Oh my God I haven’t written anything in over a month!! Sorry
sorry sorry I’ve been so bad! Let’s try and make up for it now… you’re warned,
it might be long!!
So what happened since the last post? Well, I HAVE MOVED TO
SPAIN!!! It finally happened, bags packed (46kg, I travel light…), and off with
a plane I go! Then again, it was an awful flight. The ticket was uber-expensive
(Iberia, who would have known), and then they charge you €7 on-board for a
sandwich. Obviously I just settled with a poor man’s version of a tea (served
with cream, they don’t know what milk is), before being shaken 4 times, yes 4,
by a turbulence. Now let me rephrase this. I’ve been taking planes for the best
part of the last 20 years on a regular basis and I encountered many different
situations, however this was genuinely the first time I was scared for my
life!!! I never had it so bad ever before, and the fact the flight was 2h40
long didn’t help either (it just wouldn’t stop!).
However I managed to finally land in Madrid (after a final
sudden drop that made my stomach have a friendly conversation with my ears) and
I could finally touch stable ground. For the first time in my life, I was in
Spain! Getting from the airport (huge, but weird) to the city was easy, and I
went straight to the holiday flat I had booked for a week, where the nice
landlady welcomed me and said I reminded her of her grandson (oh darling!!) and
then proceeded to compliment me on my Spanish (as did the taxi driver before her,
I already like this country!).
However the term holiday flat shouldn’t fool you, this was
not meant to be a holiday at all! Straight away, the search for a permanent
flat started! Day after day I took names of the list, not because I liked the
places, but because they were dumps. Day after day, I was getting more and more
worried. I arrived on Monday 22nd, by the 25th I was
crying thinking I would have to live under a bridge and missing the UK so much
because there everything is easy! That’s when the internet through at me
something unexpected which totally saved my life. If you are reading this and
next year you are moving to Madrid (or Barcelona), then listen: there is a
website called spotahome.com, where online you already find photos, description
and a professional video. The site’s team have already checked the flat out for
you and written down what is good and what is bad about it. What you have to do
is check their list, find what you like, and then simply book the room online. Within
48 hours (in my case it was 12) the landlord accepts your request and you’re
ready to move in! So by Saturday 27th I moved into my new very nice
home! Huge flat, 7 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen and dining area, currently
being fitted with a sofa and a TV, bills included, and almost in the centre of
Madrid! So finally I could relax and deal with everything else Spain would throw
at me…
Hang on, not so fast! What happened next wasn’t AT ALL
relaxing! If you want to live and work here for more than 3 months, you have to
get the NIE number, a unique number which identifies you as a foreigner (in
case your Spanglish didn’t give it away already…). Before going, I checked
everything online on the government’s website to make sure I was ready for it. As
if!! I went to the office (somewhere in deep suburbia), queued once for 20
minutes, met a man who sent me to another man, who then sent me to a third man,
where I queued a further 30 minutes, who after carefully considering my case
(for 30 seconds) sent me to another man, who made me wait 10 minutes (he wasn’t
doing anything by the way), who then carefully considered my case (for an extra
30 seconds) before telling me I was in the completely wrong place, that I had
to book an appointment online to another place 2 metro stations down the line
and that I had to pay a tax before going there. Result? After 2 hours, I
achieved absolutely nothing except sore feet… by the way there’s a catch, in
order to book online you need a Spanish phone number (of course you have one
being a foreigner, right?). So I went back home and cried again (I would have
got drunk but I didn’t have any alcohol on me to help me through that AWFUL
moment…).
Since that wasn’t going to happen, I decided to go and open
a bank account. Some require your NIE, they just wanted my passport (thank you
I love you!). However, it wouldn’t work. After 2 hours trying the nice lady
sent me home and kept on trying on her own: she managed it though at the end,
so thank you!
The following day (Tuesday 30th), the first
Language Assistant meeting occurred. 4 fun-packed hours with representatives of
the Comunidad de Madrid and the Spanish Ministry of Education, where they spoke
about (guess what?) how to obtain a NIE. I ALREADY WENT THROUGH THE WHOLE
PROCESS THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! But never mind, I stayed there those few hours,
then went home again.
On the 1st, after going to the school to meet the
teachers I’ll be working with plus other staff members, I went to a second
meeting, just with the Ministry this time, at a hotel just outside Madrid. I
thought it was going to be some small dump somewhere on the outskirts of the
city (they were paying for all the assistants in Spain to be there), but it
wasn’t: officially the biggest hotel in Europe, it was a HUGE 4 star hotel with
MASSIVE double bedrooms and THE BIGGEST buffet dinners you could possibly have!
I’ve slept like never before and eaten like never before!! The meetings
themselves were quite boring, but I had the chance to meet other assistants
from Madrid, share stories with them, and then share drinks! This lasted 3
days, so good…
Back in Madrid, I had the weekend to get ready before my
first week teaching at the school. Nervous doesn’t even come close to describe
my feelings!!! Monday comes and I appear… main comments from students and
staff? “Who is this?” “What is he doing in the staff room?” “He looks fifteen!”
and so on… I had to introduce myself to all my colleagues before they thought I
was stealing some exam papers or changing some marks for fellow students… From
then, 16 hours (that’s my week) started in which, hour after hour, I said the
same things about myself to all my 16 classes, and replied to the same old
questions (what music do you like? Are you a Real or Atletico guy? And the ever present So have you got a
girlfriend?). It would have been rude to reply with a “mind your own effing
business”, so I just had to answer all of them, 16 times, in a row…
However they kids are mainly nice, the school is a good one,
and I love my colleagues! I am now at the end of my second week of teaching,
and it’s great being greeted with massive smiles by the kids when you enter
school, who start screaming your name and ask you how life is going! It’s a
good feeling…
This is getting long, so I’ll now quickly say what else
happened/I’ve learned in these first 3 weeks in Spain:
- My friend Veronica from Italy was here too, so we managed to
do quite a bit of tourism;
- It can be really hot, but then it goes down to really cold,
and because of this I am now ill;
- Fresh milk does not exist. You can find it in selected
supermarkets, in a small remote corner covered in cobwebs;
- Eating vegetarian isn’t as hard as I thought, most
supermarket have a rather good selection of vegetarian food;
- Nothing is easy, not even getting a bus pass: I had to book
an appointment a week in advance and complete extortionate amounts of
paperwork;
- I am still waiting for my NIE, and my appointment isn’t
until the 30th of this month. The tax form I paid with is now fading
of old age;
- I have been out every weekend since I’ve arrived, and it’s
good;
- In 10 days I’m visiting my best pal Katy in Alicante, along
with great pal Francesca, and other amazing pals Georgia and Gemma (it wasn’t
planned by the way), so we’ll have a massive UEA LCS reunion!!!
This is all I remember at the moment. I need to go to bed
because I’m working in the morning (still not used to adult life…) More stories
will follow soon I hope.
Until then, HASTA LUEGOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
