My first days in Valencia

UPV and My First Day in Valencia

My first week in Valencia was packed with trying to figure everything out. I got to Valencia not knowing where I was going to live, what classes to take, or even where I was going to sleep that night. I only knew the names of the students from the University of Maryland and had spoken with them briefly about the trip.

I got to Valencia on Monday night. I didn't find a place to stay until around 8 or 9pm, after I got of the train and found a McDonald's with free wi-fi. With the help of my dad, and a piece of paper from the school with possible suggestions, I found a hotel called Hotel Sol Playa. Hotel Sol Playa was located right on the beach, I stayed there for two nights before finding a flat, and I took a picture of the view from my window.

The next day I had a meeting with an advisor at the Universidad

Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) and got a tour around campus. The campus is a lot smaller than the University of Maryland, so the tour basically consisted of

paddleball courts (looks like a cross between raquetball and tennis)

and rock climbing, the equivalent of a student union, and the center of campus with all the food and bookstores. I would say that from end to end, the campus only takes about ten minutes to walk, and it's a pretty nice walk when there are palm trees everywhere. After exploring the campus a little bit, I started my search for a place to live.

Finding a Flat

Finding a flat AFTER you get to where you are going to live for 6 months is a very stressful situation. The first day I was in Valencia, I set up two appointments to go see possible flats, but they both fell through. It was pretty discouraging, but the second day left me with some hope. On day two, I looked at three flats and finally settled on one near the main street of Calle de los Santos Justo y Pastor, with the help of my new friend Janelle who had an open room in her flat.

From what I have seen, most flats don't have any kind of central air. My flat only has a space heater in the main room, and definitely no air conditioning. We don't have a microwave, a garbage disposal, a dishwasher, a dryer, and our hot water only lasts for less than 10 minutes. This doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary for any of the exchange students living in Valencia, and now it is clear to me how most people in the United States can consume so much more energy than those in Europe.

Energy Consumption

In one of the classes I am taking at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, we compared energy consumption of different countries, and USA was far ahead of the rest of the world. Much of it has to do with us having to drive everywhere, but I can't imagine leaving lights on, having the air conditioning making stores unbearably cold in the summer, or constantly using products to make lives more convenient helps in our favor either. In Spain, most places do a lot of little things to save energy like in the hotel I stayed at, you had to leave your key card in place on the wall, so that when you left you couldn't accidently leave the lights on. Google has everything, so naturally it was easy for me to find a graph comparing the energy consumption of the United States to Spain, which is posted above.

After my first two weeks in Spain, I'm adjusting to the different lifestyle and learning new things everyday. I'll keep you posted!