Firstly and most importantly, I found an apartment. It's in the Sant Gervasi neighbourhood, just three train stops from Plaza Catalunya, which is pretty sweet and means that I can leave the house fifteen minutes before a class starts and still be there on time! It's a three-bedroom apartment, and I share it with an American girl (who owns the apartment) and a Russian girl. Both are lovely, which is great. There are also some furry flatmates in the form of Milo the black pug, Softie the big ginger and white cat, and Riff Raff the little kitten who looks like a squirrel! It's a fun place to be, and a really pleasant place to come home to.
Secondly, I started college in the University of Barcelona on Monday morning. Because I'm an Erasmus student, I don't have to register my subjects until October, and because of that, I went to as many classes as I could in order to decide which would suit me best. After taking some cool things and some absolutely awful things, I settled on Contemporary Spanish Theatre, Political Theory and Comparative Political Systems. It's pretty hard to follow everything the lecturer talks about, but I'm sure it'll get easier as time goes on. The lecturers are also all really, really nice, so that makes it easier already. The other Erasmus students in the classes are also all really sound, and it's very easy to get talking to people because all international students want to speak Spanish and make friends, because of the basic fact that having friends is lovely, so that's cool.
Thirdly, I went out for the first time in Barcelona. Myself and two of my UCC friends went to a bar called Vallhalla, between Plaza Universidad and Plaza Catalunya, because we were invited to an Erasmus event on Facebook. So we naturally assumed it'd be a nice enough bar, where someone would be sitting with a European flag or at least some sort of a sign with ERASMUS on it.. But no.. Our first thought was that it was like the Bróg in Cork, but about a hundred times more scummy. The tables were sticky, the music was loud, the lights were low, and people had evidently spent many a good night in there picking the foam out of the seats. And not an Erasmus organiser-type in sight. After meeting two other confused-looking students, girls from Poland, we decided to stay for the laugh, and get some sangría, and have the chat.. So that we did. Now nobody can disagree that €2.50 is a good price for 700ml of sangría, but perhaps not when you take into consideration that it was served in a beer glass with a handle, and poured out of an unmarked plastic bottle that clearly used to hold Coke, and also tastes mank. All in good fun though, and the Polish girls' German friends soon arrived so that added even more to our number, so it turned out to be a pretty fun night after all!
Other than those key events, I've mostly been getting to grips with my neighbourhood, the metro, the city, cooking for myself, cleaning for myself, etc etc etc. It's going well. I like it, and I'm happy, and I'm hoping it'll just get better from here :)
No comments:
Post a Comment