DAY 213: La Visita de Isabel

Having not seen my friend Izzy since the end of uni last year, I was so excited on Friday for her to come and visit from where she is Barcelona. After arriving early evening, the first thing we did was crack open a bottle of red in preparation for the long catch up we desperately needed and then headed to one of my favourite restaurants in Madrid, Tartufo.

The rest of the weekend I had to put on my tour guide cap and I was fairly proud of what I could remember and how to get to places....my sense of direction isn´t the best and the invention of google maps on your phone is normally of big use to me. We started off by going to the Royal Palace which is absolutely huge. Each monarch had about three big rooms for wardrobe, sleeping and "chilling" and the decor was detailed with gold, paintings and intricate patterns on the walls. The next stop was for a fro-yo and a wander before a good old siesta and a night out. 

Bringing Izzy into the Puerta del Sol (the place where it all happens) at 1.30am, we scrounged around for promoters who all wanted us to go to their particular club. After almost being persuaded to go to a place called Palace, we decided it wasn´t really our scene. He originally started his spiel with how it was house and electronic music and when we asked if there was commercial stuff he just agreed with us as to get us in. It´s probably pretty clear by now that that´s not really my thing and Izzy, being a big fan of The Den, Floritas and Dirty Pop in Newcastle, was on the same level. After then telling this random guy that the club, Joy, was shit, we ended up there, with an awkward moment of seeing him in the club and eating my words. However, it turned into a great night, with a bit of hat-stealing, running away from creepy Spanish men and dancing like we did in the toon. A night out with Izzy has never been a dull one. 

Surprisingly, we felt less hungover on Sunday morning than we did on Saturday.....it seems to be that one glass of wine now can have a serious effect on how my head feels the next morning. The first stop for us that day was El Rastro, Spain´s biggest flea market and I´m really glad we went because Izzy seemed to really enjoy it. The best stall we came across was a crown stall and we spent a good 15 minutes taking selfies whilst trying them on before the owner started to realise that we were in fact not going to buy anything. We did think, however, it was a weirdly good look, that sort of elfish look that maybe could be taken as a new fashion statement in Newcastle....that´s "edgy" right?

Afterwards, we met up with our fellow course mate, Minna, for some good old Mexican food and then headed to the Prado museum, where I tried my best to be "cultural" and explain to Izzy my favourite paintings. I think the best I came up with though was "so this painting is famous". A walk through the beautiful Retiro Park was then on the cards before the lovely Spanish sunset hit, ending the night in El Tigre, one of my favourite bars in Madrid where you get mojitos the size of your head with platefuls of free food alongside. Oh, and then we had another fro-yo. 

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, potentially one of my favourites, and we are already planning now a trip to Murcia...although with 5 weeks left, I´m not sure how possible that will be.

Work is dull but it´s only a 3 day week this week and tomorrow I am off to La Rioja with Liz...the land of the Spanish wine! 

DAY 209: La drama sigue...

So the drama continues...

As mentioned the other day, Marta left and everyone was shocked. Yesterday then, Mabel pulled me to the side and just started crying into my arms. Apparently Marta had bad-mouthed her in a 3 page essay to Human Resourses when she left, telling them that she was a terrible boss and horrible to her and a lot more. She had told our big boss, Marta Colomina, that Mabel badmouthed her all the time and was trying to get her job, and then she told some of Mabel´s closest friends at work that Mabel was fake and wasn´t the person everyone thought she was. I was completely shocked. As everyone should know by now, I love Mabel. To me, she has been a great boss - she is friendly and supportive and clear and very professional in her manner with everyone. You can also see just how much she gets on with everyone throughout the office. I was aware that there maybe was a bitchy vibe in our team of 8 women with some of the girls, as Marta didn´t really get on with them that well, however, it´s not something that I have ever experienced with them and I haven´t witnessed anything outright horrible, especially from Mabel. We all sit together and I have not once witnessed a horrible attitude from Mabel towards Marta. Because of this, now Human Resources are looking into it all and scanning emails exchanged between Mabel and Marta and other people to see if there is any written evidence and we are all getting questioned on how Mabel is as a boss. Meanwhile....Marta was messaging me telling me not to believe anything I hear from Mabel. Christ. 

Since all that, there has been sooooo so much bitching in the office and I came home shocked that 30 year old women were acting this way. Not impressed. However, it is quite interesting and dramatic. There´s also this thing going about that Marta has had another job for about 2 months and when she was off ill before Easter she was actually working there. No notice given to anyone at our company or anything. Crikey.

Today, the bitchiness seems to have died down, but the story of today was a false fire drill where all the lifts stopped working. We were told after 40 minutes waiting outside in the cold, and wind which was basically just smelled of people smoking, because I´m not kidding, EVERYONE seems to smoke in Spain, that we would have to take the stairs back up to our floor. Now, we work in a tower with 50 floors and mine is number 47 so I wasn´t best pleased with this seeing how unfit I am. Luckily, LUCKILY, the lifts started working again, so now I am back to being the fat ass that I always am!

Noelia, the newish girl, who I wasn´t too keen on before, has also started being nicer to me. I think it´s because she has just started this new project with Alumni that I usually work on with Marta and so I have to teach her everything. She said to me today "Sarah what am I going to do when you leave?! I can´t do this without you!" Well well well look at that....I´m very pleased indeed. Everyone is going to miss the slaw :P

DAY 208: Vuelvo a Madrid

Back in Madrid and it´s raining....it was sunnier in Edinburgh!

