Accion de Gracias (Thanksgiving)

This year, I was lucky enough to have semi-traditional Thanksgiving celebration. I was invited by an Italian guy (Paolo) fined to his house where they had brought a turkey for Thanksgiving in honor of their American roommate. I volunteered to prepare th macaroni and cheese and banana pudding. When I arrived there was a full turkey with stuffing, green beans, mashed potatoes salad and even sweet potatoes (or something like it). I was actually very good and especially considering most of the cooking was done by a guy who had never even seen a cooked turkey before and had no idea what stuffing was.

Mi Vida Sigue....(My Life Continues)

So since the last blog, I have continued my classes, gotten a bike, and started to feel more at home.

So as far as academics go the classes are not so challenging but for the fact that they are in Spanish. In the engineering classes obviously the language poses more of a problem because of the subject matter. But for the most part its coming along. Speaking of, learning a completely new language is not as easy as one would hope. I would like to think I have made some advances but as always its a very slow process.

I was very fortunate to get a surprisingly high quality bike by making a deal with my landlord. My landlord agreed to split the price of a bike with me, and I use it now and hen I leave he gets a bike to advertise along with his room for rent. In addition he took me to a store of a friend of his where I got a really good deal so I officially have a dependable mode of transport and I love it. I´m able to get just about anywhere (in fact I no longer use the metro system) and its also a constant source of exercise which is great.

Speaking of exercise for now I continue to work with the martial arts (Tae-kwon Do and Judo) 2 days a week each and so far so good. The crew team was supposed to start this week but we have had horrible rains.....

**The weather in the last couple of weeks has been pretty severe, it seems like its always raining and with a bike you can imagine how happy that makes me. But the are of Spain is not used to such high amounts of water already there have been many incidents of flooding, not to mention in many buildings roof leaks can be found**

So I am still waiting on that, however unfortunately I do not think that I will get the same benefit from this team. Th coach himself already told me that this schools team is nowhere near that of Georgia Tech (I was excited to hear that we are indeed internationally known!). But I figure practice is practice.

Unfortunately I do not have a whole lot to tell now...night-life is night-life, school is school and I have yet to do anything really exciting with my life . My next task therefore is to find an adventure worth taking and one that I can share here....Until then PLEASE let me know what is going on with you in your life. (Not everyone has a blog ;) ) and beleive me I am waiting to hear from you...Hasta Luego (Until Later)

Mi Vida Diaria (My Everyday Life).....hasta ahora (until now)

OK, so I have been in Valencia for almost two weeks at this point and I feel somewhat familiar with my surroundings. I do not have a whole lot to discuss since my last blog but to sum it up: I have changed roommates, I have started school and (more or less) selected my courses and have seen a little more of Valencia. (By the way for anyone who is interested I do have an address and it is available upon request)

The roommate thing: So Friday after he had gone to his university my roommate tells me that he's moving out. He said that the campus for his major was actually in Castellon ( a city about 2 hours north of Valencia) and that he had to leave immediately to find an apartment and such...fifteen minutes later he was gone...simple as that. So me and my remaining roommate, -Daniella : 27, German- were left with the task of finding another roommate. Well it turns out this was a relatively easy task. We decided to post an ad on Loquo (Spain's version of Craigslist) and within 2 hours we had enough interested people that we decided to remove the ad. Apparently. there are still a lot of people(mostly students) searching for housing. In total we had 7 people come look at the apartment on Saturday (they were all interested...it is a very nice apartment) but at the end we chose a 21 year old guy from France. Mostly because he cannot speak much English (so we have to speak in Spanish) , he close to my age and he seemed nice. So the next day (Sunday) he moved in and that was settled.

As for the classes well because I was not one hundred percent sure of what I was taking and for that reason it has been a little hectic. As of right now I am taking 2 engineering courses, philosophy, Spanish and a class called International Co-operation. It totals up to 22.5 UPV (Universidad Politecnica de Valencia) hours and only 12.8 Georgia Tech hours :( (yeah I get the short end of that stick). Though I really cannot complain because besides the fact that its in Spanish...its a relatively light load. [I realize those of you who are currently at Georgia Tech will laugh and mock me on how light a load it is and how much you are suffering because of your 3 lab courses ....and honestly I cannot argue with you]. But like I said I have just recently come to this conclusion that I am taking these classes and because I had one of the engineering classes confused with another, I have already missed 3 classes and am therefore quite behind already but hope that somehow I will be able to catch up. More to come on how this is going to work out. So far I have only actually been to one class and I could understand pretty clearly (though it was still boring--which is universal).

Some of you may be wondering: Hey what about your social life...Well....I still have not explored the city as much as I should have....I am just now beginning to meet some new people. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll meet more. Like I mentioned before I know a large German crowd but the problem is when they get together they mostly speak German and/or English all the time. At this point I only attempt to speak in Spanish. The only time I may use English is to try to explain the meaning of a word otherwise I carry my handy dictionary everywhere and try to struggle through conversation. My new roommate and I are about at the same level so its really good practice. I've also began to read books and newspapers and of course TV and movies are all in Spanish. Not to say that I don't do anything I still hang out with my German friends and my roommates sometimes and if nothing else I like to just walk around the city and attempt to explore by myself.

Another thing, I do not know if any of you are aware like I am but the dollar seems to drop in value almost everyday!! The euro is killing me...I think i may need o open a bank account here just to keep my sanity. I feel like I have stocks that are continuously going down!


