One morning I dragged myself to the kitchen, prepared to face my usual sad cereal. But that morning was different, a delicious aroma was dancing in the air. Sunshine<\/em> had just casually whipped up a mountain of homemade Vietnamese spring rolls. She looked at me, smiled, and said, \u201cSit down and eat\u201d. I sat down and had the best breakfast of my life. And then there was Joy<\/em>. One day Joy<\/em> knocked on my door, scissors in hand and a wild idea on her mind. \u201cI have a date. I need a new look. You\u2019re cutting my hair\u201d.<\/p>\n Moments later, we were in the garden. I\u2019m\u00a0armed with scissors and zero experience playing a hairstylist. \u201cCut a bit more,\u201d she said. \u201cJust go for it\u201d. A pile of hair was on the ground, but Joy seemed to be happy about it. And just like that, we became friends.<\/p>\n Trust me, living with strangers may sound scary, but it\u2019s just the beginning of a beautiful story you haven\u2019t experienced yet. So, when you arrive to your accommodation for the first time remember this: every friend starts as a stranger. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Moving to the UK for university sounds exciting until you remember you might be sharing a flat with strangers you don\u2019t know. When I moved into student accommodation, I didn\u2019t expect much beyond figuring out who clogged the shower drain and passive-aggressive fridge notes. Instead, I got, let\u2019s call them Sunshine and Joy, my wonderful… Read more » about Housemate Diaries<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3813,"featured_media":27656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[828],"tags":[3056,710,592],"class_list":["post-27654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-student-stories","tag-housemates","tag-international-students","tag-student-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3813"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27654"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27677,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27654\/revisions\/27677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/files\/2025\/06\/IMG_6546.jpeg\")
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