A spin in the mountains

Finally, I got out of the city and explored the beautiful mountains and pueblos that are outside Valencia. My friends Sarka and Hannah and I took the train to Sagunt with bikes, and from there we biked through some tiny towns and into the mountains. We ended up quite high and had some great views of the surrounding towns and the ocean! (We also ended up on a narrow hiking trail and had to carry our bikes down the mountain for about 1.5 kilometers... I was definitely very very excited to see some bike-friendly asphalt!)

Rotary Club Valencia-Cid

Last week I visited another R.C. of Valencia, Rotary Club Valencia-Cid. Unfortunately I wasn't able to stay for the meeting, because I had to leave for class (we met at 2pm, lunch started around 2:45pm, and I had to leave at 3:45). The members were extremely welcoming and accomodating of my schedule; they've also invited me to a Rotary event next week which is a fashion show fundraiser. Sounds like fun!

Here I am with the members, at the Hotel Westin:


And here's some lunch:

Día de la Comunidad Valenciana- el Nou d'Octubre

Last Sunday was the Día de la Comunidad Valenciana, a commemoration of when Valencia entered the Spanish kingdom 800 years ago. Because of the holiday, there were various celebrations of traditional song and dance, as well as events that brought up modern issues in Valencia.

On Saturday morning, I tried to go to a gastronomic festival in a nearby town with Brianna, another Ambassadorial Scholar in Valencia. We had seen information online, and at the fair you could buy tickets for 1euro and sample different tapas. What ended up happening is that we went to a completely different town, asked a woman on the street where the gastronomic fair was, and she pointed us down the street. When we got there, we were in a large parking lot with 20+ large groups of people, each cooking their own paella! Still thinking that we were at the fair, we asked around about where we could buy tickets, and a very nice man told us there were no tickets but that he would give us paella for free. Very very kind.

Here's the paella being cooked with leña, firewood (we definitely smelled like leña afterwards!):




There were about 25 fallas, which are groups of friends that have kind of a clubhouse and hold different events (including paella competitions, I guess!). The most famous is Las Fallas in March, in which each falla makes a huge float that ridicules politics or some current event. Here's a falla:



Oh, he also gave us wine, "agua fuerte," and dessert! (The dessert would have been tastier if it weren't soaked in the "agua fuerte.")








That night Brianna and I went to a concert with her flatmates. The concert was called "Concert del BLOC JOVE en benefici de CA REVOLTA" and saw La Gossa Sorda, Orxata Sound System, and Aspencat. The best way I can describe the music, and the crowd, was ska (reminiscent of Sublime). Obviously, everything was in Valenciano so I didn't understand much, but no language was necessary to feel the Valencian pride. From what Brianna's friend explained, there is a movement to unite the languages of Catalan and Valenciano, which are basically the same. Yesterday my classmate's version of the story was that in the language of Catalan, there are 2 main dialects: Catalan Occidental (spoken in Valencia) and Catalan Oriente (spoken in Catalunya). He actually compared them to Texan English and Californian English. Anyways, now changing the name of the language is a matter of politics, history, and pride. What I can say is that in the city of Valencia, Valenciano isn't spoken that much but you hear much more often in the pueblos outside of the city. They definitely have a lot of pride in their language.





Sunday, the 9th of October, I went to the Barrio del Carmen (the old city in Valencia) with Brianna and her friend Maria and we saw a parade representing various groups of Cristianos y Moros (Christians and Moors). We stayed for 2 hours but didn't stay until the end... I imagine that the parade lasted about 3 hours!

Rotary Rey Don Jaime

Last Friday I visited Rotary Club Valencia Rey Don Jaime, one of several in Valencia. This was my first official visit and talk to a Rotary Club in Spain. Anyways, they were very kind and invited me to their meeting, which took place at the Westin Hotel on Friday afternoon. I arrived at 2:30, and after a very long and delicious meal (which was about one and a half hours), they conducted the meeting. The meeting itself didn't take too long; I spoke for about 10 minutes, and the members asked me some questions, and they also welcomed a new member to the club. After the meeting, we sat in the hotel garden area and drank coffee. Because the club is small, there was a very friendly and intimate atmosphere. I was able to talk to all the members and learn at least a little bit about them. Norma, the secretary, is actually from Argentina and she works as an event planner; the other members asked her about her daughter who was starting dance and music lessons. The club wouldn't be holding a meeting the next week because Elias, the president, would be attending his daughter's wedding. The other members held a variety of occupations in law and business.

One aspect I enjoyed was the presence of family which made the club very personable; even though only 7 members were present at the meeting, the son of one member was the chef at the restaurant and came by before our meal to chat about the menu and Elias' daughter stopped by during lunch to say hi.

