The first week at university...

A couple of days since our last post have passed and many things have happened! During the past weekend, we finally moved into our apartments with our new flatmates. Dawe lives with two Spanish guys and an Italian one, while Marie moved into the ESN apartment with 14 (!!!!) other students. While it is always busy and loud in Marie's apartment, Dawe's one seems to be quiet - for now! His flatmates just finished their exam phase and, unfortunately, are all on vacation; meaning the first days he was alone. However, this isn't a problem, as the Erasmus student are really, really friendly and he could stay there, avoiding an awkward feeling of being completely alone ;)

Back to our story... The first night went well and on Monday our first day at university started. Thankfully, the university has at the beginning of every semester an introduction day, where every subject begins with a lecture in which the most important aspects about the subjects are explained (syllabus, evaluation/assessment etc.). This way the students know what is expected from then, as well as if they need to write a special assignment, when the examen will take place and how they will look like. Our first lecture was at 9am, but - of course - the teacher did not turn up. 'Typically Spanish' was our first thought! The rest of the day went without problems, while our brains were overloaded with all sorts of information in Spanish and English. The Spanish students did not talk to us, they seemed a little bit scared and just looked at us like we were not from this planet (and yes, we took a shower and dressed up in our nicest clothes). On Monday also our intensive language course started, however our last lecture went from 5pm to 7pm, so we didn't manage to participate on the first day. The woman told us to come back the next day. We went home tired and exhausted and in the evening Marie visited "el Tandem", which is like the language lounge in Leeuwarden. Students meet in a bar to speak Spanish, while drinking uno o dos cervezas. Of course, the purpose is (besides practising languages) to meet new students (there was a 'traffic light party'; green = you're single, red = you're taken; yellow = you can't decide). It was a great evening, the bar was filled and Marie met some new students. We hope that one day, the language lounge in Leeuwarden will be just as busy and successful as in Zaragoza. 

Marie y las chicas de Erasmus

The next day, we continued to visit lectures and soon realized that we wanted to keep our subjects but switch some of them from Spanish to English. The main reason was the assessment; some subjects require active participation during all classes and, as we want to continue achieving high grades, we thought that it'll be quite difficult in some cases. Thus, Marie went through the timetable again (comment of Dawe: THOUSAND THANKS FOR BEING SO F*CKING ORGANISED, MARIE!! You definitely are an life-saver!!!) and looked for the suitable subject combination, as we take classes from different years and there are some clashes. In Spain, they have two different kinds of classes: first, there are lectures, in which mostly the teacher is talking and explaining the theory, and, secondly, practice classes, in which the students are actively participating in discussions and doing exercises to apply the freshly learned theory.

Fortunately, we received the message that we can drop one subject (meaning more time to party, errrrr, being an Erasmus student), as we participate in the intensive language course. On Tuesday, we finally managed to go to the course, which is everyday from 5pm to 8pm!!! In the case of Dawe,
every day he has 3 hours of Spanish, adding two 25min-walks and approximately 60 to 90min of making homework; this adds up to 5-6h every day, which are spent on the course.... yeah, it's 'intensive'! However, first we were put in the highest class, but we soon realized that they talked about things we didn't want to learn about and that we wanted to switch classes. This happened due to the fact that we are both very confident in writing/reading but less competent in speaking. Additionally, most of the students had over 5 years of Spanish (compared to us that's two or three times that much). Hence, now we are in a class lower, but they focus more on speaking as well as vocabulary and it is more fun than in the other class. On Thursday we had our workshop for Economic History and World Economy, which we enjoyed a lot, after the class we also talked to some of the students, which showed us later the Photocopy office at the university, where you can get all the slides, information, papers printed that you need for school for a couple of cents. VERY VERY HANDY!! (*looking over to Stenden*... you need that, too ;))

On the weekend, Dawe's aunt is coming to Zaragoza and we will head to IKEA in order to get some things for our rooms. Finally, it won't be all white walls!

Tonight it is carnival party at the local club and all Erasmus students are invited; well, let's wait and see, which costumes we will come up with.....