Multimedia seminar

Cháteau de Munsbach

On Friday and Saturday we worked on the multimedia project in the Cháteau de munsbach where is the office of Campus Europea. We got to know Solar Net International who have created big online community by posting videos with subtitles in the spoken language and in English to learn and to get to know foreign languages and cultures. They have five thousand subscribers so they have made really well. There is definetely possiblities to productise their idea and make living with it. With they help we learned how to make videos to help language learning and also practised it.

Luxembourg

View to the valley

Posing

Yesterday I travelled with Kiki from Serbia to Luxembourg. We had some dificulties during the travel. First plane was late and because of that we missed the bus we were supposed to take. When we arrived to Luxemburg we had to find the hostel. Finally we found the hostel but it was fully booked. After asking rooms from few hotels we found one where was still rooms available. Today we have been walking around the city to see sightseeing. View to the valley was impressive. The city looked nice and you get the image that the level of living is high.

Looking for a summer job

Now I have started to look for summer job. I have applied job in Sweden through Nordjobbare program and in Chile through organization called Cimo. In Davids opinion I could have good changes to get some work from international employers in Spain because of my high level of English compared to Spanish people. It would be very interesting to work abroad and I am ready to go work almost anywhere. Hopefully I can find work which is related to my business studies but also other kind of work can be useful.

After living one week alone I got a flatmate. My flatmate is Italian girl from Rome. Tomorrow I am flying to Luxembourg to participate multimedia seminar of my exchange program. All the travelling costs and so on are covered by the organizer. I am happy for being able to participate the seminar and being able to help in developing the exchange program.

Sunday

Plaza Cervantes in the Sunday evening

Sunday is the most popular day to go eat dinner to the restaurant in Spain and restaurants put more expensive prices. Dinner is eaten around ten o'clock. Road to the cars around the marketplace is closed every Sunday to give people more space for walking. My tradition on the weekends have been watching match of Real Madrid in a local bar with friends.

Yesterday we had a match against Leganes and we lost the match 3-0. Now half of the matches are played. Statistics of our team are four wins, one tie and three loses. We are aiming to the playoffs where the four best teams will survive.

Kitchen

My kitchen

It is quite common that washing machine is in the kitchen in Spanish houses. I have not ever seen a Finnish flat where washing machine is in the kitchen. In Spain it is not very common to eat bread with margarine. I bought a package of margarine in the first week when I arrived to Spain but I newer opened the package even I have eaten bread daily. In this new flat I have toaster so I will probably start to eat margarine again with toasted bread. Now I have also microwave.

New flat

Room upstairs

Living room

Yesterday I moved to a new flat in the center of Alcalá. This flat is newer and more modern than the previous one. Strange feeling to be here because it does not feel like home yet but I expect to settle down soon. Because my flatmate found me a replacement to the previous flat it was possible to move in the middle of the month. Rent of the new flat is 300 euros + electricity and water. New landlord wants the rent to be paid with cash like the previous one. I do not have at the moment flatmates but there is one room available for someone.

Bars

I heard a story that Spanish had commented to some Italian that: "I feel so sorry for you because you are an Italian". "Why?" asked Italian. "Because in Italy you cannot smoke inside the bar, it must be horrible." Answered Spanish. It is very common that people smoke also at home. In Spain it is allowed to smoke inside the bars and there is not different section for smokers. This means that you have to smoke passively and your clothes will smell smoke afterwards. Entering discos in Alcalá is free but if you go to Madrid you have to pay 15 euros to enter discos.

Exams coming up

I have done four works and three of them had to be presented. Two of the works were group works of about eight persons and two individual. Subjects of my works were: Business plan, Recruiting process of a company, labor unions and is it possible that the monetary union of Euro will break down. Tomorrow I am having my first exam and the subject is environmental economy. This week we had last week of the lessons and next week is starting officially the exam period. In total I am going to have four exams.

A lot of Snow

Police prohibited access to Plaza Cervantes because it is very slippery

Garden of the faculty of Economics

Yesterday evening began to snow a lot and it snowed many hours. I even saw a plow yesterday evening cleaning streets from the snow. There is still nice layer of snow everywhere because night was cold. This is an emergency situation in Spain and there have been special actions taken: Classes of the university have been cancelled, access to motorways have been put free to make traffic go faster and special forces are working which have been used only once before. Winter tires are not used in Spain and traffic is in chaos right now.

Supermarket

Bags inside supermarket

In Spain you can see people carrying their grocery shopping with bags like in the picture. Here the bread section is smaller than in supermarkets of Finland. Milk is not kept in cold because they do not sell fresh milk and it is not in the farthest corner of grocery store. Some supermarkets have ads on the other side of reset. Free plastic bags are given but not in all grocery stores like before.

Yesterday we played floorball match against Fuengirola. My legs felt much heavier in the match than before the Christmas break. I managed to break the curse of three points or nothing by assisting the goal which tied the game to 3-3 in the last minute. We had many penalties more than our opponent but we were able to make penalty killing goal when we were playing three against five.

Expressing feelings

Spanish people express feelings much stronger than I do. They can be very thrilled or very disappointed. If there would scale from one to five to express yourself, where one means very bad and five very good. Spanish people would use options one or five to express themselves. I would express my feelings with two, three or four. For example some Spanish would say about a tasty food that: "I love the taste of this food"and I would say: "yeah, it tastes good". Generally Spanish are very positive and optimistic.

Day of magis

Migas

Today is the day of magis in Spain.Three Magis bring presents for eveyone like Santa Claus in other countries. Families go visit eachother to bring presents and to eat together. Jesus invited me to eat with his family in his uncles house. There we ate food called migas and everyone ate straight from the skillet with spoon or fork. I brought buns for dessert. Magis gave also me a present which was flag of Spain. It is great to see Spanish costums and traditions.

How many readers do I have?

Now I have returned back to Alcalá. Mom said that she have spread the url of my blog for many relatives and I was a bit surprised that how many actually knows about my blog. I cannot be sure how many is actually reading my blog because only some of the readers are posting comments. I am always really happy to get comments therefore I want to say thanks for posting comments and I hope that you keep on writing comments. Mom also said that because of the blog she knows now more about my life than she knew about it when I was living in Joensuu. The more readers I have the more responsible I feel updating regularly.