First of all, I must confess that I'm not your regular Erasmus student (not even your regular 23-year-old girl). I prefer visiting museums and taking pictures instead of getting drunk every single day of the week. I prefer having a beer on a terrace chatting, that standing binge drinking in the middle of the night freezing outside. I'm living for a year far away from home being very grateful of my parents and family, who are helping me a lot economically and making such a huge effort for me to stay living in Italy; and with my own effort and the little savings I made this Summer as an intern on an architecture studio. Not that anyone who's not doing that is weird, or a worse person, or anything like that. But first I wanted to make everything clear about the situation.

That said, I wanted to clear out some misconceptions about social life when you're on an Erasmus, and share with you my experience so far living in a country where I barely speak the language (I'm slow but steady in my Italian lessons), but which culture I love and appreciate every single day I spend here, always trying to fit in and get to know something about the Italian way of life while dealing with countless people who are here on an exchange program as well. Not that the time I've spent living in Firenze has been bad, nothing but that. It's only that I don't think I'm living what we'd call a "regular" abroad year, or at least, nothing like the ones my friends lived. In this post, I'll explain why.

#1 The locals

What I've noticed so far is that, even if you try speaking Italian and you manage to say a few phrases even going further than just a "Ciao, buona sera, come stai?", they are friendly but not very interested in you. I'm talking specifically about people at Uni, where of course we exchange students are a daily constant but, I don't know, it feels like when at my home University back in Spain, we would always be very interested about the exchange student sitting at the very end of the class. We would always go speak to them, or try to include them into work groups for assignments or just talk to them if they're a bit isolated.

But here is like, NOTHING. If you ever talk to them, they answer nicely and politely, but that's it. The conversation is finished. If you are isolated at the corner of the corridor having your lunch doing nothing, no one comes even to ask you how you are doing. I don't know if it's because I'm from Spain and that automatically makes extra-socialization to be on my genes (and I'm not the most talkative and smiley kind of girl, I must say). I just don't know what's wrong with them... Or me.

#2 The other Erasmus/international students

As I said at the beginning of this post, I don't usually enjoy doing the things people my age in Spain usually do. Although sometimes I have my party-animal side when I'm at the comfort zone around friends, I prefer calmer activities and I'm very concerned about how many of the family savings my parents are sending me to live a year full of experiences. Every single penny counts, and although I don't starve and I still grab a couple of meals outside every week or even go out for a drink once in a while, if I can put aside a tiny amount of money every month, I do.

On the other side, most of the international students I've met during my almost two months here (which happen to be 90% Spanish, duh) only meet after midnight EVERY-SINGLE-DAY on the same two spots of the city (really? Isn't there a city full of marvelous places and squares to meet out there?) to binge drinking and just do nothing during daylight because they've a hangover. If I'd wanted to party every single day this year, I would have stayed in Spain. I assure you I've never seen a party like an Spanish one in no other part of the world. And way cheaper!

#3 Daily duties

Now I'm able to understand a little better my mum when she's all day complaining about dust and fluff forming in my room. I still can't figure out how it's possible to sweep and mop the floor twice a week and still, deal with fluff big as bunnies the minute after cleaning everything up. I manage quite worthily with laundry and meal prep, I must say. But grocery shopping is something I never thought could be so painful. How is it possible to get through the week when you just have three apples and 1kg pasta pack on the fridge?

#4 REAL University duties

Nothing comes for free in life, so, I knew before coming here that those four horrible subjects from my University I wanted to validate here wouldn't be easy as pie. I must confess it feels a bit easier than at home, doing almost the same assignment I would do by my own in Spain while here we work in pairs or team but still, there's a lot of work to do.

In fact, when I'm not sweeping (cruel, true daily life of the student living on her own) or strolling around (which is almost 50% of my time) I'm working with my colleague on the massive assignment we'll be delivering in January, always sketching and drawing and cleaning floor plans and rendering. Because let's face it: I wouldn't want to come home without those subjects in particular passed!

#5 Day trips and international students associations

And finally, after this poor and boring monologue about the struggles of the average Erasmus student who doesn't like dust bunnies in her room, you'd be wondering... OK. What about associations where you can meet other students and people willing to make international friends, and be happy altogether and so on?

Well. Nothing of that exists, or at least, not at the association where I enrolled, in which by destiny enrolled the 99% of all the Spanish Erasmus students that I can't stand. Yes, day trips to places like this one we took to Perugia are quite nice but I just feel like I prefer going on my own, or with a bunch of nice people and not belonging to a huge group of other hundred students which, let's face, it's quite the task to organize and move around at the same time.

