On the third day of Marhaba, after constantly questioning whether or not I was going to find a friend or a group of friends, I began to worry. I hadn’t found a solid friend yet, and I was so used to having friends who just knew me. All through Marhaba, friendship circles were constantly being made around me and I didn’t know where I fit in. Flash forward to today: I call my flat in A2 my home. How this happened, I’m still trying to trace.

I grew up in the Philippines and had never stepped foot outside of it before my Candidate Weekend. For 18 years, the Philippines was home and it sat alone on that pedestal. I grew up in my school. My father, when he was hired by the school, moved our small family of three to a mountaintop city of Baguio. I was only 6 years old at the time. I grew up with my classmates, had my teachers as babysitters and the staff even knew my favorite food at the cafeteria. I was sheltered and that was all I knew.

Coming to NYU Abu Dhabi was intimidating. I was, once again, back in the only foreign country I had ever known. I didn’t know anyone here except for two upperclassmen who had gone to my school. Before Marhaba, I had never forced myself to go out and make new friends. I didn’t have to. Back in the Philippines, everyone knew everyone.

As Marhaba started, I suddenly found myself sitting in a room of students of over 70 different nationalities, struggling to make conversation with the people around me. Kyle Farley, Dean of Students, opened Marhaba with a message I only vaguely recall now. “If you’re feeling uncomfortable, you’re doing something right,” he had said. I certainly hoped he was correct because I couldn’t have been any more uncomfortable sitting in the West Forum — and not because of the air conditioning. On top of that came the A2s, A6s, B1 and C2-E052… what on earth were those? I was hoping for my own new girl movie moment. One of those when the heroine becomes instant friends with someone who just so happens to know everything and everyone — even though you’re both freshmen and you should both be absolutely clueless.

But friendships take time. By week two, I really missed having a close friend to help me through the jumble of emotions I was feeling. I needed an outlet, preferably a vocal one. So I turned to the next best thing: NYUAD Confessions. I wrote out my struggles in a hefty little paragraph and waited for it to be posted. When it went live, plenty of my classmates commented some pretty great and reassuring advice. I took most of it to heart. That’s when I realized that I just needed patience. I was already making friends, I had to remind myself. I couldn’t just make close friends within the snap of my fingers.

I’m not exactly an introvert but I can be quite shy. The first time I asked someone to breakfast, I got ready thirty minutes in advance and sent them an articulate, heavily contemplated message: “Do you wanna have breakfast?”

Three minutes of thinking and multiple rounds of editing is what it took me to send our my arrangement of five words. Because, of course, I didn’t want to sound too pushy. I didn’t want to rush the person — even though I was starving.

The person I was inviting had a roommate of their own. When I remembered that, I threw my phone onto my bed and lay down in despair. I felt like my message had caused a dilemma. I felt as though I was making this person decide between me and their roommate. To my complete relief, I ended up having breakfast with both, which helped grow my confidence and gave me some hope that I still had the ability to make friends.

After every day that would pass, saying “hi” and making small talk got a little easier. I had never talked to so many people in so little time in my life than in that first week of Marhaba. I had never even been exposed to so many different nationalities before. But with time, I got used to it.

I started getting to know people a little more, and I started building on friendships. I asked people to hang out with me, grab lunch, watch a movie. I made my room feel a little more like home, filling my bare, white walls with posters and photographs.

But NYUAD really become home when I came back from my winter break in the Philippines. Most of my friends from school also went abroad for university so there weren’t many people left to hang out with. The tiny community I had there, I realized, was nothing compared to NYUAD. It was just … different. I loved being surrounded by the forest, my dogs, my parents … But I realized it was not the place I missed — it was the people.

After my return I started calling NYUAD my home and very frequently so. The people here are the friends I have now. That’s not to say I don’t miss my friends back in the Philippines or that I consider them old friends. I still can send them random jokes or memes and have quick laughs with them. NYUAD became home because the people here — the friends I have, acquaintances, professors, staff — they’ve all made it feel like home, like I belong here. It wasn’t easy to reach this point. I’ve asked myself plenty of times if I do belong here and a glance at NYUAD Confessions page reveals that many people still continue to ask that question. I’ve been asked by my parents and my friends if I think I made the right decision coming here. And at this point, I’m pretty convinced that I did.