Arriving in Valencia...here we go!

So yesterday evening I arrived in Valencia - I could have stayed another night at the apartment in Gandia, but there was no reason to - most people had already left. I visited the room the previous day to get the keys. The area is really nice, just off the lively Blasco Ibanez and next to the Plaza del Xuguer, a square garden area with restaurants all around - full of students! I'll upload a few pics of the street later, but here are some of the flat:

 

  

 

No-one else was home - they went to a club called Soul Gandhara in the city centre, about 5 minutes taxi away, so I think the location is good, right next to the Universities, and half way between the beach and city centre. I used the night to get a decent sleep, without waking up bloody cold like for the past two weeks.

I keep randomly seeing other Erasmus students from Gandia around the area - so most people are within 5-10 minutes walking distance - really good.

I properly feel like I'm in Spain now, with Spanish/Spanlish!/Italian speaking housemates, the Italian seems to speak really good Spanish from the first semester - hope I'll be the same. It's really good living with students from the first semester - they know where everything is, the shops, the trips, how to get to places, etc

Today was a chill day - I stayed in most of the time with the housemates, realised it was almost impossible to buy food on Sundays, except finding one 24/7 place just around the corner.

Not sure what we'll do tonight - maybe meet up with some erasmuses...we'll see...

Gandia City, El Veradero, Cocoloco, Wine Trip and exploring Valencia

I haven't posted anything for about a week - blame the bad internet. So I'll catch up...It feels like aages ago since I was on the plane...!

Nightclubs

There are two main clubs in Gandia. El Veradero and Cocoloco. Veradero is a much smaller club but with a nice atmosphere, and Cocoloco is the craziest club I've been to (not that hard!) Spanish people start partying at about 3/4am and stay out until around 10am - so this is the reason for their siestas! It was so good - hopefully Valencia will be even better. But still, the music is so bloody loud it makes it hard to talk/meet people! - still great though.

Veradero - Paella, etc

This picture was in El Veradero - many Erasmus students. We had dinner there which was the first time I'd tried paella...and it definitely tasted better than it looked!!, really liked it. I've had it almost everyday for lunch at the Uni cafe.
 

More of Gandia

We had a tour around the city to see historical buildings, etc - you can imagine it being boring..., and the tour guy spoke in Spanish. A couple of pics (one being a really interesting one of the sky, showing you exactly what Gandia is like!)

Enguera's Wine Cellar

We travelled by bus about an hour away (not sure where!) to a wine cellar. We expected to be shown how wines were made, but it was more of a walk around the place, and to taste two of their wines! - One was the second best Spanish wine within the price range (of 10 euros haha) - it was okay! We were shown how to taste a wine properly (Oooh I can't stand all this wine tasting bullshit!), and the guy said a good wine is supposed to be tasted equally in every part of the mouth...so a good wine shouldn't taste bitter for example.

 

Saturday - Visiting Valencia

We went there with the idea of looking for a flat, but there were very little advertisements on the streets for available rooms, so instead we just walked around, visited the old part of the city and looked around the UPV - the university we'd all be studying at. Most of the whole campus was closed because it was a weekend, but we still took a look inside the library, etc. - the facilities seem nice!

 

 

 Yoigo - The Spanish Network

Almost everyone now has a Spanish number with the Yoigo network - it seems to give much cheaper rates for calling other numbers in Spain. It's free to call other Yoigo numbers (many Erasmus students), 12 cent/min national calls, 30 cent/min international calls, and 10 cent/min messaging international and national. I still don't know how much my original UK sim card cost when calling abroad, but I went with Yoigo...It was 20 euros for the SIM card.

Ski Trip to Andorra

Today I signed up for the Ski trip to Andorra which was 195 euros. There were about 50 places, so a decent number! The trip includes accommodation, travel, breakfasts and an extra 30 euros for kit hire, which would have been cheaper and far less hassle than bringing my own kit! Oh, and the trip is for only four days, thursday to sunday. I hope this weekend won't be one to miss, for start of semester parties. A few of the American exchange students are going too...most of them are from Winconsin.

I already went skiing in Andorra for a week a few years ago, but can't really remember much of it, so looking forward to visiting again. It will also be a good opportunity to improve my Spanish.

There are quite a few other trips going on. Another is in the last week of February, to Andalucia (the south of Spain), to cities like Sevilla and Granada. The trip is 65 euros, and all the days are planned with places to go, etc. It also includes discounts and arranged nights out to meet Erasmus students from the other cities. I haven't signed up to this yet though.

