After a flight to Copenhagen and several hours spent at Copenhagen Airport without knowing what to do, we -with our really heavy luggages- finally arrived in Lund by train at about 7 o’clock in the morning. We were 5 Turkish students from the same university and all of us were abroad for the first time.
The mentors from Lund University were supposed to arrive at 9, so we sat at the train station and started to wait. There were no other students at all. As the clock was nearing to 9, finally there were some people with huge luggages just like us. All the international students gathered but the mentors were late. At the end of a really long and tiring wait, finally some guys in blue t-shirts appeared. Yes, they were the mentors! They led us to buses and we arrived at the AF-building, where the Arrival Day takes place.
It was really crowded and the first thing we did was finally getting rid of those huge luggages -at least for a couple hours-. After that we went upstairs for check-in and for the first time we saw one of the most significant things in Sweden: a huge queue! All the students were waiting for their turn and there were really lots of people. We find ourselves some place in the queue and started to wait. We spent lots of time waiting and that was not the only thing that pissed me off. When I was getting my “welcome package”, there were no personal envelopes that include some important information like the user id and passport for me. The staff told me that I need to get it from the International Desk later.
After that, I checked the list for Introductory Swedish Course (SUSA) but I couldn’t find my name on that either. I had to wait in a long queue again and finally wrote my name on the list myself. After all that tiring -both physically and mentally- stuff, all I wanted to do was getting in my room.
I returned to luggage room to get my luggage but the paper with my luggage number on it was lost somehow. I know it was my fault to lose it but luckily the guy in that room helped me a lot finding it. After 5 minutes or so, I got my luggage and went outside of the building. There were several vans mentors were driving the students to their places. Since I haven’t got accomodation from International Housing Office, it was hard to find someone to take me to my room at Möllevångsvägen. After asking several mentors, finally one of them told me to get in his van.
After 5 minutes or so, I was in my room. In a short while I realised that I was all alone. First thing I thought was: “What the hell I’m doing here?”. There was no one around and I felt really depressed. Kinda childish, but that’s the truth. Being thousand kilometers away from home and all alone is not the easiest thing you come across in your life. But you should know that just in few days you’ll return to a normal mood again and even start to have fun. So don’t dwell on it so much and just try to have a good sleep!
