First impressions and struggles through the everyday life in Spain

Huh, now I’ve been about two weeks in Spain. It’s been great but, honestly, it’s not been only one or two moments when I’ve thought why on earth I am here...  At the moment, I’m in Vigo which is my new home town. I struggle a lot with the Spanish way of speaking Spanish but most importantly, I feel the most unsocial I’ve ever felt because I cannot talk with anyone with any of the languages I know a bit better and my “conversations” mean that I mostly listen what the others say. Moreover, not having the possibility to react naturally to situations really makes you lose your personality. Also, I desperately miss Mexican food, Finnish milk and heating systems – really, I don’t remember too many moments of feeling warm during the past two weeks and the problem is that I think it is colder inside the house than outside. Welcome to south!

I decided to spend the first weekend in Madrid really discovering the touristic side of the city visiting the best known sights like the Museum of Reina Sofia and El Retiro Park. The thing that touched me most in Reina Sofia was a cardboard box where there was a fork and a disposable knife in one corner of it and a Nutella-jar in another. Great. One more reason why I don’t really like going into museums no matter how sophisticated it would be. And I'm sorry, I don't have a picture of this master piece but go and see yourself, the entrance to the museum is only 8 euros and the queues were not so bad. In general, Madrid is a beautiful city but it has an atmosphere of a metropolis and the people on the street are not too thoughtful towards other people. However, that is probably the way of living in most of the cities having millions of people there and apparently that style just does not fit to me. Thanks Madrid, it was nice to visit and see the places I’ve heard about from my Spanish book but I am happy to have my exchange in Vigo where I don’t need to be scared of people to trigger their umbrellas right to my face when they step out to the street!

After taking a flight and a bus I arrived to Vigo which is my lovely home for the next few months. It rains a lot here but occasionally, for example at the moment as well as in the photo below, sun is shining! There are about 300 000 people living here and the city has a good vibe (and the best beer ever comes from this area). What is more, it should be relatively easy to travel to other parts of Spain as well as to Portugal from here. My home is located really close to the city center, we have a balcony and most importantly my roomies are the best! This is the moment to say that life is good - even without the heating. I am happy to be here and the next months will, for sure, be great and beyond.

Me being happy here does not mean that it's been only lovely, actually it means exactly that there have been some problems too. As it appears to happen always when you go abroad for a longer time, the beginning is not all so easy no matter how excited you are. The biggest problems and also the biggest successes so far have been with the language. When I arrived, I spoke Spanish, or maybe at this point it’s better to refer it as Mexican, just enough to survive with hotel bookings, flight check-ins and that sort of stuff. Nonetheless, already now after two weeks, I’m able to have some sort of discussions with other people and help the old lady in the supermarket close-by when she asks for me to pick up the cheese from the upper shelf. I’m progressing! All the same, just not to have it too easy, I have learned that basically none of the expressions that are normal in Mexico are suitable to be used here if I don’t want to end up to jail or to another maybe-not-so-pleasant situations… So, now I’m always considering twice what to say.

Today will be the first exchange student party for this semester, school starts on Monday (regardless of the fact that I have still not received any information where to go and when), probably I will learn to know more awesome people soon and hopefully my feeling-unnaturally-unsocial period starts to get closer to its end me learning more and more Spanish everyday… Or at least my level of Finnish and English is decreasing so rapidly that I'm assuming that the capacity is being used for Spanish. Waiting to see how my blog looks like in a couple of months!

Diverse Florida & always so lovely Mexico City

Vacations are over and now that I have arrived to Spain it is time to start building my life here. However, before doing that, wrapping up my past few weeks sounds like a good idea.

Probably needless to say but the vacations were great regardless of those usual small adversities like flight delays or changed schedules, long queues and misunderstandings with foreign language that you always face when travelling. Also, I didn’t really get a chance to sun bath enough - yes, this is what I was really looking forward to after the autumn in Finland - because of the unbelievably windy and unusual rainy weather in Miami, but luckily Florida provides you with plenty of other things to do.