Accommodation: Sorted!

So sorting out the accommodation has been difficult because of limited Internet access. I used three websites to search for rooms:

Loquo - The most successful website for searching/advertising rooms.
ErasmusValencia - actually I only used this once, and didn't get many replies, but it's still worth a look.
UPV Flat Database - The University has it's own area for people searching for accommodaion. This was useful, but a lot of the time people didn't give much information about the rooms.

Of course there are Facebook groups too, which is actually where I sorted mine out. I will be staying between the two Universities (the UPV and UV), which I imagine is about 20 minutes walk to the city centre, and the beach on the other side. In the flat: A spanish guy and an Italian (Erasmus student from the first semester who will stay for the second too). It was good to find a mix of native and erasmus, and I'm hoping the house will be Spanish speaking like he said.

The photos of the house looks really nice, and I can't wait to move out of this accommodation in Gandia! (really it's not that bad, but it's too small, and sharing a small bathroom with 4 other guys with a shower that stays hot for about 1 minute isn't good!), Oh, and the bed is probably less comfortable than the floor...I won't continue...!.., except for saying that the balcony door doesn't lock, and we're on the bottom floor..!

So I'm going to Valencia to see the flat tomorrow. There is also another flat that I'm interested in. I'm hoping I can sign a contract or something, and then bring my suitcase up on the weekend.

I'm still doubting whether it would be better to live with just three Spanish people, but I'll see how it goes...

The Spanish Exam - the end of the intensive language course


Today we had our Spanish exam which would give us all 6 credits (I need to get 23 credits in the whole semester), so passing this test would help a lot. The group seemed okay for me, but I was the only one who hadn't studied Spanish before, in school or something, so some things were new, and I didn't know much vocabulary.

Anyway...the test was okay and the teacher said I passed...:)

Enrolling on courses

I heard from another graphic exchange student here that all of the graphic design courses were full and unavailable, so I'm not sure how this is going to be resolved...It seems my Erasmus exchange was agreed with the Fine Arts faculty, but perhaps the courses were not (sounds worse than the situation is, I think).

All the UPV students enroll on the 1st of February to sort out their courses, etc. I've contacted my Spanish mentor to help with these things, and will meet up with her sometime on the day - I really can't deal with language problems when sorting the courses out!

Let the Spanish begin...

So today was the first proper day of the language course - we had to be at the University Gandia campus by 8am for an ESN meeting (Erasmus), which was 5 minutes from our apartments.

There were so many of us..., we met other students and got told about our weekly schedule, basically parties and fun activities. They gave us a list of all the trips organised over the semester, like a ski trip to Andorra, various trips in Spain and the biggest trip of the semester to Ibiza, where 2000 Erasmus students go...niice.

Before going to class we all had to take a one hour Spanish exam to determine which groups we'd be put into. It was a multiple choice test, but half of it was realllly difficult. So I was put into A2 (the group above absolute beginners).

The teacher speaks only Spanish, and actually she was quite easy to understand - I think because she was talking slowly. So to no surprise...we all had to introduce ourselves in Spanish. She wrote her own introduction on the blackboard and we had to change it based on ourselves...going something like this:!

Hola, mi nombre es ed, y tengo 20 anos. Naci en un pueblo se llama Hampshire, cerca de Londres. Estudio diseno grafico y voy a estudiar 1 semestre en Valencia. (Use Google translate..!)

We also had to talk about how long we'd studied Spanish and if we'd visited Spain before. I thought I'd struggle with the language a lot more than I am. I think I was put in the right group - most people are around the same level.

After class we went to town to get food and try to sort out cheaper rates for our phones. There is a spanish network called Yoigo which a lot of exchange students use, but the shop was closed because of siesta...it seems like siesta is from like 1-9pm! I managed to ask a guy if he knew what time siesta finishes...he understood okay!, the Spanish pronouncation is so much easier than French.

In the evening all of the Erasmus students went for a welcome dinner. We tried a lot of tapas foods and met more people again...some students from Iceland and a Hungarian. Afterwards we went to one of the two main clubs in Gandia, El Varadero - it was really small but the music was quite good.

There are so many germans/austrians here - everytime we try to talk English in a group, a German comes along and changes everyone to speaking German.. quite annoying! It's funny hearing them speak Spanish - harsh accent. The italians still sing in Spanish too!

