Huelva #2 - October (ENG)

Hi everyone!

Here I am already with my second blog! Let’s get started right now, because school officially begun this month!

Let’s start with me telling which courses I have chosen. I already started this process back in the Netherlands, after my university told me that I was going Huelva. Here, the thing is that you have to pick out your courses yourself and you have to make sure that there are no conflicts in your schedule.

- Spanish language course
- Marketing II (in Spanish)
- Introduction micro and macroeconomics
- Financial Markets II
- Planning and Strategic Control

Every course is worth 6 credits and for my study program in the Netherlands, it was compulsory to take at least 1 course in Spanish. I have chosen to do marketing in Spanish. All the other courses are in English, except for the Spanish language course. This course is mostly in Spanish and when we don’t understand something, the teacher would explain it in English.

So on October first my first official week started. And right in the beginning I found out that the English courses didn’t started for three more days. So that meant that I had my first English class on Thursday. On Tuesday I have my first class, marketing in Spanish. What immediately caught my eye, was that Spanish people can not speak English at all or badly. Fortunately, there was a girl in my class, Sandra, and she helped me during the courses, because she could speak English. Every time when I didn’t understand an exercise or when had to hand in some homework, I asked her what the teacher expected from us. After that, on Thursday, I had a guest lecture. At that moment it was clear to me that my actual lessons would start the next week. Eventually I had one useful class on Friday. The teacher was very helpful, and he explained how things worked at the university. He also gave us some tips about what to see in the province of Huelva.

Like I said before, the real classes started de next week. Also my Spanish language course. I heard from other students from the Hanze that it’s useful to take the language course when you are going to study in Spain. The teacher was very sweet and she told us that we could always come to her when we were having problems, at school but also outside of school. The other courses were also introduced later that week. The courses in English were Erasmus courses, so the teachers always took us into account. With marketing, the teacher asked once again at the first official lesson if there were any Erasmus students (and then I got to know 3 Dutch girls from the south of the Netherlands), but later we were expected to just follow the lessons without any trouble. And that would not have been such a problem, but Huelva is located in the Andalusia region and the people in Andalusia speak with a very strong accent (and they speak very quickly). So, it took a lot of getting used to it.
Financial Markets is a course that was not really similar to courses that I had in the Netherlands, so this course is quite tough for me. It's about stock exchanges and things like that. It is, however, an interesting subject. I also have Micro and Macroeconomics. At first, I thought it was one course, but in the first lesson I found out that it is split into 2 courses, microeconomics and macroeconomics. This course is the same as the economic courses that I took in the Netherlands. And Planning & Strategic Control is very similar to the marketing courses I had in the Netherlands.

Especially in this month it took a lot of getting used to things for me. First, following the classes in English. I never did this in the Netherlands, I followed all my classes in Dutch. Second, it was also difficult, because the teachers here are Spanish and they speak English with a strong Spanish accent. They sometimes put the emphasis differently and you have to focus very well on what they actually want to say.

Of course, there were also plenty of parties here. ESN organized every Wednesday evening / night an Erasmus evening, but since I had classes every Thursday morning (and in Spanish), I often canceled (which was not appreciated by my friends). I made up for it again by going out with them in the weekend. I also regularly went with my friends to the beach, Punta Umbría. That is the closest beach here. You take a bus, pay € 1.75 one way and the ride is almost 30 minutes. The buses from Damas are very nice and well organized.

A friend came to visit me during this period and I visited Seville with her. Seville is an hour away from me and with Damas I can catch a bus to the capital city of Andalusia about every hour. We have seen many things there, such as the Real Alcazar, Plaza de España, Catedral de Sevilla, Plaza de Toros and many other things.

At the end of this month ESN had organized a big party, the Halloween Party. It was more extensive than all the other parties they had. For example, there were buses that took us to Punta Umbría, because there was a club reserved for us. And Spanish people party, intuitional, much longer than we Dutch people. The party was still not over at 06:30 in the morning and I was very happy that I was finally in my bed on November 1 at 07:00.

I think this pretty much describes the entire month of October.

Hasta luego!