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!
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