Applying to Turkey

I have arranged my second exchange year to Turkey by myself because I am not allowed to get Erasmus scholarship for the second time. To get the place I sent email to the coordinator of Gazi university. she replied very fast and wished me welcome. There was no problem as University Finland and Gazi university are part of the Campus Europae network. Next I had to fill an application form.

After receiving the confirmation letter I have presented the letter to the coordinators in my university. Then I have applied to freemover scholarship which required various attachments. To be a student in Turkey you need a visa. To get the visa I have to go to Turkeys consulate in Helsinki, present the acceptance letter, my passport and pay 60 euros. Handling the visa application will take two months.

Paper work for internship

Participating to the exchange programs means always some paperwork. Here I will explain what kind of paper work I have been doing so far before going to Madrid.

The internship offer in Madrid I found from the folder of internship offers in my university. First I sent my Curriculum Vitae with cover letter by email to the company. After for a while they emailed me back and said that I am welcome to do a internship in this company. Then I had to prove to my university that I have a placement in Madrid by showing document with signatures. Later my university granted me a scholarship and I had to fill scholarship agreement, information document, training agreement and copy of insurance or European health card.

Not that much paper work but waiting for the replies and documents to be accepted takes time. I sent my curriculum in December and the paperwork will be finished tomorrow which means that it took five months. In the next post I will explain about the paper work what have to be done to go to Turkey for exchange.

Back to Spain

I have booked now my flight to Spain. I am going to land to Spain on the 22nd of June. I will go one week earlier before my internship starts because I want to find a flat to stay for three months. I have found a good webpage to look for flats in Spain.

Spanish names

In Spain the names for women end mostly to letter "a" and names for men end to letter "o". There are of course names which are not following this rule. For me it is quite strange that someone can have name like Jesus the name of the son of the god. Or Àngel and the female version of it is Àngela. These names can be translated but are not used as names in Finland.

On the other hand Finnish names Nino and Nina must be strange for Spanish because Spanish words niño and niña means boy and girl. Or Finnish name Mira which means in Spanish look.

Catalans

There are many Catalan exchange students among the Spanish exchange students. Most of the Catalans spoke Spanish well already before coming to Joensuu, but there are some who have not been speaking much Spanish. It was very curious to hear that some Catalans have improved more their Spanish than English during their exchange year.

Confirmation letter

Yesterday I received a confirmation letter. I got accepted as an exchange student to the university of Gazi in Turkey. I am going to spend there one academic year. I am going to Turkey in the beginning of October and then the focus of this blog Will naturally change from Spain to Turkey.

Learning Turkish

I have started to learn Turkish. We are a group of six persons who are getting classes from a Turkish guy. He has been a very good teacher teacher even he is not going to be a teacher. I know now some grammar and how the language works. Now I have to start learning more vocabulary to be able to use the language more. Turkish language does not seem too hard to learn. One notable difference to the languages which I speak already is that the verb in Turkish comes to the end of the phrase. Words are also quite different compared to other languages what I know.

Birthday parties

This academic year I have had a chance to attend many birthday parties. Especially last month there was many birthday parties in total seven. In total there has been fifteen birthday parties in this academic year. Spanish way to wish good luck for the birthday person is to pull his/her ear as many times as the age of the birthday person.