1 week down...

So my first week here has been pretty darn busy: it's really hard to think that this time last week I was stumbling down to a hostel with my life packed into a suitcase and a 10 kilo piece of hand luggage. Since then I have moved into a flat, broke a blind, embarrased myself in a French class and learned how to make a tortilla (amongst other things which I shall explain later!)

Anyway, here is the room which I shall reside in for the next few months:

The only thing that's missing is the desk and a rather fetching big bright green pillow I bought today. I found my flat about 2 days after getting here which was quite good seeing as the hostel was already starting to annoy me - sleeping in the same room as 19 other people definitely gives you an incentive to find somwhere fast, especially when the person above you snores!
The flat's a bit out of town, which means a little bit of a walk to get into Uni everyday but it's only about the same as living in Sheffield and quite a bit cheaper so I don't mind! The flat itself is lovely too, it has internet, a dishwasher and a Wii which I definitely wasn't expecting!

Moving onto something very exciting: I started training with the rugby team here on Tuesday which was AMAZING! It's obviously not like playing with the girls at home but it's so great to be able to play rugby while I'm here, even if I can't really understand much of what they're saying to me! I'm sure I'll learn eventually! The coach again isn't quite John Dudley, but he's a rather nice Argentinian man so I'm definitely not complaining :)


As far as classes are concerned I pretty much know what I'm doing, providing some clashes get ironed out (fingers crossed!) As I mentioned before I'm DEFINITELY not taking the French module as the class was far too advanced for my meagre knowledge of the language, so instead I am taking a module on 'Localisation' which is from what I can gather, about translating websites. It also transpired that it involved actually creating them as well, which was a bit tricky as I'd never touched html in my life, let alone in Spanish! Still, at least I was able to sit at the back and look confused rather than squirming at the thought of being asked for yet another conjugation that I didn't know by a scary French lady... I've had a bit more luck with the Italian module I'm taking, even though I seemed to find myself trying to think in 3 languages simultaneuously - thinking solely in Spanish/Italian is hard enough without that bloody lengua materna getting in the way! I can only describe it as like planking with your brain, but I guess that will get better with time (as does planking, so I'm told...) Russian I don't know about yet as I spent the hour that I was meant to be in the class looking for the room, but I'm pretty sure that no class can be as intimidating as one with Liudmila, or any of the teachers I will encounter in Volgograd, but who knows?

Before I finish this post I shall leave you with some pictures of the feast me and my housemates cooked last night which comprised of a tortilla with chorizo, a big pot of spaghetti and an Oreo tart. I definitely needed a lie down afterwards!

I'm here, and it's beautiful!

I'm finally in Salamanca! It is genuinely the most gorgeous city I've ever been to, and I can't quite believe I get to stay here for a whole semester. I'm going to put up some pictures, but first I shall tell you about the journey:

I feel that this picture pretty much sums up my mental state through the whole journey as I'd had no sleep the night before (excitement/nerves/curry, they're probably all responsible!) but it did mean that I spent quite a lot of the journey asleep, much to the amusement of the Spanish gent opposite me on the train. Overall I managed to get to the hostel without a hitch, but by the time I'd got myself some dinner at a mates flat delirium was well and truly setting in so it was definitely early to bed for a 10 hour kip!

Today I took a nice big stroll around the city, which as I said, is absolutely gorgeous:

 This is a picture of the languages building that I took last night, definitely beats Jessop West I feel!

And this is the big pretty church opposite :D

I did also notice that there's quite a lot of graffiti in Salamanca, some of it is the usual anarchist symbols/names or whatever but some is rather sweet and poignant!

