News from the middle of the Peninsula

Hi everybody,

It's been a while since my last hello from the Spanisch capital and life could have been more varied. The two weeks of my spanisch course just passed away like clouds on a windy Spanish winterday and the last week I was pretty busy trying to make all those subject I'd like to follow fit in a one-weeks timetable. Which was nearly impossible because so many classes are given at the same time. Well, nevertheless I managed somehow not mentioning that in the end I will only follow 2 of the 6 subject I chose back in The Netherlands.

The Photos in the beginning of this post I took in the Retiro-parc in Madrid, a lets say smaller version of central parc.

Last weekend I went to visit my good friend Kerstin, who is currently doing an internship in Motril, a small town on the coast in Andalucía. We had double fun, because Miriam and her boyfriend Dani visited Kerstin at the same time.

We saw Granada, Málaga and Motril in one weekend! The south of Spain has really extrordinary beautyful landscapes with olivetreefields as far as your eye can reach and pretty high mountains called Sierra Nevada.

Most of all I liked Granada, because of its romantic allies, the arabic flair and its relaxed atmosphere. Next time I will also visit the Alhambra, which you can see on the photo below.

Assitent Office Manager at Trend Groep

Hi there,

For 6 weeks I was working as Assistent Office Manager at the Trend Groep in Woerden, The Netherlands. I was very happy that I got this job, otherwise I would not have been able to finance my stay in Madrid that would begin at the end of january. It was nice to work for Trend, although I had to travel quite a while every day and getting up at 6 in the morning isn't my favourite hobby either. But anyway I learned a lot and I had very nice colleagues.

Madrid

Buenos dias a todos,

This is my first post from Spain, Madrid where I arrived monday january 29 2007 and where I will now spend 5 months studying at the Universidad Complutense. My first stop was the Olé hostal in the city centre where I spent 4 nights in a mixed dormitory. Fortunately I brought some Oropax, which turned out to be saving my sleep. I did not take any pics of the hostal, but you can check it out on http://www.olehostel.com/

It is very cheap, (12€ a night in dormitory) and they have good facilties (showers etc.) but it is still pretty dirty there.

I the hostel I met Ansfrida a friend of mine from Holland. She came together with 3 other Dutch girls, Jowanka, Lis and Martine. We all had to find a place to live, and sharing a problem/goal makes friends!!! Girls, I thank you all for your strengh an humour that took us through this first week.

It took me almost a week to find a place to live. Thanks to Martine, I got a room in the appartment where I now live with Ana Maria, a Spanisch lady and another female student from Bukarest. And now comes the best part, Ana has another room where Ansfrida, a good friend of mine is going to live.

The day that I brought my luggage Ansfrida helped me with carrying. As she still was looking for a room at that time, we asked Ana Maria whether she maybe knows somebody who is renting a one. We could have never imagined that she had another room in her appartment!!!

Johanna, Ansfrida and Jowanka after the first day of room-research.

Lis and Martine still full of hope!

Short brake in the Retiro Parc.

Holidays in Hurghada, Egypt

Wow, all I can say is that Egypt is very impressing with its ancienty, its landscape ans its people. It was a whole new expreience for me to begin when we (my boyfriend and me) landed at the airport of Hurghada on saturday 25 november 2006. Hurghada is situated at the upper coast of the Red Sea, about 4 hour from Cairo. The last decade it kind of exploded en now there is one beach resort after the other and that for not less that 20 km.
So if you'd like to have an every-day-sun-vacation with all-inclusive buffett, private beach and entertainment, Hurghada is the best place to be for the most reasonable price.
If you'd rather want to experience genuine and authentic egyptian life, don't go there! Everything is as touristic as possible, which does not mean not nice, but unfotunately not real.
Anyway, there we were in our 4 stars Sultan Beach Hotel and actually we could'nt care less whether we stranded in a kind of bad entertainment parc for adults where you have to stand in row in order to get your dinner and you are being pushed into this slimy bar to see this cheap and vulgar belly-dance show.
After having asked for another room because of the loud music coming from this bar, we felt perfectly great laying lazily on the pool, consuming our free drinks and 'sucking up' the warm sunrays which we desperately longed for.
By the way, I definitely think that we would not have received this other room without Mo our friendly tour operator who had a little word with the receptionist. Out new room war bigger and better than the first one.

Photo's from our hotel:

Well, after two days we had enough of hanging aroud an we went on a snorkel-excursion. On a white boat, with some other tourists, the crew and the snorkel-instructor. First I was not too happy having to wear this strange glasses and breath through a kind of rubber-pipe. But I soon had to admit that it was definitely worth it. The corals are beutyful and the fish seem to have jumped from the movie Nemo right in front of us.
Here some photo's from this trip:

My placement at Impact Communication group

Hey guys, here I go again...

Have a look at some pictures I made during my placement. Well, actually I mage on my last day. But better late than never!

The reception

At my desk

Pretending to work very hard... ;-)

Some of my colleagues, at the right side my two bosses.

Wow, so lets see how this works...