When being in Florida, visiting Disney World and Universal Studios in Orlando are must-does and that’s what we did too. Both are definitely worth visiting even though the price of one day ticket to each of them is around 100 dollars. However, to my big surprise I preferred Universal Studios over Disney and was slightly disappointed with Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Of course, it was awesome to see Minnie Mouse and the Incredible family alive in the traditional Disney parade but the parade was basically the most Disney that I got. For example, many of the rides were not anyhow related to Disney or at least I couldn’t see how just a regular indoor space roller coaster is related to any of the stories - but well, that was awesome anyway. As could be predicted, queuing times were easily 45-90 minutes for all the better rides without the express pass and I can assure that the ones that don’t have a queue in front of them are only gonna give you a good laugh about how ridiculous things exist, but that is amusing too, right?

What I liked the most when being in Florida was definitely Key West, the southernmost part of USA, a small town of around 30 000 people living in there. If you go to Florida, go to Key West and spend there more than one day because the atmosphere is really special and easy to fall in love with and there is also a lot to see in Key West, examples being the house of Hemingway and the harbor of the town. What is more, just the general appearance of the neighborhoods is so lovely that spending time with just wandering around is not a problem. Another high point during the vacations in Florida was visiting Everglades with a boat trip to see alligators in their natural environment. Of course, tasting alligator and frog legs was a part of the experience. Alligator actually tasted good but that might be the case with everything that is deep-fried... Frog legs (not deep-fried), on the other hand, tasted about the same as a fish smells like so you can decide by yourself if it is good or not. Anyway, it was an acceptable change for the overwhelming daily diet of hamburgers and cheesecakes.

This was my first time in USA if a-couple-of-hours’ visit somewhere in the north doesn’t count. I got what I was able to imagine but also experienced maybe the biggest culture shock I have ever had (!) and this is probably because I mistakenly thought that Finnish culture would be to quite a big extent similar to the culture in USA. What hit me the most, was the laziness or even rudeness of people who were supposed to be doing customer service. Some customer servants barely muttered something back to you if you asked something and some didn’t even listen what you tried to say. Sometimes they snapped something back to you with not so nice a tone if you were being stupid in their opinion, but maybe it is their sense of humor that I just didn’t get. On the other hand, Nike and Hard Rock Cafes made exceptions in this, having the most amazing service you could imagine. Clearly, if you go to Florida, you are kind of supposed to survive on your own and not to expect others to mind your business. Rent a car, find things out from your travel guide book and remember to reserve enough time for entering the country no matter if you are staying there or only changing planes for further destination because the customs take tons of time.

When landing to Mexico after being in USA, the change of atmosphere was really evident. Of course, it is easy for me to say this having lived in Mexico but I think that others will experience the same. The careless traffic, not so sophisticated buildings and sales people yelling on the street give some sort of sense of freedom at least to me. Also the amazing talent of Mexicans to get a normal day into a party just within a snap of fingers is admirable. It was amazing how little had changed during the 7 months I was away and how getting back to the people you know, felt like there had been at most two weeks since the goodbyes.

(This is actually from Key West but fits well here :) )

I got extremely lucky and had a chance to spend the New Year’s Eve with a Mexican family which was a really important experience for me and really got me speechless - literally. The feeling, when people who haven’t even met you before, accept you to their home on a special day like you were old friends, is something that I cannot describe but I do recommend everyone to try that out if the possibility is offered at some point. Even though I still struggle with my Spanish I didn’t feel like an outsider at the dinner table but rather the opposite, really warmly welcomed. It was lovely to notice that you can always communicate even though there wouldn’t be plenty of common words that both parties understand. So far Mexicans are the most helpful people that I know and it is easy to feel like family with them. I couldn’t wish for any better start for a new year. With that said, leaving was once again sad but it is quite relieving to know that Mexico will always be another home for me. 

P.S. Ending the vacations is not that bad when you know that there will be new adventures to be explored right around the corner! Hopefully Spain treats me well too!