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Catalan Culture 2004 Class Blog

jueves, noviembre 27, 2003

Assignment 4

My expectaitions before arriving here where many. My main expectations was that I expected it to be nice and sunny and that it would be cheaper here than home. I had high expectations about learning a new language and meet new interesting people. These expectations has for the most part become the way I hoped. The weather was really good all august and September, and I learned lots of Spanish while taking a language course in august. However my progress seems to have dropped quite a bit after that, since I have spoken more and more english in school after that.
My Culture expectations weren’t that many. I already knew about the “manana” culture, so I actually expected it to be worse than I have found it here. However, just like Petri wrote in his assignment we have as well had trouble with the hot water tank. The repair guy was supposed to in the beginning of September, however he dropped by a few times in the beg of October but he didn’t finish the job until the begining of November. Always with a new excuse, that a part was missing or had to be sent form somewhere and so on. Apart from that I have not had any bad experiences with the “manana” culture. In fact I seem to like it, afterall there is hardly ever the need of the rush that things have to be done so quickly as it seems to in Norway, where it is very important to be effective. Another thing which is different from Norway is the dining hours. Lunch from 2-5 , and dinner from 9-12 is quite different from what my stomage is used to. So for the first two months I always felt that I was hungry at the wrong times.
I had heard from others that it was difficult tho really get to know the catalan people. However my experience where quite different. Altough I guess i think if you find a common interest with some people you always get along. I started to play football at a local catalan team. They where great, and I became quikly a member of the team. The knew that i didn´t understand any catalan, so they spoke mostly in spanish and some english. However my spanish football career were short, due to an almost impossible task to get my papers valid to play matches. Apperently I needed som valid papers saying that I was in the country for a long period of time. My erasmus aggreement form and a valid passport was not enouch. So I am not to happy with the spanish bureauacracy. Now when I am leaving barcelona I will leave with a good impression of the catalans.



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