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....