The
semester here in Vigo started two weeks ago but I somehow managed to avoid
school till now due to sicknesses and the day of the patron of the university
which happened to be on the same day that I would have had my only classes
during last week. Instead of attending school, I’ve been getting familiar with
the local hospital and other medical services. Hopefully falling down and hitting
my head is enough to fulfill my eagerness to familiarize with the hospitals in
Spanish speaking countries. Thanks to my roomies, I now have a pretty nice
helmet to prevent more severe damage and keep me away from the hospital. :) I've already tested that it also works in the night life!
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| This is not the hospital. It's the view from my balcony instead. |
Finally
this week I’ve started my classes and the first very rough school week is over.
Yep, it’s only Thursday. Even though I only had – and hopefully will have
throughout the semester – only three days of school per week, this week has
been rather exhausting. The start of school hasn’t been made too easy here
because it’s almost impossible to get any sort of information about anything
and the answers you get are mainly ‘go and see from the web’. Well, that would
work if I knew what to look for but being unaware of, for example, courses
consisting of both lectures and practices it was a bit difficult to guess that
the lectures that are marked on my schedule are not the only things that I need
to attend. Therefore, this week has been a mess with the classes me trying to
rearrange my schedule. And there are still some changes to come… It describes
well the system here that I got to know about my orientation event three days
after it was held.
Nonetheless,
the university is rather nice being on the mountains in a rural area. It’s
definitely something different from what I’m used to. Apparently even horses can be
seen on the school yard sometimes! Even the one hour bus ride to the university
doesn’t bother me because you can enjoy the views and at least be inside away
from the never-ending rain. What is more, the teachers I have are really nice
and I can understand their Spanish (win!). I even got told by my Spanish
teacher that I should change from my original Spanish group to the next level
so maybe I’ve learned something during the time I’ve been here. Probably, this
is also to say that I’ve become social again because I can at least try to
mumble something somewhat understandable during most of the conversations, yei! Furthermore, I've also found people who speak English so maybe I won't lose totally my knowledge of it either. However, the most important thing to my survival here, I’m starting to get used to the taste of Spanish milk.
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| My faculty when it's not raining |
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| The same place when it's raining awfully lot. Where did the mountain go? |
This week
in Galicia, which is the autonomous region where Vigo is located, we have had
the worst rain in 30 years and the weather has been horrible. Due to that, I
unfortunately don’t have too many pictures to add here. Desperate people trying
to use their umbrellas have realized that they don’t really protect you because
it is raining horizontally and I guess that 90 percent of them have just been
broken by the wind based on the garbage bins on the street being full of
umbrellas. I don’t think I have a single piece of clothing that is not wet. However,
I’m not gonna complain about that because I finally got my gym membership and
yesterday during and after my cycling class I felt warm probably the first time since
arriving to Spain. So next time when it’s too cold for me, instead of
complaining I know where to head!
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| The commercial area of the university looks quite inviting, right? |
