When Dreams Come True: Nikola Chrinakova, Comenius University, Slovakia

Nikola on the left taking a selfie with her friends.

I have two favorite experiences while being at AIU. To start,  after coming back from my Hokkaido trip with my friend, I got to see another one of my friends right away by barging into her dorm and waking her up, since she didn‘t see my phone calls. We got to experience the last day of the AIU Festival together. We got food such as Kiritanpo and garlic-flavored popcorn. Afterward, we got to see really cute dogs. One was an Akita Inu and the other one was a Golden Retriever. The Akita Inu was wild because it was trying to eat my friend‘s banana-strawberry icecream. As for the Golden Retriever, it was quiet and kind. It laid down the whole time we were petting it and it looked so happy. We thought eating food and petting dogs would be the only things we had time for since we took all day long. But a surprising thing happened! My friends and I were able to meet two businessmen, both in their 20‘s, who had a full two-hour conversation with us in Japanese and watched the fireworks with us!

My second favorite experience is going grocery shopping with my two best friends. We always go to Aeon Mall each weekend (since their meal plan doesn’t work on weekends). It’s really fun to go with them, to the mall, because we sometimes go to the Japanese version of McDonald’s together, or to the game center (where we had spent most of our coins getting me my very own Nyanko-sensei plushie), or to the underground grocery store where we share one cart that has three baskets on it. I would like to say that, at times, I struggle with money or food, but I always have friends to help me out along the way. We have many precious memories together, but I value the smallest ones. Such as chilling and hanging out together in my friend‘s room, watching horror movies until 4 am in the morning, and drinking sake. Coming to Akita has its ups and downs, but I will never forget the amazing experiences I have had with my friends.

This is my very first time coming to Japan and it is such an honor to have this amazing opportunity to study here along with both international and Japanese students. My words cannot describe how thankful I am! I dare say that I feel at home here.