Back home, we don’t have a campus. Our school is just a building. Two floors, a bunch of classrooms, a cafeteria and three courtyards. A small garden. A tiny library. A couple of couches here and there. That’s pretty much it.

Here it feels like the college is a town. Everything has its own building. And one of those buildings is my temporary home. As a person who’s never had to share their space with that many people, I often find myself confused about lots of things. I mean, I managed to lock myself out of the room in the first five minutes of my stay — off to a great start, right? Thankfully a very sweet guy helped me out and the security guy didn’t make me pay for it.

First of all, I have roommates. Yeah, plural: I live in a triple, and while the room is relatively big, it’s still a bit crowded at times. And then there’s the Alarm Problem. I can’t fall back asleep after listening to the wonderful sounds of Marimba seven times in a row, but my roommates think it’s totally fine to make me do that and then continue sleeping for hours. This problem made me add this clause to our roommate agreement (which they still haven’t signed): “If Roommate A turns on 7 alarms starting before 7am and doesn’t get up, they shouldn’t be surprised when Roommates B or C get a bit angry and slam a couple of doors.” I’m Roommate B, of course; it stands for Bitch.

Then there’s the shared bathroom. Apparently most people think that cleaning up behind themselves is above them, so it’s usually pretty gross; the water doesn’t always cooperate, staying cold for the most part of my shower; and there’s nothing more fun than walking out of the bathroom in a pink bathrobe with messy hair and no makeup and running into some hot guy. What? That happens a lot and it’s not cool, trust me.

But sometimes it’s kind of nice. Yesterday I woke myself up at 6 a.m. to finally have a nice shower; at 7 the water just goes cold. I stood there, falling asleep as the hot water brought me back to life, and heard someone get into the second stall. I felt this instant connection, companionship: I wasn’t the only one seeking warmth and cleanness of the early morning shower. I still don’t know who that was — they left before me — but I’m grateful for that little moment we’ve shared.