My first month!

In the beginning of September I arrived in Alicante. In this blog I will write about all kinds of topics concerning my exchange. To start at the beginning I will discuss how I found my accommodation in Alicante. I made the decision to go to Alicante with a friend of mine. This made it more difficult because we wanted to get rooms in the same house. I have searched the internet for hours, but it's not that easy to find two studentrooms in the same place. That's why I started looking at apartments. And as it turned out, I found an apartment that was actually cheaper than just a room. So I am living with my friend, in a 2 bedroom apartment. This is so much better than just a room, because I prefer sharing the kitchen, living room and bathroom with just him. We couldn't have found a better place. It's right on the beach in an apartment complex that even has a swimming pool. We are not exactly in the center, however we do have a tramstop in front of our house. It's only 7 minutes to the city center. Unfortunately it takes a lot longer to get to the uni, because we have to switch trams. This practically costs us an hour. But because our rent wasn't very high, we decided to buy a scooter, that we could sell again once we left. This was a great decision because we have the most beautiful location and we can still get to the uni in 20 minutes, which is also the travel time by tram from the city center to the uni. I arrived a few days before the orientation day at the uni. Because we came with 4 people from the hanze university I already knew a few people, so we could start doing fun things right away. It was very fun to explore the city and surrounding places with them. The weather was amazing and it literally felt like a holiday. Those first days are the best. Getting to know the city and other Erasmus students. Then it was time for orientation on the 6th of September. We were so exited. The campus was really nice. This first day we got all the necessary documents and a tour of the grounds and facilities. You will meet so many new people during this tour, so even if you come by yourself you will make friends easily. That day I got to meet a lot off people that became really good friends of mine in the following days. Before we came to Alicante we already picked out some of the courses. From the 12th on we would go to class and figure out if we really wanted to take these classes. Changes could still be made in the following weeks. I made some, and my choices where finalized at the end of September. This did mean that I missed a couple of lessons of some of the courses I picked in the first month, but that wasn't a problem. In all honesty I found it really strange that we only really started that late. It did give us a lot of free time though. The first month was incredibly fun. And in my opinion Alicante is a great place to study. I will discuss the city later though. To finish this first blog entry I will say this: the uni did help us really well with all the necessary information and actions we had to perform.