Morocco-Marrakech

Last weekend we decided to take a trip to morocco. A nice break from our hectic lives in Spain :) Marrakech in Morocco is only a one and a half hour flight from valencia airport and flights cost €60. you can get cheaper flights if you book in advance, we didn't book until a week before we went. We stayed in a really nice hostel called Riad Medina Azahara. It only cost €10 each a night and included breakfast. the rooms were clean and it had a really nice roof terrace for relaxing and the staff were really helpful and friendly. Here is a link to the hostel we stayed in.. http://www.riadmedinaazahara.com/

We arrived at around 8.30 in the evening. Marrakech is two hours behind Spain. We got picked up at the airport by the hostel. As we drove through the city the taxi man was very nice and showed us the main areas. We then met one of the hostel workers at the main square and he brought us the rest of the way to the hostel. We walked through the medina which is the main square and market area. The markets are called souks. The place was really lively and there was so much going on. There were people with monkeys and snake charmers and hundreds of stalls selling everything from clothes, shoes and souveniers to spices, henna tattoos and orange juice and also hundreds of food stalls. When I was walking through the square I really liked it. I loved looking around and seeing everything that was going on. There was a really good atmosphere and lots of tourists about. The area remindied me of Thailand a bit. We got to the hostel and we were really happy with it. We set out bags down and went back out to wander round the market.

The people in the markets were very aggressive at trying to get us to buy their stuff. We were so tired and just wanted to have a look around without being bothered but it's not possible here. Even people in the street who didn't have stalls annoyed to go to restuarants and played music asking for money. The women doing henna tattoos would also grab your hand and just start drawing on it without you wanting it. They said at the begining it was free but then they chase you for money. If they think your Brittish they shout out 'Asda price' and 'Primark price'. Some of them even shouted out sexual inuendos which made us very uncomfortable. But we know that the see tourists as an opportunity for money. We had to walk around constantly saying 'no thank you' to everyone that approached us. If you ignore them they don't be happy and shout abuse. I wanted to look around the different stalls but couldn't without gettign hassled. After a while we got tired of the hustle and bustle of the markets so we dicided to go for some food.

We found a really nice rooftop restuarant and I ordered chicken tagine. This is a traditional moroccon dish. It came out and all it was was a piece of chicken. It was delicious and really tasty but for €7 you would expect a bit more. After dinner is was pretty late so we just went back to the hostel to relax because we wanted to get up early the next day. We bought some drink in the airport because morocco is a muslim country and it is really hard to find alcohol. So we just had one drink back in the hostel and went to bed. Here is a picture of us out for out first meal in Marrakech..

The next day we got up at 9 and arranged to go on a camel ride. It cost 300 dirhums which is about €25 and it included transport, one hour on a camel and some mint tea afterwards. We wearn't going until 3 so we had another look around the markets in that morning before we went. This time we didn't feel like we got hassled as mush as the night before so it was nice being able to look around the stalls properly. You have to bargain with the people aswel and a lot of the time they won't agree but once you walk away they call you back and agree to your price. I bought a fridge magnet to take home as a souvenier and a pair of fake chanel sunglasses (which I love). I didn't really have much money to buy anything else. A lot of things were dearer then I expected! We then went to really chepa and nice place for food. I got a salad as a starter and then steak and chips all for only €2.50 and it was delicious and filling. Everywhere you go to eat also gives you loads of bread which is so nice but so bad. I'd say I put on a stone eating bread over the three days! After lunch it was nearly time for our camel ride so we relaxed on the roof terrace of the hostel until then.

At 3 we went out and met our tour guide, Abraham. He was really nice and friendly. One the way out to the camels he told us some stories and the history of morocco (I can't remember any of it now), it was very interesting to hear at the time. we stopped off at a small shop that sold the tradional head scarfs. We put them on and got pictures taken.

