Hi you!

I've been working to create some of the pages of Locate app. First of all, I forgot to tell you about the Locate meaning as I was more interested into showing you guys how we were developing our logo. I didn't know we would spend so much time on that, cause the logo didn't seem as the most difficult thing as we want it to be very clear, functional and simple. But a brainstorm of ideas came to us, and I decided we should work a little more on it and incorporate something which was meaningful for the app. So I once showed you our first logos I created with Photoshop as first ideas I had. But I want to show you how it is going to be the final logo. 

We tried to build our new logo, but as it were some new little objects we wanted to put togethere we asked for a little help to our teacher to help us. As you can see there is a world, which is strongly related with 'travelers'. And there's another drawing which is a fork with a little sausage on top. The fork means eaters or restaurants to eat, and the sausage stuck on it is like when we poke a tack to mark the place you want to go in a map. So these are both meanings we wanted to include: first of all the word travel, global, world and the other one restaurant, eat, food.

Hi there!

I have to say I'm kind of stressed this week. I had a lot of work, not just from uni but from work in which I am working as an Erasmus reporter here in Cardiff for the Catalan Television called Tv3. 

I really like what I am doing. It helps me to improve my journalism skills as I didn't have much time before to work for anything related with my degree. When you want to gain experience doing any internship it isn't normally well paid, so every time I could work for vacations in the past I preferred to earn some money and leave internships for a future. Now here I have the opportunity and I have to say I incredibly like what I am doing, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the work I should do and I see I am not able to work more than 24 h/ day. It is confusing sometimes, because I feel I am maybe losing some things from the 'Erasmus' life, as sometimes my friends are going to visit places and I have to keep doing my work... But anyway, in the end it will be rewarded :)

Here I show you one of our typical Spanish cooking days we usually have in Senghennydd Court residence due to invite all british and erasmus who wants to taste traditional dishes from our countries :)

Hey buddies!

Today me and my group-mate have found out a new tool to structure the different pages or layouts regarding to our app development. We started to think & plan what we want to have in each page of our app writing every kind of idea. Also drawing them in paper as we didn't know any other way to do it. Then we discovered what I think it will definitely be one of the clues to organize ourselves and to know what we have to create afterwards that with Photoshop CS. The limitations we find with Lucidchart is that we have limited time to use it as we have to be subscribers if we want to use it after these 2 or 3 weeks for free.

We found this tool reading the recommendations from our teacher Naomi in one of the Module Content she gave us every week. So thank you to let us know this tool! It will be so useful not just for this module but for every group work we will have in a future.

Here I share with you what we did due to organize our work with Lucidchart:
*Click here if you want it to see full size*

Morning! How are you?

While I'm warming my hands on a steaming cup of tea, I'll try to give you some briefly ideas about what I've been planning to develop since I started Spring Semester in Cardiff uni.

First of all, you may notice I've just given up writing in spanish, my native language (I will explain you in the following paragraphs), so as it's been a long time I didn't post anything here.  There were good excuses for it, such as new projects I've been planning to develop, and enjoying to travel around the UK too. So I think both are quite good reasons to stop posting at least for a while.

I've always told you about positive aspects of living in Cardiff. It is not that I just wanted to post about how incredibly things are going and forget about the rest, but I preferred to tell you the good things because I AM truly having the best time of my life and, in the end, I would NEVER regret my decision to come to Wales. However, I must tell you it was sometimes hard and I didn't tell you the 'worst' part of it because, even it is not that dramatic, it would be unrealistic if I wouldn't tell you there were little obstacles sometimes (even I insist it's not that bad). It has been fully related with the academic world, uni.

When I first arrived to Cardiff in Autumn Semester, I truly felt misfit sometimes just in terms of university stuff:

- My classmates did have their own group of friends because they knew each other from other years. It is hard for anybody to adapt in a new environment of people you don't know, so imagine it is in a different country, culture and language. Whilst it seems it can be terrific, it wasn't. There were other Erasmus or International people in the same situation as me and I didn't have problems at all. I must say british people has always seemed incredibly nice and warm to me, and I was surprised how things changed in a few when I intentionally forced myself to make an effort and speak to others.

- Essays were a new thing to work through as in Spain we don't have an specific way to deliver our work. I really had troubles to get used with it. I also had to make an effort to understand the british accent (as I have always been in a US English Academy, it was so hard to understand people in the first place. And imagine welshy students!)

- I had to double my time when writing essays and portfolios. As I normally write in spanish or catalan, it took me ages to write something with sense. I really had Google Translator as my unequivocal tool in life for several days.

Teachers didn't make a difference between foreign and native students. You are required to write in a correct form. Grammatically I had mistakes as I didn't practice english for TWO YEARS! Ok, I watched loads of movies, programs and Tv series twelve hours a day in english, but come on, it's not the same.

All I wanted to say is that it was a bit hard to achieve purposes in terms of uni and modules stuff, but I've passed my exams so I am happy even though I could get better marks.

Now I return back to the start which is the main object of my post. So maybe this little turbulence of 'being in-adapt' encourages me now to start the Spring Semester with such a different new perspectives. And the new modules seem to be much more better in comparison with the others I had before.

There is a new module I want to introduce you. The Social Media Trends has been one of the modules I chose to do this semester, and I think it's going to be a very productive and also inspirational module.  I hate when modules are based in lectures in which you will have to memorize all the information to do an exam because you end up forgetting everything you've been trying to memorize just to pass the exam, and not because you're truly enjoying it. So it's time to focus in this new project and developing ideas!

In this module we will need to 'design and develop a form of digital communication that addresses a business need'. We can develop it in many different platforms: blog, tumblr, pinterest or an app... As long as they better satisfy the market needs, you can choose whichever. Me and my classmate decided to do it like an app because the app will be for travelers who want to discover which places they are able to find typical food through every country in Europe. We want to create like a big community to share information about restaurants or places to enjoy a recommended typical food places. So it will be like a huge restaurant searcher of 'real' food from every country.

Here I'm going to post all the process and you will be able to see how we build this new app for travelers. We still have to decide the name of the app and also look for what kind of apps already exist and analyze the competence to improve our own app.

Hope you're going to enjoy the new project. See you! xx