It’s not you, it’s the requirements of my degree

You may be wondering why you haven’t heard from us for a while. That’s because we’ve broken up, moved out and moved on. In other words, we’ve moved on to our second semester abroad! From now on, you’ll be getting separate blog posts about different experiences in different places, but don’t worry, it’s not all change. There’ll still be a fair amount of bad puns, sarcasm and general complaining about the challenges and embarrassing situations we’ll most certainly encounter.

My second semester will be spent studying in Forli, Italy. I’ve been living in Forli for almost a week now, and the university transition has been much smoother than when I moved to Granada. This could be because I’d done it all before, expecting things to go wrong and be difficult to manage, especially given my low level of Italian, but I think it’s due to how incredibly organised and helpful the university have been thus far.

Once we’d chosen our modules, it was very easy to find out where and when they were, and draw up our timetable. (The majority of modules here are only worth 5 credits so you might be doing a LOT more hours than you’re used to in Swansea, we have four, one and a half hour classes on Mondays!) From there, we went to the International Office who gave us an information pack including maps, leaflets and forms that we had to fill in to register in the commune and get a Tax Code. None of this information was provided to us in Spain, so we already feel a lot more at ease.

Aside from university, moving to Italy comes with all the same challenges that moving to Spain did: new food (today I spent 3 euros on a box of porridge and it was the only one left, I strongly advise you to bring your own), new routines (try going from 10 to 26 contact hours a week – I. Am. Shattered) and new bureaucracy including boring things like navigating the new bins system.

In these first two weeks I have also learnt how reliant I am on Wi-Fi. We only have 50 gigs a month between us and it’s proven quite a challenge to not be on the internet 24/7. As a result of this, we’ve had to go back to caveman days of communication. I’m using dictionaries and my brain instead of Wordreference. I’m sending all my texts via carrier pigeon. I’m currently scratching this blog post into a stone with a blade fashioned from a sharpened stick. Too far? Too far.

I haven’t had much chance to explore my new city yet but when I do I will be sure to share all the info I learn, of course with pictures. My aim for this month is to find the best pizzeria in Forli, which will most certainly be documented.

That’s about all my news so for now I will arriveder-see you later!

Rebeka