For those of you who have recently received an acceptance letter to study in Spain, you’re probably already daydreaming about la vida loca that awaits you: a new world where the hardest decision will be which tapas to accompany your glass of sangria, sunbathing on a beach as the sounds of flamenco and salsa music float through the air. For the most part, you won’t be disappointed. However, what the study abroad brochure fails to mention is that your year abroad will be soundtracked by the worst kind of music, that your favourite band would never dream of touring Spain… but also, that the music festivals back at home have been ripping you off for years.

Adele has just graduated from Nottingham Trent University where she studied Italian Language and Media Studies, and spent her year abroad as an Erasmus student in Cassino. She is currently working as a British Council Language Assistant in Barcelona and is blogging about her experiences. You can keep up with her latest updates by following her on Twitter @adelejoanna and here is her advice about NIE, banking and SIM cards in Spain.

So I’ve been terrible at blogging during my time in France. I don’t know what to put it down to really. There was a lot of work in the last few months and preparing for exams was pretty stressful. None of us had any idea how we were going to do or what the exams would be like. Luckily I’ve now got my marks back and am happy to say I passed everything fine. I have to say though; exams in France were pretty strange. The exam conditions were not strict at all which was something very new for me. The exams themselves  were a little strange, for example for one of my literature modules, despite studying more than one book, we only got one question, on one book. No choice at all. Luckily, I’d studied all the books really well so didn’t have a problem but am glad I didn’t use that tactic which I think is sometimes employed in England, where you hedge your bets and just study some of the texts well and not all of them.