Hello again! (or should I say hej!) Now that I’ve settled into life in Stockholm over the past few weeks, I’m excited to share more about my housing! My program, DIS, allowed for students to rank their preferred living options among 4 choices – residential apartment-style community, student dorm-style housing, homestay with a local Swedish family, or a living-learning community centered around a specific focus each year. I was lucky to receive my first choice of housing, an apartment-style complex that is designated only for students studying at colleges or universities nearby. One floor is filled with my program’s students, who come from colleges all over the US and even beyond, while the other floors are all local Swedish students. I love this arrangement because it creates the perfect size community to connect with other study abroad students and form roots in my local area.

I am in a single room, meaning that I have my own apartment, while most students in my complex live with a roommate. This poses both a challenge and an advantage. As for the former, it requires more ambition and planning on my part to connect with fellow students. However, with the amount of social and academic opportunities offered by my program and organized by peers, I have found it easy and welcoming to create connections and form friendships with others in my program. After all, everyone is hoping to find a new home and community here in Stockholm! As for the advantages, I have found that living in a single room encourages personal growth and allows for more flexibility. For example, I am able to plan my day, cook, and do my laundry without coordinating with a roommate’s schedule, which encourages me to take charge of my everyday life.

My housing site is located approximately 25-30 minutes from central Stockholm and 40 minutes from my school, which poses another challenge. Stockholm has an incredibly efficient, reliable, and clean public transport system, but my distance from the city still requires me to plan ahead. I love how this need for planning has created a new ritual – each night, I form a rough plan of the next day, so I can minimize my time spent commuting and cleaning, and maximize the amount of time I have to socialize, study, speak to teachers, make meals or grab dinner with friends, plan trips, explore the city, run errands, call family and friends from home, and more.

All in all, I love how my new housing is becoming a home to me. Returning to Stockholm from an academic trip where we stayed in a hostel for a couple nights, I could not wait to lay down in my own bed here in Stockholm, make a nice meal in my kitchenette, and wash my hair in my small frameless European-style shower (if you haven’t seen one before, look it up – it took me a couple days to get accustomed to not having a rim around the shower!)

To conclude, my biggest takeaway so far is that home is what you make of it – so make the most of it!