University of Stirling

After a few (many) days off the blog, I finally have some time and energy to update. Now I'm gonna talk a bit about the university.

The University of Stirling is settled in a wonderful campus, surrounded by trees, grass, and all sorts of plants. There's also a lake crossed by a bridge (in which a few people had already suffered some injuries) and rabbits and squirrels. And swans. 

I live off campus, but right next to the wall that marks out the area of the campus. We have to walk through the door in the "fence" to go class. It literally takes me 4 minutes to get to class from the main door of my building. Maybe 4 and a few seconds, never had time to count it exactly, but you get the idea :p We have all lectures, or at least 95% of them, in the building called Pathfoot. 

So when you cross the bridge you get to the Atrium and Andrew Miller Building (cafeterias, shops, banks and such, plus library, bookshop, pub, Student's union, etc). It takes 10 minutes tops to walk from Pathfoot to here. Then they also have a cinema downstairs. It's like the shopping mall of a city but in campus. 

Then you can find the Cottrell Building which is very confusing for every student and teacher in this university. If you look closely, you can see it has the shape of DNA, and that fact, instead of making it easier, it just gets things more complicated.

We also have a swimming pool, also known as "the home of the Scottish swimming" or something like that. I haven't tried it yet, but hopefully this weekend :D

Here you can see a picture:

(http://www.open-world.ru/upload/information_system_17/3/9/6/item_396/information_items_property_6062.jpg)

Now, regarding the courses, here is a brief summary of all of them:
PUBP16: Publishing Dynamics: this module is about the process of publishing itself, things to keep in mind when you publish, like copyrights and such.
PUBP17: Marketing, Management and Communications: what you need to know to sell like crazy and make money. This is the module that teaches you that publishing houses are ran by marketers, not editors. Score...
PUBP18: Editorial Practices and Content Creation: who is who and what each one does in a publishing house, how to spot good works and what to do afterwards
PUBP19: Publishing Project, Production and Design: DESIGN, Helvetica, how to creat the book, Helvetica, computers, photoshop, printing, Helvetica, production... and create a book of our own!! From scratch to the very end! Every page, every picture, even the covers! ISN'T THAT AWESOME! So readers, ideas are welcome :D
In my opinion, everything is well organised, and the contents of the modules are quite interesting and extremely useful. What bothers me is the timetable and the group assingments. We only have class Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which might sound nice, but we are in uni from 10am to 5pm. We only have one hour for lunch, each lecture is 3 HOUR LONG... So sometimes it's too much. Other than that, we're fine.
Well, also except the group assingments. At the end of the semester, we won't have any exams, so we are working our marks out of assingments. Granted, I'm not always very willing to work in groups, but this is going too far. Every assingment so far had to be done in groups, and it's really hard to organise ourselves when some live out of the city, others are just part-time and the rest are working in our days off. I understand that we have to do some group work, get to know other people, learn how to work in a team... but there's a limit. And, personally, the teachers should take into account the different situations of the students in general and see that it's not that easy to fit the timetable so you meet with 3 different groups of people for 3 different assingments...

But everything, as a whole, is very fulfilling :)

And this is pretty much it so far.
Hopefully it won't take me so long until I write here again.
See youuuuuuuuuuuu

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More updates: First day of school

