New students!

I remember it like it was yesterday, the day I stepped foot on the huge American Airlines plane that was taking me from London to LA. The 11 hour flight that I spent thinking and speculating about what my upcoming 5 months would be like. I remember thinking "Well, Malena, if you don't like it or if things don't work out the way you want them to, you always have the option of just returning home. And it's only going to be 5 months, then you will be back home in Sweden." 

But as you can all tell, everything did work out and I don't just like it in Santa Barbara, I am completely in love with it, and never in my wildest dreams I would have imagined my self 2 years later sitting by my desk located at the Marketing Department at SBCC, being a member of the Phi Theta Kappa, doing great in all of my classes and working towards my degree. 

The things I remember worrying about were stuff like:

*Will I meet friends?

*Where and how will I find a place to stay?

*What will my classes be like?

*Are my english skills good enough?

What I did, was to search on facebook for other people who were going to move to Santa Barbara at the same time. I found a group called "SBCC Spring 2012" and it had over 100 members. That group helped me find a lovely girl named Sanna (who came to be one of my closest friends) who I started e-mailing with. We arrived in LA on the same day and we decided to share a hotel room in Santa Barbara. (That's were the picture is from, our very first breakfast) The second day, we sat down and looked for housing on www.craigslist.com . We found an apartment at Oceano/Cliffdrive almost right away and we ended up meeting the landlord and got the apartment on the same day. (The picture) From my own experiences and from what I hear from everyone else who are living in Santa Barbara, is that the monthly cost per individual is between $550 to $750. With room for exceptions of course.

                                                                

We were in SB early though. We arrived on January 4th and school didn't start until January 27th. So that is one tip, be here in time. And it is good if you start looking for roommates before you arrive, and you can do this by searching on facebook, or put up an ad on craigslist saying that you are looking for roommates. 

Another tip is to contact people who already live in Santa Barbara (through facebook or craigslist) and ask them if they have contact info to different landlords in the area. Most students who study at SBCC live either on the Mesa (which is pretty much were the school is located), downtown, or in Isla Vista which is located about a 20 minute drive from SBCC. 

The school website also has a link that provides a lot of great information about housing in Santa Barbara: https://www.sbcc.edu/housing/

Well, thats a little bit about housing. Feel free to ask me questions about it!

And when it comes to my personal life, it is pretty much the same: workouts, studying, working, eating my favorite food in the world (oatmeal with banana and milk, I could eat it for days) looking forward to Halloween etc. I had my first midterm today which was in yoga class. We went up as a group and had to lead the class through one of the 3 sun salutations. I did some practicing last night at our place.

I feel like I just want to ride off of this amazing wave of gratitude that I am on right now. I am amazed by all the great things in my life that I have worked so hard to accomplish. They are paying off.

Much love