... And this is all the thinking I did during our bus trip to the Eurochocolate fair in Perugia and which I felt I needed to share with you guys. So...

Have you ever felt as I do when traveling abroad? Is it me turning nuts about the whole situation? Do you also have weekly battles with dust balls big as bunnies? Do tell me in the comment box!

#AirMomentUPV. Some say it's the journey and not the destination what matters the most. Well, when it comes to architecture and design of anything I would absolutely say that! Last Saturday we had the chance to have the girls from Conjuntos Empáticos (which is an investigation group about architecture, art and pedagogy which gathers up some cool people mostly from Madrid) as guests at Valencia Architecture School to teach us about inflatable and pneumatic architecture, which we could make ourselves with their priceless help.

We spent the whole day at the School, a group of nearly 30 Architecture students working non-stop patterning in huge plastic rolls, cutting edges, "sewing" pieces with our flat irons and basically, invading the whole School's hall to build a huge inflatable, plastic "mushroom" in which we can get inside!

It feels amazing to see the process, from the first excitement and don't-know-exactly-what-I'm-doing moments to the peak of the day when you see it all black and you're sure you won't achieve the goal, to the final countdown in which you realize you're part of the the team, everyone's working super hard to get the work done and you'll achieve it. It makes me remember last year's ETSA·TOPIA festival, which was all about team-work with people you might not even know at all, but whom you end bonding and sharing those crazy, race-against-time moments. I find these kind of experiences super important for anyone in any professional field: it develops teamwork, empathy, social and crisis-solving skills which are essential in any job, but specially in architecture. You are supposed to be against this kind of experiences every single day in your future, so better be prepared!

So, that's the main reason why I'm bringing you these pictures today: mostly to see the process behind that very cool thing we built. Those are the pictures which hide our conversations while "sewing" plastic, our desperation moments because we couldn't find any sense to the patterns and seams (but we figured it all by the end of the afternoon) and the final result. At the end, fashion is a series of processes and creative solutions to some needs and problems which are supposed to be solved, too. And which are supposed to be of good use: in this case, we will use the #AirMomentUPV pavilion to meet and have a cozy place to relax between classes and seminaries at the Architecture School. How cool is that?

Have some of the following ever happened to you? What sort of things bothers you being a blogger?

- Why do you write in English if you live in Spain and have Spanish as a mother language?

This project started the first time I traveled to the US to improve my English, so I thought it would be nice not only to improve my speaking but also my writing. Talking about what I loved, liked or inspired me would become my motivation to master a language I was learning. Then the blog became bigger and I realized writing in English allowed me to not only gain more readers but also to understand and be understood by a large following I couldn't have achieved if I only wrote in my mother language.

- Why do you usually wear your lips with red? (And then... "You look much older")

Seriously... There's a lot of people who seem to have so little to do other than only consider how I wear my lips. I like how red looks on me. It's something physical and easily recognizable at first sight on me. Nobody wears red lipstick around me and it's my sign, something that makes me who I am.

- Everybody can stand in front of a camera, pose and then just write nonsense on a blog

I affirm that everyone can write a blog. It's easy, and you can talk about whatever you want to. But keeping an audience, get people interested in what you write and shoot is different, and maybe I'm not the best doing that, but I assure you not everybody can do that. You must know how to connect with people, you must understand analytics, you have to process the pictures and make everything have sense after you stand in front of the camera. Being a blogger is easy. The point about it keeps the blog and remind yourself almost every day why you do it.

- Change the content of the post because we didn't like how it sounded or the things it pointed

I can say that this has not happened to me many times, but it has happened to me somewhat. And you can't even imagine how unpleasant it felt. Not because I wrote anything bad (which I think I didn't) but only because someone didn't like my opinion and told me to change it. As it sounds: change my own opinion. 

This blog is my place. Is my voice. I don't only write for sharing, networking and inspire others, but also to express what I like, what I live, what I do. And I find way more disrespectful to tell a blogger to change her opinion that whatever the blogger wrote if it was on a polite way with its evidence. You have to deal with that.

-Write/review something to me free 

I blame not only to those PRs, brands, and agencies which do this kind of practices, but also those bloggers who accept this terms. Would you work for free? Design something for free? Write an article in a local newspaper for free? I wouldn't if I knew that someone would be earning a huge profit with what I've done. So, it really pisses me off when I get e-mails asking me for "publishing just some pictures and talking about our brand to your readers". Really? I work really hard for getting those amazing followers, I always write my posts with all the devotion in the word... And you're asking me to sell myself like that? Sorry but, no way.