Being an international student, I have to face many difficulties; and one of the hardest things I have to endure is living independently away from home. Living alone is always the hardest situation, and yet I've been living half the Earth away from my parents for almost two years now. This experience brought me a lot of mixed feelings. Looking back to the day I decided to leave my country to study, I finally realized that my life was going to be so different. So it turned out that I had to adapt in a strange atmosphere of independence, where no one reminded me to clean my room, not to forget my breakfast, to take medicine when I was sick or to drive me to school every day. At the beginning, my life was too hard and exhausted, I always wanted to give up, to leave this place and I was really homesick. Sometimes I just wanted to go back home, where I could be protected and loved by my parents rather than drowning in a lonely place and facing many kinds of dangerous people. Over time, I finally got out of my comfort zone and began to feel comfortable in my life. Additionally, I am currently attending university, and it is a new, calm and stimulating environment for me to integrate into. Over the course of several weeks of school, I realized that I needed to put a lot more effort into improving myself, for example: my self-learning skills, time management skills, motivation skills,