I started my third year of studies by doing my exchange in Madrid. I started the semester in the beginning of September and now four months later it is my time to return to Finland. My stay in Madrid has been mostly studying, doing sports and meeting new people. I had six courses in total and some of the courses were a bit challenging, so I was studying a lot. In TAMK I am used to have quite a lot of tasks in groups but during my exchange we barely had assignments in groups. It was a nice chance, but also it was more work for each student. Most of the courses had mid-term exams, so during one course we could have three mid-term exams and then at the end of the course a final exam.
Studying in Finland or in Spain is not that different but I noticed some differences too. For example, an exchange student without a knowledge of Spanish might have some problems living in Spain. Most people I met working in the customer service in Madrid did not speak English. Some of the teachers and the staff of the university did not speak English, exception of course the teachers that teaches the courses in English. In Finland I think the knowledge of English is better, if you go to the supermarket and speak English to the staff, they will understand you and probably will be able to answer you in English. And in TAMK nearly all of the staff has a good level of English.
My schedule included lectures from Monday till Friday, mostly from eight to 12 or 14. My apartment was not really close to the university, so I needed to get there by bus and a metro. The easiest way going around the city is going by metro and the public transportation in Madrid is good and also cheap. On my free time I was either going around the city, going to the gym, but mostly studying. I saw many nice places in Madrid, tried nice restaurants, went to watch football in the stadium and went around the beautiful streets and parks. Something I founded really nice in Spain was the weather. The first couple months it was over 20 degrees, nearly 30 and the last months it was from 5 to 15 degrees. The nice thing was that it didn’t rain much, and it was not as dark as in Finland, actually it was sunny almost every day.
All in all, my stay in Madrid went well and I can finish my exchange with some new experiences and good memories.
Saludos,
Jonna
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