Yes, it finally arrived! Today was the first day of school, an introductory session actually, but first day anyway. It was kind of overwhelming: we got free books, tons of papers and even a group assingment, but it was at the same time reassuring. On my first day, I was having doubts, I guess that just like anyone else, and wondering if I would actually fit in, if I would like the program and if I would enjoy my time here. Today I learnt more about everything we are expected to do, and even though I will have to face some things that I won't enjoy (such as statistics) I think most of the contents will be fun. Specially the internships (hopefully) and the final dissertation. It was very comforting to know that one of the teachers in the degree is working in the comics and videogames industry, so she will be able to tutor my final project. There's plenty of time left to get to it, I will have to work on it during the summer, but it really helped to know that I would be able to work on what I'm most interested in :)
What really helps a lot is being social. I don't know if I told you, but in my dorms there is another Spanish girl, Lara, who is also studying the same Masters as me, so we are in the same class. It's helpful because we don't carry this "Spanish-only" attitude, (if you know me any well you'd know that's not my thing) and we get along well with many people from everywhere, but it's good to have some support.
Then there are a lot of other people from different places: Scotland, USA, England, Germany, Brazil... so we are a very multicultural gang. We've been out to a pub two evenings in a row, and as scary as it might be regarding the economic situation, it's just the beginning. I don't think this will carry on for very long, but now we are just starting, getting to know each other and ourselves around. When everything starts getting busy, then I guess we will hang out rather indoors than outdoors. Which will also be fun for sure.
Most of the fears and doubt are gone. It felt very good to talk to other people about this, and see that you are not the only one in this situation. Lyndsay, a Scottish girl living in my dorms, and I were talking about this today and yesterday evening. We are very proud of ourselves for overcoming these tough first days, starting to see some light and move forward. We'll keep on that :)

So that's all for now. I'm trying to be efficient (it's so hard to find an exact translation for the Icelandic word "dugleg"...) by keeping you updated everyday, so please be also efficient by reading my words! :)

Thank you for your attention.

Kv. Paula.

Have faith

That's my new motto. "Have faith". I acquired it last July, when my friends were (FINALLY) visiting me in Iceland, and travelling around. Not viceversa. Nope.
My friends Lucía and Sara went to Iceland with their friend and boyfriend, and Sara's boyfriend talked about having faith. Not in God or anything, just having faith. "When I'm looking for a parking spot, I have faith on finding it right in the place I want to find it. And it happens. It's all about having faith". So I decided to follow this philosophy.
I was tired and hopeless yesterday, but today I had to get in a train to Edinburgh (my father had some trouble and had to go to the hospital... everything is fine now, no need to talk about this any longer :) ) and that's when I realised I was okay here. I visited this wonderful city that I loved from the very first minute I stepped there. So after all the hard time yesterday, I remembered "HAVE FAITH".
Back to Stirling, I attended a dinner at my dorms building with a lot of people who live here. (It felt weird not to say "Takk fyrir mig" after dinner or the whole evening, so I guess I became a bit of Icelander after all). That really helped A LOT. Then we went out for a beer. Or even two.
So I started to talk around with the people, just mingling in and getting to know them. I found out that I wasn't the only one down and blue on their first day! Others even BURSTED IN TEARS last evening! So I wasn't the only one suffering the fears...  I knew that I needed some time to meet people and find my place, but everyone has always some doubts... and that happened to me.
But like I said, I had FAITH.
And so everything changed :) And now I know many neighbours of mine that hopefully will my staying better and fun.

Tomorrow I will be attending to the first session of the semester. WISH ME LUCK!

You're hot and you're cold, you're yes and you're no...

Oh well, then, here we are...