Then we went to the camel site. We were put on a camel each and the three camels were tied to each other and we had a man guiding them along. It was very scarey at first when the camel stood up. I didn't realise how tall they were. We were all safely on the camels and off we went. Two baby camels followed us the whole way around. They were so cute! It was so much fun being up on a camel but after a while it got a bit boring. We just kind of alked around in a giant circle lookin at the same tress the whole way and my legs got sore sitting on it aswel. I think maybe 20 minutes is enough for a camel ride when your not actually goin anywhere. Heres some pictures of us on the camels and the view we had for the whole hout walking around..

whent he very long hour camel ride was over we were brought back to the main area and brough up to another hostel and given some mint tea. Everywhere in morocco has mint tea. I would have preferred a beer. After our mint tea we just went bck to the hostel and got some food and relaxed. We were sharing a room with three brazillian lads so we got talking to them and ended up sitting drinkin in the hostel with them for the night. They were actually on erasmus in Madrid. We had so much craic with them and it was great meeting new people. We ended up having a really good night.

The next day we had to leave to we didn't have much time to do anything before we left. We walked round the markets (souks) for a while but I had no money left to buy anything and it was about 35 degrees so it was so hot so be walking around. We also had to have our shoulders and knees covered over there so we were walkin around fully clothed in 35 degree heat. We got some moroccan lunch of cous cous and a kebab and then went back to the hostel and relaxed on the roof terrace until it was time to go to the airport.

I had an amzing time in Marrakech and I didn't want to leave. I loved experiencing a different culture. The atmosphere was really enjoyable and the markets were bearable once we got into bargaining. I wish I could have stayed a few days longer to experience a bit more of morocco. I would have loved to visit a waterfall and stay overnight in the desert. Ah wel there's always next time. I definately hope to go back! Here are some more pictures just to finish off..
                                                                 The main square

Taxi man that took us to the airport

€7 chicken tagine

Hostel roof terrace

Camel shadow



Week 6 of classes

Lat week I got part of my project done. I did an essay on the genre of horror. I really enjoyed doin this essay beacuse i like horror films so I had fun looking up horror films from the past and learning about when horror began. The first horroe film was only two minutes long and was made in 1896 titled `Le Manoir Du Diable´. Earlier horror films were usually set in old mansions or castles and were about the supernatural. More modern day horror films are associated with collge students. Horror films play on people worst fears. the atmosphere in them is created by dark shadows, scarey music and heavy breathing. The next part of my project is to design a poster for a horror film. I think that this will be lots of fun.

In film comedy this week we watched a movie called `Duck Soup´ (1933) by the four Marx brothers. This film was surprising for its time and was a failure at first because people didn´t understand it. But now it is a huge classic and future directors were influenced by it. It changed the way film makers approached comedy. Actors could now express comedy through what they said and not just by their actions. This film also made fun of musicals. I enjoyed this film at the beginning and thought it was funny but after a while it became anoying and I couldn´t wait for it to be over. The main character acted more like a stand up comic which got a bit irritating after a while but his jokes were still funny. There were two characters in the film who were spies and they REALLY annoyed me. They were funny at the start but this wore off very soon and they became anoying. They acted like children at times and were very stupid. One of them didn´t talk and used props to communicate. He was like a character from a silent film. I was happy though that there was sound in the film as you can only watch so many silent films. Here is a link showing the two spies. You might find them funny or annoying. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-NqUsKFnRU

For history of design this week not very many of the class showed up. I think it was because it was lashing rain outside and people decided to stay in bed. We braved the rain though and made it in, event hough we got absolutely soaked on the way. Its not suposed to rain in Spain (so I thought). Anyway, because no one really showed up the lecturer jus talked to us about the fallas festival. She gave us a sheet of paper and we had to write down our experience of it and whether we enjoyed it or not. Then afterwards we all discussed our own experiences with it. I didn´t have a particulary good experience as you can see from my previous blog post but it was interesting to hear about what other people did and how they enjoyed it. That was it for the class really beacuse she didn´t want to go on with more work without most people missing.

