My Erasmus so far..

The first month of Erasmus is gone so here go my impressions of Spain so far... 

La Malvarosa beach, Valencia

When I first got here it felt like a holiday for the first few days.. hot weather, summer clothes and not to mention hot people! Stayed in a hotel for 3 nights before we moved in our apartment on Avenida Doctor Peset Aleixandre and let me tell you, finding an apartment that we liked proved to be much harder than we thought. The first 2 days we looked at some horrible ones we found on Idealista.com but then on the last day we visited this apartment and it looked amazing. We got it straight away because our experience until then wasn't so positive and we did not want to keep looking. From then on all hell broke loose. Shopping, trips to the police, internet provider, more police trips (for our NIE number, not anything else..yet), sorting out the bills, selecting modules for college and so on. Without exageration it was probably one of the hardest month of my life. 

While I was still in Ireland I was excited about leaving home and coming over to Valencia but one month in and I was ready to give up.. My flatmate was not doing very well either and I ever dare say she was much much worse. Skype'ing with family and friends was hard too ... Remember one night I was on Skype with my best friend for the first time and mid conversation I started crying so bad I could not breathe. I couldn't say exactly why I was crying but I was. All I wanted to do then was be home with the people I care about. 

I know it all sounds like I am an ungrateful b***h and trust me, I had days when I said the same thing. I was in a different country (a very nice country for that matter) and I was feeling miserable. Some people would give anything to go on Erasmus and here I was complaining and feeling sorry for myself. 

Our waiter gave us a free Spanish 

lesson

Then things started to change. College started, made new friends, started to know the city and the way their culture works (well, at least I was trying) and things got much better. I also learned that I wasn't the only one who felt like that, it was all part of the culture-shock of a new country. I even started reading some articles about culture shock and how it works and I was surprised by the things that I read; it seemed like the author was talking about me personally. It was relieving to hear that other people went through the same stages as I did. 
Now Valencia feels like home and to be honest, I don't even want to think of the moment when I will have to leave

everything behind: the good weather (pardon me, I meant AAAH-mazing weather), the friends I made, the beach, the tapas ... 


I guess the morale of my experience so far is that no matter how bad things seem at the beginning, they will always get better. All we need is a bit of faith and a bottle of positive attitude (maybe a bottle of something else too :D ) 

Ciudad de las artes y ciencias at night

Adios amigos