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.