Later that day our effective presentation class was also cancelled because no one showed up. I think there was about five of us there out of 20 so the lecturer also didn´t want to move on with work. Our second effective presentations class went ahead though on friday. We were split into groups of two and given a sheet with a small amount of information on it and we had to make a presentation out of it. I feel like I learned a lot from this. The lecturer took notes as we all presented.I was told afterwards that i didn´t make eye contact and was reading off the sheet the whole time. This was because we didn´t have much time to learn off the material but I did´n´t think it would be noticed that much so I know now that eye contact is very important and I need to work on that for the next time. The lecturer told us that we will do lots of exercises like thins to help us prepare for our final presentation at the end of the year. I think this is a great way of learning because he can point out to us what we do wrong so we don´t make that mistake when it matters. I was also way more nervous doing this then I thought I would be so hopefully practising in front of the class will stop me from being nervous on the day. 

At the start of the week we also did a no technology day for our social context of technology module at home. I really thought I´d die without my phone but as it turns out I´m still alive. I enjoyed this day as a ONCE off. It was interesting to see how I coped without my phone and internet. For the whole day I did feel like something was missing but I did enjoy spending the day actually talking with my friends instead of sitting in silence watching television. But I hope to never have to go another day without technology. No electricity is bad enough without taking other forms of technology off me.

Fallas Festival

This weekend was the Fallas festival in Valencia and the erasmus office organsied a day trip into Valencia for it. This is a festival that’s on every year from the 17^th til the 20^th of march. Thousands of people come from all over the world for it. Most of the streets are closed down and there´s people everywhere. Loads of food stalls are set up all over the city and there´s a great atmosphere around the place. Everyone can walk around drinking in the streets. The Fallas is a competition where people build massive statues representing something and they are displayed in different locations all over the city. On the Thursday the winner of fallas is announced and then on the Saturday all the ones who didn’t win are set on fire so you have these massive fires happening throughout the city. On the Thursday they also build the “Virgin”. This is a massive statue of a woman made from wood and flowers. There are constantly parades happening and each person in the parade brings the flowers to the virgin to she can be built.

Every morning of Fallas there is a marching band walking through the streets at 8 in the morning and fireworks been thrown to wake everybody up. There is a firework show at 2 o´clock everyday. You can´t see them because is it bright but they are there just to make noise. All day long for the whole weekend people are constantly throwing fireworks so it gets very loud. There is also a proper firework display at night. It was amazing to experience this and was a welcome change from Paddy´s day. But at about 10 o´clock on the Paddy´s we had to give in and go to an Irish bar. There was so many people there and we got talking to loads of Irish people so we really ended the night on a high. During Fallas the trains go back to Gandia all night so you can stay out in Valencia for as long as you like.

During the day on the 17th the trip the erasmus office arranged was a bit of a disaster. We got a bus in at half 11 (we wer told to be there pormptly at 11 or we would miss the bus) We ddint get into Valencia until around one o´clock because the traffic was so bad. We got off the bus and walked t the train station and hung around there for a while (for no reason). We were then told to go do what we like until 3 o´clock when we would meet back at the train station to go to and aquariam. We decided to go for something to eat and then to see the fireworks which were happening at two o´clock. after this we didn´t know what to do so we just walkd around looking at some of the fallas statues. when we met back at the train station it was half three before everyone got there. We were then brought to the see the winner of fallas and given five minutes to see it and take pictures. After this we met back at the train station whoch was around 4 o´clock. We then had to walk to the aqiuariam. We were told this takes 20 minutes. It actaully took an hour. I was wearing very uncomfortable boots for walking as we were not warned to be prepared for walking. We paid 11.20 ro go to the aquariam and we wer promised a dolphin show at half 4. We didn´t get there until five so we missed the show and the aquariam closes at 6 so we paid that money to look around for an hour. And by the time I got there I wasn´t even in the mood for it after all the walking, my feer were in soooo much pain.

So 6 o´clock came and we then had to walk back to the main square (also another hour away). I refused to do this and myself and four others decided to get a taxi. In the long run thia was a bad idea because we lost the rest of the group. But I physically couldn´t have walked. We were texting and ringing the organiser but he would´t give us a sraight answer as to where they where. We ended up jus going to see the virgin ourselves. We eventually bumped into them on the street and they were just hanging around doing nothing. I was in such bad form as this is what I had been doin all day. We wer also told we were goin to a medieval market which didn´t happen. Myslef and one of the other girls got so fed up we just left to go to the Irish bar, this was 10 o´clock at night after walking around doing nothing all day. The rest of the eramsus gang stayed and went to an erasmus concert which we heard was a big dissappointment. So we were glad we didn´t stay.

