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!