First week at the campus of Bellaterra

Whether you choose it or not, bureaucracy is never far away.

In general, it's not that hard to go abroad with a scholarship. The international office 'tells you exactly what to do' and has it all planned. They will arrange it, "no worries"...

But sometimes, even for experienced people in bureaucratic stuff, it's not that simple and clear. Especially when 2 systems are different.

We have the UAB (old system) and Howest (new system). If this situation occurs, it suddenly gets not thát easy to get a final signature that confirms: "accepted @ UAB", "assured", "legal",...
ONE hand, ONE pen, ONE authorized person, ONE single move and some goodwill. That's all we needed! (*)

As you can imagine, bureaucracy seems to control us!

My first week mainly consisted of observing and listening. "Don't touch...", "Don't do..." :)

I am willing to accept that and as there's no real rush to be spotted, I had plenty of time to meet colleagues and see a part of the campus.

The people here are great! Friendly, helpful, polite.

Many of them speak (understandable) English and if not, they will try to. That deserves at least some respect! By doing this you're pushing your limits and it makes you also stronger in a way. It's something I learned when I was 1.5 years ago in VLC.
"Don't be shy!" & "Let them laugh!"

In which language we communicate depend mostly on the moment and subject.
If there's a rush, we might be talking in English. Pure technical conversations with Marcos are about 75% in English. But most of the time we just talk Spanish, which is an excellent way to improve myself.

There are a lot of investigations going on, by a lot of teams, involving many people.
After the first week I can tell that I mostly depend on these 3 people:

• Albert; the man that brought me in, lecturer, the responsible of the lab and many projects.
  He's also the one that takes care of all the problems that might occur during my stay.
  
(pic soon)


• Marcos; lecturer, investigator.
  This guy knows very well the pilot plants, I'll be his helping hand during the coming 4 months.
  
  


• Margot; lab technician.
  She's aware of all the technical stuff and the possibilities of the lab(s).
  
  

The campus is very big and has an excellent infrastructure. There's a stop of the FGC (Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya) inside the campus, there a train station of RENFE (Red Nacional de Ferrocarriles Españoles) next to the campus, many restaurants, shops, a cinema, a theatre, sport facilities, etc.
You name it, you have it!
It's a small city on itself with around 50.000 students and several thousands of employees.

Impresionante!

(*) The situation is more complex: we also need a "fictive course", etc.