Sports activities start next week and I am going to try to join he row team (though it only meets on the weekends so it is not nearly enough physical activity). So to supplement for right now I am taking up Judo and Tae Kwon Do as well which are offered through the school (but that is still only once a week each). Hopefully I can just find someway to row more often. One source of constant exercise is walking, I have to walk eveywhere....there is a metro but it stops running at 11 (so if you happen to be at a club then you have to walk or find a taxi). It is a 20 minute walk to school and yes I could ride the metro to school but I choose to save the money, besides its not that far...and every bit saved counts.

So like I said not a whole lot to report...I have a friend Jessica Carter who is currently in France and is planning a trip to Barcelona (so hopefully I can meet up with her)... My mom is trying to come for Thanksgiving so I need to look for a ticket for her (as well as a place for her to stay)...Learning a language is more difficult than one would hope but its slooowly progressing....
The next thing is I gotta do is buy a bike. With a method of transportation...who knows what adventures can unfold....

Tengo un apartamento (I have an apartment)

I am very proud to say that after hours of blood sweat and tears, a lot of headaches, and spending more money than I care to remember I finally have an APARTMENT!

Starting the day after my last entry on Tuesday I have been to Valencia (an hour trip one-way by train) 6...yes 6 .....days in a row. Everyday was another headache, miles of walking, spending money on the train to get to Valencia, and the local metro as well (thats where most of the money went) I searched with my roomate Martin from Germany.......

**As I said last time there are many Germans here...so as you can imagine I tend to hear a lot of German and English. I try to pretty much only talk in Spanish (I don't remember enough German anyway). There are also just a lot of foreigners in general....because of this program called Erasmus in Europe that allows students from different countries to go to other countries in the program. I think each country has a different stipend amount that is afforded to their students and each student is allowed to do it once in their college career. I have met people from Italy, France, Switzerland, Holland, Austria, and a few others I cant remember. I am not sure if Australia is part f this group or not, bu there are a handful of them as well.***

....and it seemed like we were the only ones worried about it. Now we both have apartments and everyone else is scrambling to find a place. I really like the apartment I found, it is located in an area called Palmaret. My roomates are Daniella (German, 26 years old, beginner level of Spanish) and Juan (Spanish, 18). They both seem very nice, now I bridge the gap between them because Juan speaks very little English.

The location is about 10 minutes from the university and about 15 min from "El Centro" (The center of the city) I live right next to the Metro (the bus and rail system), so it is easy travel. The neighborhood is quiet and there are not too many people .And I pay less than 300 a month, so not too bad.

And my language course....its going alright. Not to say that I haven't learned anything but if I could do it ll over (to me) it was not worth the cost. I have met some cool people and it is good that I was here early but I feel that if I had bought a book on Spanish grammar (my Achilles heel---English grammar too) and just arrived early and stayed at a hotel I would have been just as well. We take a final exam tomorrow to pass or fail but the exam for me is only a personal thing. I am in a level too low to apply to my degree(because of my great grammar skills) and since I pay for it myself my HOPE is unaffected.

Now that I have an apartment I can focus on other things. For instance, I have recently come to the conclusion that I am out of shape...so now it is time to find somewhere where I can row and a gym to go to to start exercising again. I have been able to go to the beach and it is really a very beautiful sight and all those surfers out there would love it because it has very nice waves (true I have been to the beach very few times and don't know a lot about waves but they seem nice).

I am going to admit I have no taken very many pictures at all so far...between searching for a room and class, I just have simply forgotten most times. I will try to remember in the future but now I still do not have much to show. Also I do not have internet in my room , I have to use the wireless at my university so oftentimes I forget my camera in my room. And since I do not want to walk the two blocks from my room to the school (I told you I was out of shape) I still have no pictures posted. So if none are posted very soon feel free to leave me a reminder.

The next important task: register at the school and, oh yeah ,I might want to find out what classes I am taking....(stay tuned)

La Llegada (The arrival)

Hola a Todos,

So my journey here to Spain was a long one: The short of it is I travelled for approximately 21 hours (origin to destination) and have just started my Spanish classes. The details are below. WARNING it may be a little long winded and ramblng.



The airport wait was the shortst I had ever experienced I went from the ticket counter to the gat in about 30 minutes, so I had plenty of time before the flight The first flight was to London and it went smoothly (though I had to reduce my bags because London is very strict about 1 carry-on) I found out jut how strict in the airport when I had to reorganoze again just to fit their standards of bag size. But I continued into Madrid and this is where the actual adventure began. I arrived in Madrid at about 12:30 in the afternoon and did not get my bags until apporximately 2 pm because the baggage claim was very slow.



I should mention here that I really did not have any concrete plans on how I would get from Madrid to Valencia (about a 4 hour trip by train). I knew there was a train but no idea how to get there. So I carry my luggage onto the train....



**Interesting sidenote - to all of you who convinced me to carry 2 bags instead of 1 I am very angry with you....Carrying these bags all over Madrid (There are stairs everywhere!!!) was very painful.**



...and go towards the train station, which was of course sold out. SO I went to the bust station and bought a ticket to Gandia (destination). It is now 4:00 pm and the trip by bus is 5+ hours long. After an hour we sotp at a gas stop and I have my first Spanish meal..an empananda and a bottle of water. The bus continued and I finally arrived at the destination at abiout 10:30pm At this point I went about finding a taxi and arrived at my apartment at 11pm. Luckily the mangager happened to be there and he let me into the building so I was able to get into my room. I met my roomates (2 German and one Fin) and sat around and talked for a while before goiong to bed.



The next morning I saw that 90% of the people here in this program are from Germany. I met one American from Oklahoma, a couple guys from Australia, and the rest Germans. We beagan our classes and the go for about 4 hours a day for two weeks.

Now I have to go about finding an apartment in Valencia, I start tomorrow. The adventure continues.....