Wondering around Gandia

Today was a free day before starting the language course on Monday. We got up quite late then headed down to see what the beach was like. It was warm today too!, only a t-shirt needed...even a bit uncomfortable to wear jeans! Here are some pictures of the beach and habour, etc:

After looking around Grau de Gandia, we headed over to Gandia City, but actually it wasn't much different. Lots of shops closed, maybe winter season quietness, and the fact it was Sunday. We'll come back another day - expecting Valencia to be a lot more lively.

In the evening we searched around for a restaurant, ending up in a pizzeria called El Picillo. Despite not understanding most of the ingredients on the menu, and getting laughed at by the waitress, we managed to order okay! So our group consisted of me, a German, a Swiss and two Italians. Eating pizzas with the Italians was amusing - they keep analysing and comparing them to their own...this pizza scored just 2/10! Haha.


We watched some of the football between Valencia and Villareal (Spanish league) in the restaurant. Someone set off a loud banger outside the place when Valencia scored...is this standard?? - a good way to let everyone know there was a goal haha. The final score was 2-1 Valencia. It seems the Spanish are really love football...almost every TV channel in our apartment showed football highlights last night (not complaining at all here..!)

Hasta manana!

To the sun!...the first day

So the flight was nice - clear skies and sun the majority of the time...and I got my window seat! The approach to Valencia airport was great - down the coast then across the city in-land. The city looked huge, and it was good to see some of the landmarks I recognised online, like the City of Arts and Sciences. Here are a couple of flight pics, but the quality isn't great.

At the airport I met up with two Dutch girls - randomly asking them..."Erasmus??" - of course they were!, and they were also doing the language course down in Gandia - So we stuck together.

The first stage was getting on the metro from the airport to the city centre - a Spanish women showed us which station we had to get off at. Walking out of the metro was so nice - instant warmth!...nearly 20 degrees in the middle of January....it's like skipping 3 months of weather in England.

Valencia!

So straight across from the metro was the Estacion del Norte, the train service that we needed for Gandia. Asking for tickets was the first time I had to speak Spanish...so...Tenemos que ir a Gandia (We have to go to Gandia). She understood! - I was thinking...is that the first time I've actually said something useful in another language? - anyway...it's so satisfying to get the message across. We had to wait an hour for the train to come, so a Spanish McDonald's filled the time.

After more travelling, and then a bus onto Grau to Gandia, we finally arrived at our apartments by 9:30am or something, and here are a few pics (while it's tidy).

Some of the Erasmus students had already arrived at the appartment - one of my housemates came yesterday (Ben from Germany), and we are still waiting for two others - I think an Italian (surely with a name of Paolo) and an Austrian.

Soon after arriving, we went to meet other Erasmus students. It was funny trying to communicate in each other's languages and hearing 3 or 4 different languages in the same room - everyone was struggling, and my accent definitely didn't go down well...!! (even though the American girls liked it) - I need to talk slower... After meeting more people and discussing each other's nationalities, we called it a night at around 2am.

1 week to go!

So the flight is booked and I leave on the 16th January to start my semester abroad in Valencia! I wasn't sure which date I'd be coming back to England, so I got a one-way ticket (this sounds good!). Summer and World Cup 2010 being considerations here....and the fact I'm not coming back until I'm fluent!

I'm excited...a bit nervous, but not as much as I thought I'd be - probably because when I arrive, I know that everything will be sorted out for the first two weeks (accommodation and the language course).

I'll be doing the two week intensive language course in Gandia, organiased by the UPV (Universidad Politecnica de Valencia). The price of the course was around €200, with hotel accommodation (on the beach...shame!) being another €90 - so it's pretty expensive. I've heard English is spoken far less in Valenica than in Madrid and Barcelona (gulp), so doing this language course at the start will hopefully give me some confidence. I'm sure being confortable with the language will make the whole experience more worth while.

Starting to learn Spanish

I've been learning the language with two programs:

Rosetta Stone - an amazing software that immerses yourself in the language and gradually builds your vocabulary, etc. It's quite repetitive but definitely more enjoyable than other software packages.

Michel Thomas' audio tapes - another really impressive way of learning a language. (Believe me it's so much better than how the website looks).

Both were really useful which took me from knowing probably only two words (hola y gracias), to building useful sentences. I also found it worthwhile finding some Spanish speakers to practice the language with, on Babbel.com, which is a sort of social network for people interested in learning languages together.