5 things I miss about England

I’ve been out of the country for over a month and, apart from the obvious friends and family, it’s the small things I’ve found myself missing, like…

1) A kettle. Most Spanish people don’t understand why anyone would own a kettle because they never drink tea. I’m not the biggest tea drinker so I don’t miss it for that - I actually quite enjoy having to make tea with a saucepan because it makes me feel like I’ve earned my cuppa. I miss it for making food. Boiling the water in a pan takes double the amount of time and, stupidly, I only ever start cooking when I’m hungry, so those extra 5 minutes feel like a lot longer.

2) Shops being open between 2 and 5, and at all on Sundays. If you haven’t bought food for Sunday beforehand you will starve. Fact.

 

3) Being able to ring my friends and family when I want. Calling home now has to be a big, planned event on skype and conversations have to last at least half an hour. This has been detrimental to my relationship with, for example, my brother who has just started uni himself so neither of us have any time (he’s only in his first year though so I think he’s probably using this as an excuse not to talk to me). At home if something interesting happened it’s so much easier to have a quick 10 minute phone conversation.

4) The pace of life. Everyone always complains that British people never have any time for anyone and everyone’s always on the go. I quite like that. It means everyone gets straight to the point and things happen faster. Here, spending 3 hours eating lunch is no big deal and the ‘hasta mañana’ attitude means that everything takes double the amount of time.

5) Politeness. When you are walking in Spain people will not move out of your way. Staring for an awkward amount of time is acceptable. If people need to spit in the street multiple times nobody thinks anything of it. People will tell you exactly what they’re thinking, as I found out the other day when a Spanish man told me I looked really ill. Thanks for that.

Doing as the tourists do

I’ve now been in Bilbao for 4 weeks and I can finally say that I’ve seen the landmark the city is most famous for – the Guggenheim museum. The museum celebrated its 15 year anniversary this weekend so entry was free and the first 3000 visitors each day got free cupcakes. Unfortunately going to bed at 4am meant we missed out on the cupcakes, but we still queued for 15 minutes in the rain exhausted and hungover which I think was quite an achievement. And, honestly, I was a bit disappointed with the museum.

The Guggenheim is an incredible building, and you can’t miss it when you walk the streets of Bilbao so I guess I was expecting something slightly more amazing. The actual structure of the building inside is still incredible but the exhibits, in my opinion, were pretty forgettable. I’m probably not the best judge because I don’t really appreciate art in general, but I was happy that I didn't pay 8€ to walk around what, at times, I thought resembled an IKEA warehouse. 

The teaching side of things in Bilbao has been going ok. At first I loved talking to the kids’ one on one because it’s easy and I love talking, but there’s only so many times you can pretend to be interested in someones favourite music. So I’ve asked if I could start taking some whole class lessons instead, and next week I will be teaching the students about Halloween. I never thought I’d see the day when I actually want to take on more work. I did have one mishap, however, last week that still hasn’t deterred me involving the teacher asking me to explain the meaning of words like ash, flood, and volcanic eruption which is quite difficult for someone who never paid attention in GCSE science lessons; so I stumbled my way through giving explanations such as "ash is what you get in a fire". She then asked me to write on the whiteboard words to do with the topic natural disasters and had to correct at least 5 of my spellings (in my defence they were words like lightning and tsunami). When a native Spanish speaker corrects your English spelling I think it’s a sign that you’ve officially been studying foreign languages for too long.

How to survive without internet

So, we’ve been without internet ever since we moved into our flat 11 days ago and despite the obvious annoyances of not being able to speak to family and friends our lack of internet has actually turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise. Instead of staying inside watching English programmes and skyping we’ve been forced to find other things to do. Consequently, we’ve seen more of Bilbao and have gone out almost every night since we’ve been here. This has also prevented us from getting home sick because we’re so detached from everyone that right now it feels like nowhere else exists.

Only after we spent a ridiculous amount of money on copious glasses of wine (wine in Spain is cheaper than water) to justify spending so long in cafes with wifi did we realise that the bar next to us has wifi that we can reach from the lobby of our apartment block. So as I’m sat on the floor in the lobby (we’re now probably notorious with our neighbours as the weird English girls) I will give a brief update of my last two weeks. I moved into the flat. I went to the schools for introductory lessons - turns out my schools are both taught in Basque which isn’t ideal for improving my Spanish. I went to the training days. I met more people. I went out. I slept.

I realise that my brief update doesn’t make it sound like I’m having a great time but I’m now beginning to believe everybody that says the year abroad is the best time of your life. I had my first proper week teaching this week and spent most of it discussing One Direction with the students. Going on first impressions I think I’m going to enjoy this ‘teaching’ thing. 

MY ROOM!

Kitchen

Lounge

View from my balcony