My name is Daniella and I am a Business and Retail Management student in 2nd year. I was born and raised in Lima, Peru but moved to the UK almost 3 years ago to study. I did Foundation Year at the University of Surrey, and now I’m looking into placement opportunities for my Professional Training Year. This year I became the first International Student Ambassador from Peru and it makes me really happy to get to share my experiences with all of you.
Moving to the UK after finishing school without my family wasn’t an easy task and neither was finding the right university to attend. Because the course I choose to study is very specific in the business industry finding universities that offered this course and had a good programme was very hard but gladly I found Surrey.
Surrey offered a really good retail programme but also had many attributes other universities didn’t. For example because I travel quite often Surrey had the perfect location as it is located very close to all international airports as well as being close to London meaning that I could visit some friends in London or go to spend the day there with my friends.
I’m so happy I made the right choice and came to Surrey, at first I was nervous about having to speak English all day when I’ve grown up speaking Spanish 24/7 but after a month or so I felt confident and got used to it. When I came to to Surrey I didn’t know if I was gonna meet any Latin Americans or Spanish-speaking people but gladly I did. Not only did I meet people from Spanish-speaking countries but also I’ve made friends from all over the world and got to see so many different cultures and places around the world.
I meet most of my friends during Freshers, I was so nervous about making friends and talking to people but then I realised everyone felt the same way. This really helped with the transition of living with my family my whole life to living with people I had never met before. This required me to adapt quite fast to a new environment but it has also transformed me into a better person and I know that if you guys make the decision to come to Surrey you will love it as much as I do.
I will be blogging about many things throughout the year regarding my experiences at Uni with accommodation, societies and life as a student in general and hopefully they will help you have an idea of what living in the UK and studying here can be.
