Well my last month in Spain went very very quickly. Not really that much new things happened, which is why I didn't update anything.
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| Me and Miguel at the cena |
A few weeks before Christmas we had a cena - which was a bit like a Durham formal in that we had to dress up for it - because it was the end of the year, but we had it early because of exams. All the residents and then all of the staff were there. We had paella as our main course... I tried prawns with their heads on for the first time, and felt a bit under the spotlight when the entire residence watched me pulling the heads of the prawns and complaining that I was taking too much meat off the tail. But yeah, I managed to get over my phobia of seafood. Then after desert we had nougat, which is a typically Spanish thing to eat around Christmas time. Afterwards we had a party in the residence, which we weren't normally aloud to do, but because it was this special night we could. Then we went to a different, new club after which was a bit expensive but a nice change. All in all it was a really good night. Speaking of Christmas one thing that I thought was weird, but probably good in Spain was that the Christmas lights are turned off at about 10:30, probably because of the crisis but it makes good sense as no one is really out and about after tea time when the shops are closed.
We also FINALLY went to the main beach, called Playa Samil, me and Marta walked there one Saturday (because it was a bank holiday we couldn't get any buses) and it took agessss, but it was worth it because it's really nice. The beach itself is huge, but it wasn't very occupied because it was December, which probably made it nicer. Apparently in Summer you can hardly move on it, but if I were Spanish and I wanted to go to a beach to sunbathe I don't think that Galicia is really the place I'd head for.
There was an indefinite bus strike for the last few weeks, which mean limited services. I ended up missing my oral exam for a Spanish course I took because I thought the bus that normally came still did but in the end it was one of the cancelled ones. But this being one of the countries in the world where rules are bended on regular occasions, I sent my teacher and e-mail and she let me do it another day; that day I made sure I was there earlier...she was there late of course.
I had a lovely send off from the people in the residence; they had clubbed together and bought me a load of different stuff, including some things they didn't think exist in England like Doritos or Ferrero Rocher, so I just played along with it and let them think I didn't know what they were. They also all wrote a person letter to me that I wasn't aloud to read until I was home, made me a photo album and a signed Spanish flag, among other things. So got some lovely souvenirs as well as the memories to take with me.
All in all my four months in Spain were fantastic. That's the only word to describe them. I never thought I'd make such good friends speaking what is officially my weakest language. My confidence in Spanish has grown so much and I feel that I've got to know a bit about the culture which I didn't really know before, having never been. Spain, despite its lack of care for time, or rules, or any order whatsoever, is a brilliant country and once you learn to accept that nothing happens on time or that your answer to anything official will be "come back tomorrow" or that you won't go to bed before 1:30am and you don't let it bother you, you will fall in love with Spain and get given the status "español adoptado". It's definitely somewhere I can see myself studying or working after university.
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| Going home |