All in all the day was a disaster they were very unorganised. No one would tell us what we were doing and we were just told to follow. I was very excited about the day beforehand and it ended in a big dissappointment..thank god for the irish bar in the end!!

Some pictures of the Fallas statues and the burning of them..

Here´s a short video just to give you an idea of what it´s like to be there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF1HBNfiYCk

Week 4

Unfortunately this week I was sick for my film comedy class so didn´t make it in. So my first class of the week was history of design where we learned about the industrial revolution. The industrail revolution brough with it railroads, steam ships and steam machines. It affected the lives of workers, urban life and brought aboutsocial reform. I found this class very interesting. For the first time during the industrial revolution, women were now starting to work and children would also work instead of going to school. However both women and children got paid less then men and people would work 18 hours a day and therefore have no social lives. I couldn´t beleive this as I couldn´t imagine just spending your life working and have no social life. Nowadays people live for their social life whereas back then peope lived to work. Now people complain about working 8 hour days. During this time people also moved from farms to cities to be closer to work. George Stephenson (1781-1864) built the first locomotive. Before this there was only wooden trackways where horses pulled carts. I would imagine that it was something like this..

With these advanced trains and steam ships came the development of tickets, posters and publicity..

We also learned about steel and the skyscrapper. Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) produced steel. George A.Fuller, an architect (1851-1900), then built the Tacoma building (1889) in Chicago.

And in 1902 the first skyscrapper was built in New York, the Flatitron building.

In a few weeks time we have to get into groups with people from our country and do a presentation on a designer from Ireland. So we will have to spend some time over the next few weeks researching a good designer and preparing out presentaion. I think this will be very interesting as I don´t know any Irish designers so hopefully I will learn about a number of them during our research of picking the best one.

For out effective presentaions class this week we handed up our presentaion outlines so hopefully we will gwt some feed back on those next week. I have decided to do my presentaion on Thailand. I´ve travelled round Thailand for six weeks and think it´s an amazing country so I would like to use my presentation so inform people about the country and hopefully convince them to go there. I will also inform them of the cost of living, getting arounf things to do and places to stay. I will also include a small part on how to volunteer in the country. I think my presentaion will be very revelant to my audience who are a group of young erasmus students who like to travel. In class this week we learnd about body language and how it can distract your audience and take attention away from the message. The most important thing is to be yourself. If you are not yourself and try to be someone else who is funny or outgoing when your not your audience will know straight away and loose interest. You need to be enthusiastic about your subject, at some point try to make eye contact with everybody in your audience, (this is difficult for large audiences but my one will be small so I think it´s possible), and project your voice so the people down the back can hear you clearly. You also need to enunicate cleary. I think this is very important for me as I will be speaking to a group of people who´s native language isn´t english so they will find it hard to understand me if I mumble or run words together. I think this will need lots of practise :(

Week 3

This week in film comeday we watched a few more funny clips and learned a bit more about what makes something funny. We saw the clip "The Sprinkler Sprinkled" which I had seen before in film studies class in first year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HVj7kezK98 We see here that its funny because the butt of the joke makes the joke in the end when he chases him with the hose. There is a reversal of roles here. We also watched "Transformation of Hats, Comic View" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvY_cDdeV34 It´s suposed to show how disguise can be funny but I didn´t find this clip funny. We also watched some Charlie Chapman shorts. When I was younger I thought that Charlie Chapman was really funny but for some reason now that I am older I don´t find him funny. We watched "In the Park" and "The Champion". These types of comedy are all based on the body and most comic situations are attacks on the body. But here the violence doesn´t have any real consequences as blood kills any aspect of comedy. We also see how Charlie Chapmans character always pretends to be the perfect gentlemen but it turns out that he is quite the opposite. There are also alot of probs in these clips which add to the comic moments. I enjoyed watching these clips and learning about what makes them funny. Even if I didn´t find some of them particularly funny I understand that this was the begining of comedy. People watching these would never have seen anything like this before and they would ahve found it funny. I look forward to watching more clips in class tomorrow and hopefully in the next few weeks it will move on to more modern clips.


