October: School is getting serious

So I have been in Alicante for about 2 months now. I picked out my courses and really started studying. We also finally started with the Spanish course. This is something I still don't get. Why start so late? We already needed it at the beginning. Especially because we had to choose one course in Spanish. I attended the lessons, but the teacher spoke so quick, I couldn't understand a thing. So my recommendation is, if they want us to follow courses in Spanish, it would be better to start the language course strait away. The Spanish course turned out to be very fun. With more Erasmus students that I didn't know yet. I'll get into the Erasmus stuff later. First I will talk some more about my courses. I took to tourism courses. They where called English for tourism 1 and 3. It seemed nice to learn something about tourism and my guess was that there would be a lot of Spanish students in this course. This turned out to be the case. The level of English however was very disappointing. Sometimes I forget how good our English actually is in Holland. These students really struggled with their English. And I even had to correct one of my teachers sometimes. This shocked me, because even though my English is higher then the Dutch standards, I thought teachers had to be natives or at least flawless. That I was almost better in English then my teacher was very strange. I enjoyed the courses though, because I had to work together with Spanish students and it offered me more insight in their culture. The other courses I picked where labor economics and fundamentals of business economics. The last one I took in Spanish, since this is mandatory at our uni. Big mistake because it turned out to be quite a difficult class, let alone when you are following it in Spanish. So one recommendation, if you worry about getting your ECT's, don't choose this one. Or at the very least not in Spanish. Labor Economics was nice. The teacher was not a very likable person, but the subject was nice, just a bit boring the way he brought it. I like economics however so I am still happy to learn something new about it. One last thing: you get to create your own schedule, if the courses allow it, so you can adjust it to your preferences. I picked a few early mornings, so I could go to the beach afterwards and a few afternoons, so I could sleep in a bit after going out the night before. This way I got to combine lots of fun with still being able to attend all my classes. Thursday nights are the best nights to go out for Erasmus students, so I would recommend a late start on Friday. Next month I will write more about our live here and the city and what fun things you can do around here.