Then there's the Plaza Mayor, the main square:

Then I look a walk in one of the big parks: Parque de las Jesuitas, which is HUGE, and has pretty fountains and an excersise circuit, there's definitely no excuse to get unfit while I'm here :)

Especially as I think I've found a rugby team here, and where they train! The most exciting part of my walk was finding this:

 The funniest part of my walk was finding this sign next to it:

"Pisar" actually means 'to step' i.e ''keep off the Rugby pitch'' but either way, they've definitely got thier priorities right!
The last part of my self-guided tour was the river, which has probably become my favourite part of the city already:

Tomorrow we've got an Erasmus meeting, which hopefully means by the end of tomorrow I'll know what I'm meant to be doing, and I've also got a big list of numbers of people (from telephone boxes!) with (hopefully) free rooms in flats that I can move into, so with any luck my next post will be full of exciting things like what I'm studying and what my flat looks like. It's more likely me posting about how streesed I am about trying to register and timetables and stuff and worrying that no one wants to live with me or something, but a girl can dream, right?

Now if you don't mind, I have some people to harrass about flats. Although harrass is perhaps not the right word to make sure they let me live there... :S

So I went a bit mad with the miniature toiletries...

  

 

6 days to go until I fly and I'm now trying to pack my whole life for the next few months into 23 kilograms... Definitely a daunting task, but it did mean that I got to raid Boots for all their mini toiletries, which I admittedly had a bit too much fun doing - who knew they sold miniature face scrub?! Although I do realise that getting caught up in the novelty of baby versions of Original Source is not only a bit sad, but buying loads of them kind of defeats the object of saving space in your suitcase, at least I'll hopefully have nice smooth skin and shiny hair for the first 2 weeks or so!

For now I'm looking forward to my first Monday morning lie-in for what seems like forever, and of course my cheeky trip back up to Sheffield for some Fresher's week fun that I'm likely not to remember much of (if a certain lovely bunch of ladies get thier way!:P) This will  possibly inevitably be followed by me being an emotional wreck as I try to say goodbye to people, so if you happen to encounter me from about 2am in ROAR until about 3pm the next afternoon (this is me being optimistic here) I can only apologise in advance!

On a lighter note, in less than a weeks time THIS will be my home!

Now I do love the Arts Tower, but that's kind of a step up, isn't it?

I don't know if you heard, but I'm kind of going abroad...

And I'm really quite excited...and nervous... and slightly sad at the same time because I'm leaving lots of lovely people!

I'm not going for a few weeks or so (24th September) so I can stay in Sheffield for a couple of days in Fresher's week so I'm getting the best of both worlds really, plus there's the possibility of Union Christmas Day too - what more could a Rugby Girl abroad want?! Maybe a way to get to Club Dinner/Wednesday matches, but you can't have it all I guess.

Basically, this is a blog to document my year abroad to Salamanca in Spain and Volgograd in Russia. I got given an absolutely ADORABLE travel journal by my lovely friends from home so hopefully they'll be nice and detailed and I won't forget anything!

Compared to other Year Abroaders, I'm going to Spain pretty late (mostly because I'm not finishing work until the 16th, and it'd be rude not to go to Fresher's week ROAR when you don't have to be in the country until a week and a bit after!) so I'm hoping that I'll be able to find a flat/be able to settle in, otherwise this blog will be a bit short and embarrassing. Luckily, Erasmus is pretty relaxed on what you can do coursewise and the Spanish psyche of putting everything off until the very last minute means that I don't have to properly 'matriculate' until the end of October or something crazy, so it shouldn't be too much of a palaver (she says...). Also, apparently going through phone boxes is a good way to find a flat...that sounds a little bit wrong to me!

Obviously being a language student I've known that all this is coming, but it hasn't felt real until a couple of days ago. Seeing people's Facebook statuses saying they've found a flat in Sevilla or done a 7 hour stint on a train to Petrozavodsk makes you realise that you're actually not going to walk into a lecture theatre/seminar with these people until you've spent 4 months being shit scared of policemen with big guns. And that's after you've inevitably tried to out-drink a fellow Erasmus student in a 1euro shot drinking competition (and probably failing. My competitive spirit far outweighs my stomach on many occasions - just ask anyone in epic fancy dress on a Wednesday evening on the ROAR podium.)

For now this is another way of distracting myself from the fact that I STILL need to buy my travel insurance and should probably start reading in Spanish again so I actually remember how to speak it and not look like a pleb the minute I get off the plane in Madrid. I guess rambling is much more amusing!