On the fifty second floor of Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pudong, there’s a luxury café from where you can see all of Puxi and the other buildings in Pudong after the curtains open at seven PM. I went there one day before Move-In Day, enjoying my afternoon tea sitting with my dad, and talking about my worries of the new life I would start the next day at NYU Shanghai as a member of the Class of 2020. When the clock struck seven, the blinds opened, and the most breathtaking view lay before me. Under the sweet luring tunes of a piano playing in the café, I took some long seconds to capture the miracle that I was witnessing with my very own eyes. On my left, the Oriental Pearl Tower was brightening up with its lights and taking most of the attention from all the skyscrapers surrounding it. In front of me flowed the Huangpu River guiding the ferries to their destination. The dusky skies slowly called for the nightfall while I saw the lights of Puxi gleaming over the roofs of the houses. A mixture of feelings started to build up and hit me, as the realization of starting adventure in my life, far away from home, away from my dear family members and my old lifelong friends. How am I going to live the next four years in a city and country so unknown to me? I knew no word in Chinese. I never really had any real life contact with Chinese people and customs, since there isn’t much diversity in my country back home. I feared about the levels of pollution everyone seemed to be worrying about. And mostly, I was concerned about how the NYU Shanghai community would welcome me.These uncertainties had definitely been built up by doing a lot of research and reading all the articles I could read about NYU Shanghai before I decided to come here. Let’s face it. There’s not plentiful of information beside some posted on On Century Avenue and what the school had provided us with. This one struck to me in particular, as it seems to state a few points which intimidated me the first time I read it. Some students even dropped out of NYU Shanghai because of the issues referred to in the article. I know some of the freshman have had their doubts on coming here when they read it in the first place. I did so myself. There are things we should supposed to be aware of, and need to be taken into consideration before we make the important decision of moving to Shanghai. When I asked some of the freshman how they felt about this article, most of them they told me that they felt dubious about coming here at first too. But what made them still choose to come here?That article is not a strong reason for turning down this amazing opportunity. They told me that they’d feel homesick everywhere else they’d go. It’s normal to feel homesick no matter if you’re in Shanghai, the States, Europe, Africa. Plane tickets are expensive everywhere you go. And it’s not brand new news that the air is polluted here. NYU Shanghai advocates for the Health and Wellness center in case we feel isolated or face any physical or mental distress. It has all the available resources to make the transition smoother and make sure each and every one of us is provided with help whenever we need it. The criticisms still have some truth. It’s a fairly new institution, and we may have all feared that the risk we’d take would be a huge one. But we were until the end convinced that the risk was worth taking. It is worth working to make your university flourish in different ways, suggesting any new great idea that would make the experience here an unforgettable one. We, the Class of 2020 feel that what the university and city promises to offer completely makes up for any downside it might have. NYU Shanghai is after all, similar to other good universities in the world...except that it’s honestly so much better and more exciting.The truth is, just until this very moment that I am writing this article in the comfort of my dorm bed in Tower 1 in Jinqiao, three weeks into the Orientation Week and the start of courses, I felt like I haven’t been in a place to judge whether what was said in the article was explicitly true of not. But now, after getting to learn a whole lot more about life here, and talking to many freshman about how they feel about coming to NYU Shanghai and their experience so far, let me tell you all the reasons why coming here has been the best decision most of our class has made, and why it is slowly starting to feel like home to us.We come back from a tiring day of classes to a lovely accompanying roommate or roommates who despite being tired themselves, they talk to us, and we help each other with our Chinese, GPS or EAP homework. We get to complain about the GPS readings, we order food late at night, we buy extra unnecessary furniture on Taobao, and laugh out loud until we finally turn the lights out for the start of the next day. It feels like home when you collectively live together, in a similar household theme.We go to the AB and engage in different classes and courses taught by highly educated professors who inspire us to be the best version of ourselves. The student to teacher ratio just makes it impossible to get behind with our studies. Also, we basically get to know everyone in the meantime. It feels like home when you see familiar faces every day with who you can start a conversation about practically anything.The student body made up from different nationalities is just a perfect platform to learn about different cultures. It still feels exciting when I get to explain where Albania is to Chinese and other international students who are curious about it, or when we try to teach one another excerpts from our native languages. We get to learn Chinese, probably the coolest language in the whole world. It feels like home when we get to share and embrace all the diversity present at NYU Shanghai. It’s virtually impossible to get bored. Whether you sign up for a Cultural Brush Painting Class even though you know nothing about painting, or go to Yoga Classes even though we’d rather just sleep instead, or joining a club and devoting our time to it even though we are busy enough already, there’s always something to do. It feels like home when we all grow together intellectually.We get to explore one of the best cities in the world. Starting from the financial center of Shanghai, to its outskirts, there’s a myriad of places where we can go and immerse ourselves in the local life. So what if the skies get foggy and polluted from time to time? If we’re being grumpy about the sky instead of the enjoying the city, we’re definitely doing it wrong. Doesn’t it feel like home when we have a favorite bar to go to with our friends, a favorite restaurant or a park where we can spend your free time?For all the aforementioned reasons and so many more, NYU Shanghai is becoming an epitome of a cozy warm home to the freshmen of Class of 2020. It is a home full of students who may disagree at times and experience difficulties but overcome them by supporting one another and becoming one whole community in a sea of many. There’s no other thing left to do but to be the most amazing class NYU Shanghai will have for the 2016-2017 Academic Year. This is a once in a life opportunity. Every challenge we have to face will be worth facing. We simply have to make the best out of it.This article was written by Anisa Muca. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Anisa Muca