History of design was alot more interesting this week so I hope it keeps going in this direction. We learned about some influential designers such as William Morris (1834-1896), Architect Philip Webb, (who designed a house for William Morris that was medieval inspired) and Frederick W.Goudy who had a unique cartoon style. William Morris was the most important of these. He is best known as the leader of arts and crafts and was a British Avant Garde designer. He designed lots of books and designed his own trade mark that appeared on all of his books.

    William Morris Trademark

Other Willaim Morris designs include:

We also watched a short documentary about him and then at the end of class we had to pick one of his designs and try to draw it. I found this part difficult as I am terrible at drawing.

In effective presentations we went over the three key stages in preparing for a presentation. They are strategy, structure and style. Strategy involves tailoring your message to the specific audience. Once you know what you´re going to say you need to structure your material into a meaningful message. The audience need to know why they should be listening to you and once you have their attention you need to show them why they should care about what you are saying. the style of your presentaion involves your posture, tone, enthusiasm and ridiating confidence. We also talked about the outline of a presentation and what the opening of your presentaion should contain. This comes in the form of ABCD.

• Attention = capture your audience´s interest instantly
• Benefit = explain what they will gain from the talk
• Credibility = show them you have the authority to speak
• Direction = give them a route map of the presentation

For class this week we have to have researched a topic that we want to do our presentaion on that we will discuss in class and then have the main outline typed up for friday. I think I would like to do my presentation travelling as I have travelled to America, Canada, Thailand and now Spain. I would hope to inform the class of each of these countries resulting in them wanting to travel there.

This week myself Sinead and Emma also finished our project proposal that we will hand up tomorrow. We have decided to film a movie trailer for a horror film. We will all work together on this dividing out the roles between us and then at the end we will individually design our own posters as a way of advertising the film and then also each do a 1500 word essay on the genre of horror. I am really looking forward to starting on this project. We hand up our proposal tomorrow ad then out lecturer will let us know how many credits we will get for it.

Finally finding my way around!

I survived my first week of classes and I actually enjoyed my learning experience this week. I eventually figured out the days, times and places of all my class and made it to all of them! I had my first golden week. The week began with Spanish class which to say the least was awful. The level of the class is intermediate and I couldn´t understand a thing as I don´t even have basic Spanish. But I decided that i would give it a chance and try and learn from it so I went to my second Spanish class on thursday. After this I realised that I would not be able for this class as I spent the class with my head down praying the lecturer wouldnt ask me a question. I dont think I would have even known if she was talking to me beause I couldn´t understand a thing. The class is thought through Spanish and from my own learning experiences in the past I know that I can only learn a language if it is thought through english. So today i decided to drop the spanish class and learn the language through a tandem partner where I soeak english to them and they speak spanish to me. I also have been spending a lot of time on google translate :)

Tuesday was a better day. We had film comedy class which I really enjoyed and its the class I look forward to all week. (Our lecturer is really nice and he is going to help us work on a project in our spare time because we have limited options for classes we can attend in english.) He began the class by splitting us up into groups of people from different countries. He wanted us to understand jokes and what makes them funny. So we had to tell jokes to our group and then explain why they are funny as people from different countries have a different sense of humour. This was a really fun exercise. Once this was done he showed us cartoon clips of Tom and Gerry, Bugs Bunny and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? After each clip we dissused the factors that made it funny. These were things I never would have noticed before. Factors such as sound effects, explosions, cruelty, surprise and exaggeration. I tried posting a video here of one of the clips we watched but for some reason it won´t upload! (frustrating) So I´ll just have to post the link..
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvy_s-GfDxA

Wednesday was the first of our history of design class. I didn´t really enjoy this class. The lecturer was teaching about Ancient Greece, Rome, Persia and Egypt and telling us about how the pyramids were built. She was also teaching about the evolution of humans from monkeys. Maybe it´s just me but I don´t see the relevance of this. Because myself, Emma and Sinead are the only ones in her class from Audio Visual Communications she expected us to know everything because we have studied design before. It was very embarrising when she kept asking us questions that we didn´t know the answer to. I had to eventually just tell her that we don´t know this stuff as we have never studied it before. We would´nt be doing a class if we had studied all the stuff before. I hope that this class will improve and that she is just getting the boring stuff out of the way first.

