What’s it like living in a private flat so far

In some of my earlier posts I have expressed my excitement regarding the fact that this year I am no longer living in Student Halls. I also said that I would later tell you about what it is like, so now that I’ve been here for almost 3 months, I thought I’d sum up some of my experience about it.

I learnt that I just can’t make friends with the idea of cooking. Basically, me and my flatmate have been living on frozen pizza and other easy-to-make food. In most cases, we simply don’t have time to cook – or more precisely, we don’t have the patience to cook. By the time we get home and realize that it’s dinner time and we’re starving, we have no energy left for cooking. Also, when we did cook, we had some pretty bad experience with it… so then we somehow stopped. The only meal I feel comfortbale to prepare is spaghetti – not to original, right? However, there is always a chance for improving, so perhaps one of my New Year’s resolutions will be to cook more in the second semester.

I also realized that a significant amount of money can be saved by wearing a coat inside the house. That is to say, after receiving our first electricity bill (thus ultimately realizing that this is Adult Life now and we don’t like it at all), we decided to save money in any way we can. Hence we only use the heating when absolutely necessary and only on a low scale. I can’t tell how much I hate cold but since I have to manage my budget, I feel like this is something that I have to do. Okay, maybe sometimes we go to a bit of extremes. My flatmate for instance was under the weather for quite some time and we figured out that maybe turning off the heating in 80% of the time is not helping… But the hatred towards the electricity bill overwrites that.

Furthermore, I discovered the importance of personalizing the flat, too. At first, I didn’t really bother with any decoration but after a few days, the walls seemed way too empty so I decided to make the most out of it with posters, pictures and bulletin boards. After that, the flat felt like something that I actually want to live in; really, it helps when you feel alienated and homesick.

A segment of the wall with some of the film posters

For the winter break, I am back home in Hungary which feels really weird -and not weird at all, at the same time- and I certainly feel like I am now more able to appreciate the little things, such as not freezing in my room or eating real food. (I guess most of the students can relate to it, right?) Still, I will miss Leicester and my own little nest there…