November: work and play

As promised I will talk about my life in Alicante. But first I will talk about some of the things I had to do for school. I had my first exam for Fundamentals. This was very hard because it was in Spanish and my Spanish is still not that great. We also had to do a couple of presentations for the English for tourism courses. This wasn't hard because my level of English was better then the Spanish students, but still took some work because they all had extensive knowledge about tourism and I didn't. I am still satisfied with my results though. So, Alicante. First of all it is a great city! The centre is very small, which means you can practically walk everything. There are also a lot of nice beaches. Apart from a few trips to nearby villages our live consisted mostly of hanging out with the other Erasmus students. Going out for dinner a lot, because that is very cheap here. And we often went to the beach. In November this got less and less, but it was still possible sometimes. The weather here is so great. This makes everything more fun. You can lay in the grass on campus if you have hours in between classes and enjoy the sun. The nightlife is also great here. There are so many Erasmus students here, which means you will see so many familiar faces when you go out. There are a lot of Erasmus activities for you to choose from. Weekend trips, day trips, parties, you name it. These things are a lot of fun. The only downside from this was that you mostly hang out with Erasmus students. And therefor only speak English. Yes, of course you will use your Spanish in shops and restaurants, but this doesn't help you enough. It did not work for me at all. I had hoped to be able to speak Spanish already, not completely, but at least be able to have a conversation without to many struggles. This was really not the case. My Spanish course was to easy, and the economic course I took in Spanish too hard. This was a big disappointment and will make my exam much more difficult. If I can successfully complete it at all. So, a tip from me would be, make sure you make Spanish friends, even though it is very hard. Erasmus is safe and so much fun, but it will result in you not being able to speak Spanish in the end. Some other things about life in Spain: there is a lot of chloride in the water, which makes it disgusting to drink and it's really not healthy. So we buy bottled water to drink instead of from the tap. Furthermore, as I have said before, going out for dinner is very cheap compared to back home. You can have a great meal and some wine for under 15 euro's easy. Also alcohol is much cheaper here. You can get a decent bottle of wine for about 2 euros. Shopping is cheaper as well then back home. Very nice ofcourse, because you can do so much more fun things than back home. We usually do our groceries at the Aldi, but also other supermarkets are not too expensive. Transportation is also not so expansive. Taxi's are more affordable then back home. The tram costs about 80 cents per ride. But you'll have to get a transportation card for that, which will cost 2 euros. Otherwise you can buy your tram ticket in the tram or one of the machines at the station. This will cost 1.45 euros a ride. One other important thing I can think of right now is that the supermarkets are all closed on sunday. So pay attention to get your groceries before. That's all I can come up with for now!