UNIVERSITY, A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES

The University of León is, without a doubt, a growing place due to the new building sites that are being carried out in the area. Founded 28 years ago, there are more than 1400 staff working there and 13400 students including 2600 erasmus.

Vegazana Campus is composed of 15 colleges where you can study many different degrees. The College of Philosophy and Letters is the oldest one, and lots of cultural activities are performed there. Worthy of mention are the visit of the Buddhist Monks and the numerous exhibitions of books and pictures that take place in the entrance of the building. The University is also adapted to the new days creating places consisting on the most modern technologies, and a great example of this is CRAI-TIC.

Besides the colleges, the campus has a lot of interesting buildings, for instance, San Isidoro Library. ‘San Isidoro’, which is a great building where are included more than 430000 books, is the most important library in the campus. You can find there the perfect place to read and study. There are other smaller libraries in the different colleges of the campus, each one with specific books for their degrees.

Interview with Victoria and Lidia, students of ULE, about the University of León:

A European program exists for students who want to come to Leon to study for a semester or for a year; Spanish students can also go to other countries. This program is called `Erasmus´. There is a relationship which is called `Padrino Erasmus´ and thanks to which Spanish students help foreign students to look for a flat or to know the main things about Leon and the University.

Interview with Tatiana, Erasmus student of ULE:



Are you tired of doing always the same things? If you love sports, you can practise some of them in the campus. Near the college of INEF, there is a gym where you can choose between practising typical sports like football or basketball, or some kind of dances. If you prefer the nature, it is also possible to practise open air sports because there are some grounds around the university to play football or some other olympic games.
University also organises trips to offer other alternative sports to the students. Trips to `San Isidro´ to go skiing or snowboarding are a good option if you like this kind of winter sports and meet new people.

The School of Languages of the University of León is near San Francisco Park, which is in the centre of the city, and you can get there easily by bus or even on foot. In the School, you have the possibility of study English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Arab, and you will obtain 9 university credits. Each language is divided into different levels, and in order to have access to a higher level, you must do a level exam. Students will have three lessons of one hour a week, except Fridays and Saturdays, when the classes last three hours non- stop. As well as teaching all these foreign languages, the School provides Spanish Language for foreign people, and even the so-called University Extension Courses, where you can learn the Lionise language, outdated nowadays. Finally, the School of Languages has a complementary activity developed during the summer: Summer Courses of Spanish for foreign people, where they can take classes of Spanish language and culture.

Of course, students also have time to enjoy themselves and, what could be better than University parties to do it? University parties are the way a lot of students escape from the stress of their daily life. Each faculty has its own festivities, all of them celebrated the same way: one whole day of festivity, consisting on an ‘Espicha’, which is a gorgeous party in the middle of the campus where people go and drink, dance and make new friends. The committee of the respective faculty builds a big top with music and a bar where you can buy beer, calimocho (a mixture of wine and coke) or whatever you want to drink. Espichas usually start at 12 o’clock and they last until 11 o’clock. Fortunately, fun doesn’t finish here and after the Espicha, ‘El Húmedo’ is a must- see. El Húmedo is the old zone of the city where you can find a great number of pubs and discos with different musical styles. Erasmus students have particular parties in certain pubs and they have also discounts for drinks. Sadly, espichas are not accepted by everyone. The debate was open when the students were forbidden to celebrate espichas in the campus, a fact that unleashed dissatisfaction in all the students. The solution seems to have come with a meeting between the vice-chancellor, the members of the committees and the city council, where they decided that espichas will be celebrated on Saturdays instead of Thursdays. The question is: Does this solution convince students, used to celebrate their parties on Thursdays? Some students answer our question.

Interview with Victoria and Lidia, students of ULE, about espichas:



Thanks to the great number of possibilities the University offers us, we can get easily what we want. It is a fact that the University of León is growing, and it is up to us to keep it like this.