So I arrived today to Scotland, and that was okay, nothing special. We took the bus to Edinburgh, because in case you didn't know, my dad and his brother (my uncle AND godfather) are here with me. I'm very glad, for I'm not sure I could've made it this far alone. So yes, we went there to check-in their hotel and then go to Stirling, where I'm staying and studying, to help me move in.
And that's the moment in which we turned into some kind of Odisseus to get here. Train? "But that only runs to the station, not to uni. There's a direct bus there". Ok, we go to the bus stop "There are no straight buses to the campus." "Where are you going?" "To the bus station in Stirling. You can take a bus to uni there". "Sounds fine. Ok".
BAD MISTAKE. HUGE. HUMONGOUS MISTAKE. The f****** bus took 2h and 20min to get here, when it takes only 40 minuts by car. RIDICULOUS. So we got here later than I expected, and we asked the driver again and said "yeah, if you want to take shorter, you should maybe take the train, it takes about an hour". WELL, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, but it's a bit too late now.
Anyway, we went to uni. Apparently, we really worked hard to become Odysseus, because it took me around 50 minutes to collect my room keys.
Tip: People, if you don't know the way somewhere or you are not sure, JUST SAY IT. Don't confuse me and send me the opposite direction just because! (So you can guess why it took me so long to do a thing that should've taken 15-20 minutes).
Then I got to my room and it's pretty big, so I'm happy. It's gonna be very hard for me to keep it tidy, although the size doesn't have anything to do with it :p
Now I'm all alone in my room...writin to you... but now FIRST IMPRESSIONS!
Scottish people are nice. No, they aren't. Ooooh, this person was so helpful! I love Scots. No, I don`t! Could you be more rude? And so on and so forth. Really, that's basically my head all day today:
"Awww, I love it so much here"
"MWAAAAAAAAAA, I miss my dogs and my house, and my hometown! And mommy, and sister, and friends! And my consort! And everything! I even miss ICELAND!!"
"Good Lord, this is so beautiful... and Scottish are so nice (as well as crazy and noisy in the buses...)"
"NOOOOOOOOO, I can't do this! I feel so homesick!!! I want to go back!!!!!!!!!!". (Specially when I had to deal with a bus driver that was so similar to Dwight, the funny and favourite weirdo from  "The Office", and just as stupid, I think)
"I'm so happy I took this decisition... it's a LIFE CHANGING DECISION"
"Iceland wasn't that bad"
THAT WAS IT. Agreed, Iceland was not bad... but it's Iceland. Wonderful memories, wonderful people and wonderful landscapes.. but honestly, if I had to stay longer, I could've gone mad. So when I started thinking that staying there would've been ok... I worried.
So I got in the bus to get back to campus, and then I talked to a random girl who is studying here too! She was so nice... and another girl joined the conversation.. And we got off the bus... and I got to my HUGE room. And I had trouble trying to log in the internet, so I knocked next door and a nice Brazilian girl helped me. (She went crazy when she saw how big my bedroom is)
And that's how I'm trying to do my way around here :) Just smile, and people will smile back.

And besides everything, I learnt things in Iceland. So if I feel that everything goes wrong... ÞETTA REDDAST ;)

P.S: I have no idea how the voting thing for the independency is going, but people are really taking it seriously wearing t-shirts, pins, stickers rooting for a "yes" or a "no". I tried to count during the long trip to Stirling and 'yes' hardly won. We'll see tomorrow :)

Welcome to my little place

Hello there everybody!
Hi hi. Hi. Hi...
Yeah, I actually have no idea what to write. It's kind of hard and awkward to write my first post, but I guess I will give it a try by telling about my plans on this blog:
As many (probably all) of you know, I'm soon moving to Scotland to study my Master's degree on Publishing Studies in the University of Stirling. I am a BA in English, from the University Complutense (which actually is not that awesome, but the people that took part on that chapter of my life is) and I spend one year in Iceland as an Erasmus student (where I met a lot more of great and unforgettable people). That fact really changed my life, for I met the person for whom I moved back to Iceland after finishing my degree. I lived and worked there for two years, and then I found out what my next step would be, and here I am.
So I've created this blog to keep you all updated. Since I know people from all around the world (more or less) I decided to write in English. If you have any trouble, just click the translator option on the right (although if you are understanding this, you don't really need to do so) and choose a language. Easy peasy.

About the title and url of my blog, I will mention the reasons on why I chose them:
A Tale of Three Cities: I think it's pretty obvious. In some way, I wanted to honour my degree and everything I learnt in those wonderful five years by using Charles Dickens' piece A Tale of Two Cities, also so it's somehow related to my current studies. Why "three" cities, though? Because that's the number of cities that helped me grow as a person: Madrid, Reykjavík and now, Stirling. And I thought it was smart, clever and cool. So I used it. And if you think it's lame, you might be right, but if you know what kind of jokes I like, you shouldn't be surprised :D
And the reason for the url is simple: my name (paula) and the first initials of my first family name: DL:di-el if named in English but written in Spanish, which oddly enough sounds as the last two syllabes of my last family name (Gu-DIEL). TÁ-DÁ!! Magic!
You might thing that's also name, but I`m not a poet or a talented writer as some of you are. At least, not yet!

So there you go, my first post in my second blog. I hope you like it, I hope you'll follow and I hope you'll enjoy.