Are we enrolled yet?

This week has been a big week of confusion and disorganisation in terms of university. We had 2 presentations this week which explained about being an international student here at UGR. It’s left a lot of us a bit stressed but hey, it’s what we expected anyway. Despite choosing modules and applying to the university twice already, that is basically scrapped as soon as you get it and you have to do it all again – pointless, I know. This means we have had to pick our modules again which is a stressful process taking about 5 hours as it also includes making up our own timetable making sure we have no clashes. Perhaps this normal for the rest of Europe and we’re just used to getting it all done for us at university in England. Despite all this we aren't officially enrolled to any classes until October. You are basically supposed to turn up to any subjects you are interested in. It sounds a lot less stressful and confusing than it really is! Anyway this is how my modules are looking:

Semester 1

Español norma y uso

Catalán intermedio I

Portugués inicial I

Introducción a sociología

Lengua y cultura de los países de habla inglesa

Semester 2

Catalán intermedio II

Portugués inicial II

Introducción a las variedades lingüísticas del español

Árabe Clásico (nivel 1)

Historia del cine

I’ll be doing 20 hours a week; each module has 4 hours a week which is practically double what we have in Kent. The good news is that everyone in the faculty has Fridays off - YES. Unfortunately there are few modules I feel super excited about studying because Translation and Humanities are different faculties meaning I can’t do any of the modules from Translation and Interpretation, instead I did the logical thing and chose to do beginners Arabic; god knows how that will turn out. I’m really hoping I can do well throughout the year - if I do it can count towards 20% of my degree which would take a lot of pressure off my final year. I really am not counting on it though. With my 8 hours of classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, starting at 8:30 AM and finishing at 9:30PM there is no hope for me. Wish me luck; it’s not going to be easy.

Last night I went to my first botellón with my flatmate and her friend. It’s basically drinking in a public area of a town/city and chatting to your mates. Words can’t even describe the botellón I went to. When we got near to the botellón we popped into a shop to get our alcohol. You basically choose what spirit and mixer you want (they have basically everything) and they put it all in a bag with some plastic cups and a big bag of ice, all for €10. So, off we went with our rum and fanta limon. I really was not expecting it to be that big; it was probably the population of Sleaford in a huge car park. There were just so many people everywhere, I wish I’d taken a photo but I don’t think it would’ve done it justice. You find your group of friends and dump your bag of alcohol in the middle and start drinking. It was pretty gross because there was so much melted ice and empty bottles everywhere so I got wet feet, I also dread to think what it looks like in the morning it must be an absolute state with so much rubbish. It was hard to keep up with conversations/even understand them not only because of the accent and generally speaking fast but also because it was so noisy. You could see people slowly leaving around half 3, but that wasn’t to go home it was to go to a club. We went to Mae West which was a really cool place. It took as a while to get in, about 3 different queues but we finally made it in about half 4! The club is a sort of Wild West theme. There was some famous DJ there that night, he was climbing all over the place and even got into some life sized bird cage...rather strange but everyone was loving him. The music was really good and it was just generally a cool place. At 6:45 I got into bed (very sleepy) and slept until about 2pm. How the Spanish do this regularly I do not know.

Here is a summary of life in Spain so far...

Things I’m loving

-jamón

-free tapas 

-friendly people

-the weather (for now)

-shutters

Things I’m finding hard

-lack of organisation at uni

-the milk situation (it should be refrigerated at all times)

-going out /eating so late

-lack of kettles

Apart from all the confusion and disorganisation, I’m enjoying life in Granada and looking forward to starting classes on Monday, getting into a routine and really getting back into Spanish (I hope). And, of course, my first set of visitors in 2 weeks - ma, pa, and nanny! 

Besos