apartment. I picked a white, green, brown, and a bit of black as my theme. I wanted to focus on banana or palm tree leaves. I choose my theme waaaay back in April so I could start looking for decor items online that would not break my budget and that way I could ask for items relating to my theme as birthday presents. The pillows I was gifted have since been sold out but back in June, H&M had really cute pillows that were very inexpensive as seen in the pictures!
I will go more into detail about where I bought or where the decor items I received are from in my next post!
On August 11th I had to wake up at 3:30am for my 4 and a half hour drive to Murray, Kentucky for orientation. It was a very long and boring drive but I made it to orientation just in time! I barely found a visitor parking spot and rushed to get checked in for orientation. Orientation was full of different lectures about safety on campus, visa restrictions and requirements, payment plans, and more important information. At the end of the lectures free prizes were given out if we answered questions and I won a Murray State University keychain that has been very useful! That day I met lots of international students and became friends with them.
After orientation ended, I drove to the apartments I am living in now and got my keys to my apartment and room. I am living in an apartment where I shared the kitchen and living room with 3 girls but we all have our own bedrooms and showers. When I walked into the apartment with Franzi, a German girl I had met just a few hours earlier at orientation, we were shocked by how messy the apartment was. Most people know that I like to keep my living space very clean so I do not like messy or dirty living areas. Franzi helped me move all my items from my rental car to my apartment room and then I went to the office to ask if someone could clean my apartment :D Thankfully my roommate that was living here cleaned a bit after herself so the next day when I returned to the apartment it was a little bit cleaner.
The following few days I was on a cleaning spree. I started by cleaning my bathroom and shower so I could put my things into place and settle in. During those days, I was also going to several events organized by churches and MSU such as Football 101, an American Cookout and more. A few days after that I managed to start cleaning the kitchen, which was the messiest part of the house. It took 3 days to deep clean the kitchen to make it liveable (at least by my standards)!
On August 15, I started classes. It took me 15 minutes and a lot of driving to find a parking place. My first class was Introduction to Music Industry and I LOVED IT. I am so glad I signed up for that class! The first day of classes was like every first day of classes. I just received information on what the class is about and what the syllabus looks like. Now that the first week of classes is over I can feel that Murray State University was the right choice for me. I am really looking forward to all the adventures this exchange semester has in store for me!
Make sure to leave a comment and subscribe to my newsletter! My next post will be a detailed room tour. I can't wait for you to see what I have come up with!
Love,
Susanna Poysti aka Real Girl Dreams
Watch my exchange video!
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