Valencia

Exactly one week ago, (Sep 20 2010) I received an email from RI with my assignment: La Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. This was my first choice university! I also received some files that were informative but perhaps created more questions than answers.

I got the contact information of two friends of friends who attend UPV (and were also Erasmus students in Stuttgart). Hopefully I can remain in contact with them and ask them about Valencia.

Sunday night (Sep 26 2010) was the DISTRICT 5280 FOUNDATION ALUMNI ASSOCIATION PARTY. It was the first time that they had held this event, but I got to meet some of the leaders of the Alumni Association and also past Ambassadorial Scholars, which was awesome. Mina is the President, and she gave me some materials that she had kept from Spain (which I unfortunately left at Karis' house and felt terrible about). She studied in Bilbao, Spain about 7 years ago. Karis is going to Argentina in February as a Peace Scholar. Brian has applied for a Peace Scholarship. Jamie is a UCLA Public Health grad and returned from Córdoba, Argentina in December and now has a job with the CDC in Arizona.

Lessons learned:
- Communicate with the RI counselor (mine is Jorge). It seems like a lot of my more difficult questions should be directed to him, not my WVRC counselor Gordon or Dave.
- Make lots of connections before I go abroad... through Rotaract, Couchsurfing, common-interest groups, etc.
- Make an effort to meet as many people as possible, which may or may not be difficult
- Meet guys on motorcycles and make lots of novios, which is the best way of learning the language (from Jamie, of course... Jamie had only taken Spanish 1 and 2 before going to Argentina but made it clear to everybody she met that they were going to speak Spanish not English. Her classes were in Spanish as well but the other students were really helpful and made she that she understood)