Flatshare – How to live with people from different cultures

One of the biggest challenges when you are a student is finding your place, there is so much to take into consideration; budget, proximity to uni but also to the party places and figuring out what type of room or flat you are looking for. It’s just a lot of big decisions and responsibilities which you have to base on aspects of your life which you had never even asked yourself about until right there and then. Take it as a period of discovery, during which you are not only going to be finding out about who you are but also become much more insightful as to how people surrounding you are. Flatshare is the way of getting the most out of this discovery phase and in our days the chances are that you will be living with with people from all over the world, all with their own habits and ways. This is a situation which will take some time to adjust to, here are some tips to making the process go smoother.

Start by being aware of your own culture, values and attitudes

Understand that people who have not grown up in the same country or context as you will interpret some of your behaviours the wrong way. To avoid this seek feedback from your friends and family, to find out more about what type of person you are and what might come across as offensive to people who do not know you. It might seem a bit odd to learn about your culture after living it for so long, but if you understand better what affects your culture you will understand in what ways your behaviour might affect other people’s culture.

Get rid of your stereotypes

Knowing about the values, expectations and beliefs which drive individuals behaviour from certain cultures should inform you how to behave towards an individual but what it does not do if inform you about the individual himself. Most people confine to their stereotype, but so do you and it is never a good nice feeling to get the impression that you are being put in the same basket as everyone else. So approach them with some guidelines but do not thing that you know them.

Be understanding

Now that you know that people are all different and that you should not approach them with pre-conceived ideas, be understanding when you get to know them. Try to be open minded so that you can start off on the good foot, and also understand what type of person they are which will facilitate communication with them.

Engage, do things together

To better get to know each other plan to spend some time doing what each of you like to do in your spare time. This way you will give some insight as to what type of person you are and will be much more relatable. Also the other person might be from somewhere, which would not usually do these activities experiencing with someone who is use to do them can be a really good friendship building activity.

People are more similar than you think most of the time. We grow up in such a large world with so much information everywhere and sometimes we can be mislead to thinking something which we should not believe we have had the opportunity to make up our own mind. So be kind, you don’t know from where people come and what their story is.

Start your multi-cultural living experience by booking your room abroad with HousingAnywhere.com. Europe’s number 1 booking platform for international students going abroad, trust by over 130 universities worldwide HousingAnywhere helps their student to find quality accommodation near their university, hosted by trust landlords.