The first time you become aware of the importance of friendship

I hear someone knocking on my door and immediately I know who it is: Siva, it is you. I know that, not because there is no one else who could knock on my door, but I know it is you, Siva, because no one else would knock on my door. But let me start the story from the very beginning:

In September I moved to Nancy, a small town in the east of France. I came to start my studies in physics and at the beginning I had many doubts: I did not take any physics or chemistry classes in school, I did not speak French for more than a year and I love to be surrounded by a big group of people and to live in a big city. Studying in Nancy meant studying physics in French, being far away from the friends I made in school and during my gap year and it required me to move to a small town – in brief: it was a big challenge.

This is something good, I thought at the beginning. It meant that I would learn a lot and that after this experience, I would be stronger than ever before. I had a very rational point of view and just ignored the emotional part that would go hand in hand with a hard experience:

The feeling of being alone, of being lost and the feeling of being unsuccessful.

It is in these moments, when other people become really important to you and it were these feelings of being lost and alone that let grow a strong tie between my house mate, Siva, and me.

I live in a house with seven other students, three of them German, three of them French and one of them Malaysian, Siva. Everyone is really nice, but one person is really special to me and had a strong impact on the time I have spent in France so far. It is Siva.

I do not know how many times I was close to stopping my studies, going back home. Never before I found it difficult to live abroad, usually I always made many friends in only a few weeks. I never had problems following classes in school and I never struggled in organizing the administration stuff such as bank accounts and so on.

Then, all of I sudden, in France I had trouble to deal with all of the sections named above.

But I was lucky, because I had someone living with me who is able to care for the people around him and someone who knows how to cheer you up when you are close to giving up.

When I tried to study chemistry and did not understand anything at all, Siva came and explained it to me. When I told him that I was missing hanging out with friends in bars and having more people around me, he did not only give me advice about where to meet more people, but he also went out with me. When I had problems with my banking account, he took the time to look through all the letters that I had ever gotten and helped me to solve my problem.

He cheered me up, when I told you him that I had failed my first test. He shared his stories about the problems he faced when he came to France for the first time with me. And, most importantly, he made me feel home by showing clearly that he cared about how I felt, by accepting my invitations to go out and by asking many times how my friends were doing.

He taught me not to give up and became are my role model concerning how to treat others. I never met anyone who cared so much about his environment and was able to create such a good ambience around him.

I want to say thank you for being the way you are and I hope that everyone who ever felt the way I did, when I first came to France, has the luck to have someone like Siva around him to cheer him up!