Friendship

The third week of my second semester at LUISS starts today. So far, it has been taken-off well and it is good to be back at LUISS after a two month summer break. Even though most of my friends are not at LUISS anymore (because they were Erasmus students) I was happy to see my Italian friends again. This already raises the first topic: Finding friends at LUISS…..

Unfortunately, it is not that easy to make friends with the Italian students. At the beginning I was a bit lost, because I did not know the Utrecht students who participated in the Strategic Management minor that well and most of the Italians have been studying together for more than one year when we arrived at LUISS. Therefore, they already had their own circle of friends in which we did not fit and belong in.

Hence, most of us became a member of ESN (International Exchange Erasmus Student Network) LUISS right at the beginning of the semester. ESN LUISS organizes parties, trips and a lot of other things in order to socially and personally integrate Erasmus and exchange students. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people from all over the world at those events who later became my friends.

After a few months I also got to know some very nice Italian students. Our neighbours - Andrea, Giuseppe (Pepe) and Antonia – are students at “La Sapienza” which is with 140,000 students the biggest university in Rome and Europe. Without having any doubts, they once rang on our door bell and invited us for dinner without even knowing us. You see, Italians are actually very open. Even though the communication between us is quite hard, because only Andrea speaks English, it works out and we are still having dinner together once in a while until today.

Then there is Caroline, Jessica, Nicola and Margharita. I consider them as my main Italian friends at LUISS. I met Caroline (Caro) once by accident. One of the Italian boys introduced me to her, because she and I are from the same part in Germany. She is a regular LUISS student and besides Romy and Martine my main library buddy. I spend a lot of hours studying there with them before exams. Then, I got to know Jessica - a typical Italian girl – because I was sitting next to her during a lecture. She introduced me to Nicola and Margharita. Those two are best friends and always hanging out together. We found out that Nicola is just living across my street and that made it perfect.

This semester Rafaella, our contact person at LUISS, organises - in cooperation with the Dutch Embassy in Rome- a “Dutch-Italian Business Challenge”. The purpose of this business challenge is to bring the Italian and the Utrecht students together.

To sum, it is possible to make friends here in Italy. The most important thing at LUISS: you should go up to people. That makes it way faster and easier to find friends here. For know I am excited how the business challenge is going to be and I will keep you up-dated! Have a great week.