Here I am with the club:




Rotarians enjoying coffee:


Here's a few photos of lunch. First we had bread and olive oil, then appetizers which consisted of jamón iberico and cheese, mozarella and tomate valenciano, and salad. Of course at this point I was full, since the appetizers were extremely tasty. But of course, we still had the main course (either fish or meat), and then a strawberry mousse for dessert.

Motors, generators, and transmission, oh my!

As expected, I had my first shock of feeling unprepared for my Master's... and not the language aspect! There are a lot of electrical engineering principles that are utilized in our courses and even though we don't actually DO any electrical engineering, it's good to have some kind of background in that field. Lately I've been trying to quickly learn what could possibly be 1 or 2 years of undergrad electrical engineering in several weeks; not fun. I've also tried out various resources, including textbooks (both English and Spanish, each of which has its pros and cons), wikipedia, google, and my classmates. What can I say? Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Otherwise, classes have been going relatively well. It's becoming more and more effortless to understand the professors, but I still have a tough time understanding my classmates when they ask questions in class. So far the workload has been relatively light, although I know it'll pick up with projects and tests. Some are individual projects, such as designing a low temperature solar thermal installation, and other projects require quite a bit of work, such as performing an "energy audit" for a company, building, or factory to help them better manage their energy usage and save money.

mis amigos de la vida Valenciana

Quite possibly the most important aspect of my life here is the people... because despite being enrolled in a interesting and demanding Master's program and living in a beautiful city, my life would be lacking if I didn't have friends with whom I could share the experience.

Here's a brief rundown of my new friends:

Adriana- the first person I met here! I asked to couchsurf with Adriana in the first few days that I was in Valencia while I was looking for apartments. Super friendly and super chill girls... Adriana does fire dancing too! Here's a picture of Adriana, a couchsurfer from Georgia, me, and her other flatmate Gregory (from Venezuela):



Here's my flatmates, Leo, Paul and Julia:




Leo is in his first year at UPV studying informatics, Paul is a grad student studying informatics, and Julia is a Master's student studying architecture.

Here I am with a group of international students I met (at the on campus bank, nonetheless!). I started talking to Diego and Sarka while in line at Bancaja, and they invited me on their weekend trip to Puig, a nearby town where there's a castle. We were all prepared for the day trip, with bicycles we rented for a mere 2.5euro for the day, but our (cheap) decision soon caught up with us as there were problems with Sarka's bike pedal. At one point it literally came off the bike! Obviously we didn't make it to Puig but we spent the afternoon at the beach and exploring the port of Valencia.



And here I am with Sarka, enjoying free kebab in Benimaclet!

I've survived my first week as a grad student!

Here's what my schedule looks like:
Monday, 4-6pm: Energy Markets & Regulations
Monday, 6-8pm: Intro to Energy Technology

Tuesday, 4-6pm: The Energy Problem and Sustainable Development
Tuesday, 6-8pm: Distribution Networks

Wednesday, 4-6pm: Wind Energy
Wednesday, 6-8pm: Intro to Energy Technology

Thursday, 4-6pm: Solar Energy
Thursday, 6-8pm: Energy Auditing

Friday: Labs (prácticas)



Right now I'm in the "Primer Cuatrimestre" schedule. The way the Master is organized is that there are 3 options: Renewable Energy, Efficiency, and Nuclear Energy (mine is Renewables). Out of the 2 options that I didn't choose, I had to choose one as my "optativa"; from this subject I take 2 courses (I chose Efficiency).

Language
Yes, all of my courses are in Spanish. So far, this hasn't posed too much of a problem although I was exhausted on Monday after 4 hours of class. My Wind Energy professor didn't speak very clearly and on top of that a lot of the subject matter was very new for me, so that course was definitely the most challenging. Needless to say, the next day I did a lot of reading on types of generators and the internal components of generators.

Classmates
There's about 35-45 people in the program right now. (The number is still changing because people are enrolling.) The majority of students are Spanish although there seem to be quite a few from Latin America (Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica that I know of so far). Maybe 10-20% of the class works so I guess that's why our courses are all in the afternoon. There's also a few students from other European countries, but otherwise everybody speaks Spanish fluently.

Classes
Everything is structured relatively similar to the US and the courses I've taken at UCLA... the professors post all of their notes and presentations online, have office hours (tutorías), etc.

Here are some differences:
*One big difference is that there are no assigned textbooks, so in terms of cost this is huge.
*The grading system in Spain is from 1-10, where 10 is the highest. However, the passing grade depends on the professor and it's usually around 3.5 or 4 (whereas you would imagine it to be around 5 or 6 as it would be in the US). Since there's no curves though, I guess this helps a lot.
*No TA's!

I'll leave you with a little anecdote from my first day of class... the professor was discussing energy consumption and the very high per capita energy consumption in the US. A girl said something like "Well, that must be the case since everyone drives huge cars over there!" and he replied "Things are changing, and they're civilizing."