The other class i really enjoyed was effective presentations. I think that I can really benefit. We have this class on a wednesday and friday. I think this will be helpful beacuse I am missing out on so many presentaions at home this semester so hopefully this will help me keep on top of my presenting skills and also help build my confidence for presenting the group project in third year. The lecturer has really good english so he is easy to understand and we are the only native english speakers in the class so I feel like we have an advantage. We were given notes on overcoming stage fright which were really helpful. At the end of the semester we have to do a presentation by ourselves on any topic we like so until then we´re going to work on the best way to approach it and outline it and how to keep your audience interested. He is also preparing us by getting us to read out things in class so we won´t be shy when presenting which i feel like is an effective approach!

I am really looking forward to see what this semester abroad will bring in terms of learning. I have to spend this week making up a project proposal for my film comedy lecturer so he can allocate credits to it and also work a bit more on my spanish by hopefully getting a tandem partner. I´m excited about getting stuck into the work! My film comedy class in the morning should be fun! :)

First Impressions! (Erasmus,Gandia,Spain)

I arrived to Gandia, Spain two weeks ago on erasmus and my first impressions are not the best. I loved the area and the weather when I first got here but five days into it our apartment got broken into.

We headed out on the wednesday night to an erasmus bar called Varadero. This place is very different to what I am used to at home. Most people here are also erasmus students but they speak very little English so it´s difficult to communicate with people making it harder to meet new friends. Especially in an environment with loud music when you can barely hear yourself talk never mind anyone else. Eventhough I am not a smoker I found myself in the smoking area for most of the night because that was the only place you could actually talk to people. It´s very different from going out with your frineds at home.

We arrived home to the apartment afterwards to discover it had been broken into while we were out. The kitchen and the sitting room were the same as we left them and the door had still been locked so we didn´t notice anything until we went down to the bedrooms. My clothes from my drawer were on my bed and my wardrobe doors and drawers were all open. I got such a shock. I looked under my bed then and noticed my laptop and iphone gone. Also my nintendo ds was gone from my drawer. My friend Sinead´s laptop was also gone and Emma´s rent money. We were really freaked out. We called the police but it took us a while to get through to anyone who could speak English. The police finally arrived and they didn´t do much for us. They looked round the apartment and took our passport details. Four of them came but only one could speak little English. We were then told to go down to the police station the next day to make a statement.

Before we could make a statement the next day we had to find a translator because none of them speak English. It´s very frustrating bein in a country where you don´t speak the language and very few people speak your language. I would have presumed that everyone in Spain could speak English.

Our first week in college was another disaster. We were expected to just go on the internet and find timetables and then find our classes. But this was impossible as all the timetables were in Spanish. We found that no one could help us with this. We met other erasmus students from Norway who were the same as us. We eventually figured out that we had to enroll online and that told you the time and day that the class was on but not where! We just had to arrive at the college in time for our class and hopefully meet people in the same class who knew where we were going. Because of this we only made it to a few classes in our first week. We missed some but we think we know where to go next week so hopefully next week will be better.

Today also, a week after the robbery, we got someone who could come to the police station with us and translate. My Spanish mentor came with us and without her we would be lost (even more lost then we already are). We finally got our statements done and made it through our first week of college. Tomorrow night there is an erasmus welcoming dinner and drinks party so I´m hoping that will be a good night. So now I´m going to put the past two weeks behind me and try not to dwell on it and look forward to whats to come. The erasmus union seems to have lots of fun things planned for us! Hopefully my next post will be a bit more cheerful after we´ve gotten over all this.

On the bright side the weather is lovely, clear blues skies, cold at times but better then the wind and rain at home. Our apartment is right in the middle of the beach and the college and there´s a beautiful view of the beach from our balcony. If I could make one recommendation to anyone after my first two weeks here it would be to not come to a country on erasmus if they don´t speak English and you don´t speak their language. It´s very frustrating and makes things a lot more difficult.