Planes, trains, and buses

I didn't get the chance to write two weeks ago, so you're getting two blogs from me today! First, let's talk about transportation. I honestly amazed by the transportation in Spain.

If you need to get anywhere in Europe, I recommend using Ryanair.com. This site is awesome. Once I got a round-trip ticket to London for less than $20. If you have a specific destination in mind, try to be flexible with the departure and arrival dates because it will be much easier to get a cheaper flight. If you just want to travel and don't have any solid idea on where you want to go, you can do searches based on price. I know people who have gotten flights cheaper than $5, and my friend from the Netherlands swears that she got a flight for free once.

I only took a train once. It was a little faster than a bus, but much more expensive.  I don't recommend taking a train unless you plan to travel before or after your program. If you do decide to travel after your program and want to see a lot of different places throughout Europe, the railpass is a really great deal. You can buy passes that last for different amounts of time. My friend bought one for two weeks after our program ended and jumped on any train he wanted to any destination he wanted within those two weeks. He got to see a lot of different cities and countries that way.

I did a lot of traveling within Spain, so I used buses. The bus system in Spain is great. You can get to almost any city for a very reasonable price. I either bought my tickets online at alsa.es or I went to the bus station and bought my tickets at the counter. If you plan to go across the country, however, I recommend flying. I took a 13 hour bus ride to the north coast and then took the same ride back a few days later and it was miserable. With all the transfers there were a lot of issues. Not to give too many details, but I spent a snowy night sharing a blanket with a homeless man.


Now let's talk about classes.

I took all of my classes in Spanish with Spanish professors from the university; however, 98% of the other students were Americans. There were some French, Japenese, African, and Canadian students, but the place was dominated by American students. On top of that, the building at the University of Granada where the language classes are taught is on the other side of the city from the rest of the campus. Meeting native students during classes was practically impossible. I didn't know about this before I went, and it's probably the one thing that bothered me the most about my study abroad experience.

In Spain they use a grading system out of 10 (instead of 100 like we do here). It's very hard to get a 10 or even a 9. Many students are happy just to get a 5 or a 6. One of my professors explained that if there is a class of 30 students, only 1 student will get a 10, 2 students will get a 9, and everyone else will get something lower. That may be a little exaggerated for some classes, but not all of them. Overall, I enjoyed most of my teachers and the classes were fairly interesting. Also, all the classes that I took abroad helped me to graduate a year early!

Well, that's all I have for you guys today...

cuídaos!

Jacob