Like any other university does for their new students, UIC held a welcome week especially for the Erasmus and international students. Now, when I say week, I technically mean days, well 3 days to be specific. We were informed over email when these days would be and we had to sign up to them, this is how we choose a moving date. Each day taught us more and more about both our University and Barcelona.

The welcome days take place in different places so I thought I’d just mention that UIC consists of two main campuses: The Barcelona Campus and the Sant Cugat Campus (there is also the education faculty which is around a 5 minute walk from the Barcelona Campus). The Sant Cugat Campus is about an hour outside of Barcelonas city centre and is for the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Faculty of dentistry. The Barcelona Campus is around 30 minutes away from the city centre and includes the Faculties of Business Administration, Law, Humanities, Architecture and Communication. This is the campus that Jada and I will be studying at.

January 16th– Welcome Session

Todays ‘Welcome Session’ was held in The Barcelona Campus, meaning that we got the chance to see the campus we would be studying at for the next 5 months. We also got the chance to practice the best route to get to the campus. Today was a short, introductory day.

Considering that today was our very first day where we would be meeting lots of new people and teachers/tutors, we woke up really early and made sure that we were around 10 minutes earlier than the time we were supposed to meet (which was 9:00am).

Once we arrived, we followed the instructions provided in the email they sent us and found the room we were meeting in. When walking into the room we had to find our sticker with our name and country on it and then we had to find a seat. Hanging on the back of the seats were these UIC backpacks and on the seat there was a UIC Folder, UIC calendar, a Barcelona Tour Guide and a few other leaflets.

Quite a few people had already showed up and when looking around the room we could see so many different nationalities, it was pretty cool. They really are international!

Once everyone had arrived, they gave a presentation with everything we needed to know about the university. During the presentation we played some ‘getting to know each other’ games, which gave us a good opportunity to meet some of the other students.

After the presentation we headed outside for a break, loads of snacks and drinks were provided. During this break we took group photos, ate and it gave us the opportunity to properly talk to each other. Everyone was really friendly and we even managed to find two others who were also studying journalism.

After the break we were split up into our faculties and had a tour of the campus, giving us a general idea of the layout and where everything is, including the important offices we needed to know about (the newsroom was the best part WOW).

We finished the day by meeting our tutors and having the opportunity to ask any questions we need to ask.

January 17th- “Catalan for Dummies” and Cultural Adaption Workshop

Today’s workshops were in the Sant Cugat Campus, this gave the medicine and dentistry students a chance to see the campus they would be studying at. Considering the campus is in an actual Spanish Hospital, it was very impressive.

After rushing around and struggling to find the room in the massive building, we finally arrived and it turned out that we plus two others were the only ones there. At least this meant that we weren’t the only one struggling to find the room.

Once more people arrived we started off the day with the “Catalan for Dummies” workshop, this was taught by one of the heads of the language department at UIC. It’s pretty self explanatory really, it was a class teaching us the Catalan basics. However we were also taught a bit about some Catalan traditions. This was a really interesting class and I think it was incredibly important for us to understand the culture as it is plays a massive role in Barcelona. The only bad thing was that considering I am trying to teach myself Spanish, learning Catalan made things slightly complicated.

After this session we had a break, we went to the canteen and they had a bunch of snacks and drinks laid out for us. I ate way too many mini chocolate croissant and when I say way too many.. I mean it but hey ho no regrets!

After eating we went back to the classroom and started the Cultural workshop. We had a presentation about Culture Shock and a few other things and then we moved onto some interactive games. For the first game we were placed into groups (the first time Jada and I were split up, which was good for us to get out of our comfort zones) and did a Kahoot. My group ended up winning and we each got an English-Catalan book, which was pretty cool. We then continued on by playing some card games with a confusing trick.

We ended the session by creating bracelets, we were given a set of questions and a list of colours with corresponding countries. We had to answer all the questions with a colour and then get all the colours we had and make it into a bracelet. Thus to show how international we all are and where about we are all from.

January 18th- Barcelona Guided Tour

The last day of the welcome week and possibly the best.

We met at the Barcelona Campus where we were split into English-speaking and Spanish-speaking groups (there are quite a few people from Colombia) and assigned our tour guide. We were all given these earpieces, which I have to say made us feel very important, almost like James Bond!

We then headed up to the bus and the tour began. We were driven around the incredible Barcelona, we were shown La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s House and other incredibly beautiful architecture (in my opinion one of the best things about Barcelona is the architecture, its simply extraordinary!), the Olympic stadium and swimming pools, a beautiful view of Barcelona from the top of a hill and so much more.

We also made a few stops where we got out and walked around, we got out in an area called Tibidabo where we could overlook Barcelona and where Museu d’Automats is. This is a must see for me! We also got out at Ciutadella Park where the Arc de Triomf is. This park is actually a 10 minute walk away from mine and Jada’s flat and I cant tell you how lucky we are to have it so close to us, its stunning! We wondered around the city, passing the Picasso Museum and many other places.

They dropped us off really close to where Jada and I live so this worked out very well for us.

It was overall a really great day, it was like having a summary of Barcelona, sounds dumb but thats how I see it. We got to see all these beautiful places in the matter of a few hours and from the view of a bus, giving us a general idea of where everything is and the names of areas. Now its time for us to visit these places ourselves and I cannot wait! So much to see and for once not so little time but actually so much of time!

That was the end of the Welcome days, I really enjoyed them as it gave me an opportunity to see the university, Barcelona and meet some really lovely people. Definitely glad that I signed up to all the events, I would definitely recommend attending welcome weeks as they, well mine especially, are a great introduction to the next 5 months.

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Pure happiness!