So it´s actually been a fairly dramatic week at work. Marta, one of the girls on my team, appeared on Tuesday 2 hours late in her jeans and suddenly announced she had quit PwC (as of that day). She didn´t give any reasons for it and hadn´t informed the boss or human resources or anyone, she literally just gave no notice and said she had just come in to collect her stuff. Now, I´ve known for a while that she never really got on with the other girls on the team, but was shocked that as she walked away, no one even hugged her goodbye. Confused and assuming I hadn´t understood the Spanish correctly, I went after Marta to ask what was happening and she just repeated that she was leaving and that she would be back at 1pm to tell the boss and that then she would explain to me. About half an hour later, Mabel came in, unaware of this news and her reaction was literally "well Marta is fucked up in the head"....really a bit harsh Mabel...don´t really like that, love. Anyway, Marta didn´t return and so I messaged her to ask what was up. About 6 hours later she replied "I am moving on to a better life and my despedida (farewell party) is on Thursday. I hope to see you there". In addition to this, she didn´t invite anyone else in the department. I´ve always thought that some of the girls at work could be a bit bitchy, but since then it´s really been taken to an extreme...bitch bitch bitch bitch.

So that was that and I felt I bit bad that just that morning I was considering leaving the job slightly early....however, despite my boredom here at work, literally have fuck all to do these days, I think I will now stay on - 6 weeks isn´t long!

It is nice to be back but coming back to an apartment by yourself can be a bit hard and so far this week I´ve not really done much. A lot of tv has been watched and I´ve been crying away at both Made In Chelsea (poor Binky) and Eastenders....I really am far too emotional :P.

Anyway, this weekend will be fun as my friend Izzy from uni is visiting me, and I´ve got to get my "tourist cap" on.....San Bernebeu.....Retiro Park....The Palace........let´s hope the sun comes out again! Then next weekend, well actually as of Thursday as Spain is giving us yet another holiday, I am off up to the north of Spain with Liz for a wee "break" (yes, both of us already need a break!). As to do it as cheap as possible, we have found a random person on the internet who is driving up there and who we are effectively just going to hop in a car with. Probably not something my mother would approve of but with the two of us I´m sure we´ll be fine!

Hasta luego.

DAY 195: La Semana Santa Viene

So another 4 months down in Madrid and it´s time for my Easter holidays and I´m really looking forward to a relaxing week at home. Spain definitely has had both its fun times and hard times and the whole experience is something I will vividly remember.

If I think about work, I came out here terrified, and speaking Spanish all day every day was so intimidating. Luckily my Spanish has improved a lot but with Mabel speaking to me in English all the time, perhaps I should be better. I think the whole thing when learning a language though is confidence and the more you speak it, even if you do make mistakes, the more you will improve. Anyway, despite her always speaking English to me, I have to thank Mabel for a lot. She´s so kind and has always been so supportive of everything and she is a really fantastic businesswoman. On top of that of course we have the fact that she is bloody gorgeous. I know I´m not a lesbian but I definitely am attracted to her ha. Her boyfriend is a lucky lucky man! The rest of the team are lovely too and Mariangeles is another girl who I ´ve really appreciated here. She sits opposite me and we chat all the time (this time in Spanish)…mainly about Ryan Gosling! It´s been really nice sitting with her for the past 8 months and despite her being a good 15 years older, she´s really been a friend. We of course have the people I don´t like though, and for people who know me well, the list of people in this world who annoy me is probably far too high! But anyway, first we have Noelia. Noelia came about a month ago and she is an intern like me but a few years older. Anyway, if I´m going to be honest here, she just absolutely loves herself and I can see her judging me every day and she always makes snide wee comments which piss me off. She´s so patronizing as well and thinks I can´t speak Spanish so just doesn´t like talking to me. Almudena is another one, or “Almu” as she gets called, which I don´t know why cracks me up. She´s nice I guess but just very…very.. dull. Finally, we have the German girl, Alex. It´s very much a love-hate relationship. For an 18 year old she is very close-minded and judgemental and comes across quite rude, but at the same time I do go for coffee breaks with her a lot and today we got on ok so I haven´t closed my opinion completely on her yet. I think she´s just complicated to understand, plus I guess we are just very different people. Anyway, enough of that bitching and back to work – sometimes boring, sometimes difficult and sometimes enjoyable – the matter of the fact is though that it has been a very good and possibly rewarding experience for me.

When I come back after Easter I will hardly have anytime left here and I know I´m going to miss the friends I´ve made out here a lot. I don´t really socialize outside of my work with my colleagues but of course I will miss them too.  If I´m honest we have probably had too many nights out of drinking far too much, doing silly things, kissing boys and munching on McDonalds but that is part of what the year abroad is about, in my opinion (that´s coming from the view of clearly a drunken mess). And of course we have had fun travelling…..Valencia….Lisbon….Toledo….Salamanca… - I literally just want to travel all the time now!

It also took me a while to embrace the Spanish culture. First of all…they eat so bloody much! I still don´t understand how most of them stay so thin – I swear they are eating at every moment of the day whether it be a “snack” (although to me a sandwich is not a snack?) or a big 3 course meal…with of course lots of bread and litres and litres and litres of olive oil. Olive oil is literally put into every single food they have here. You see people buying 5 litre bottles of it in supermarkets and that’s just to get them through the week! I for one am looking like a plump pudding. In addition to that, it took me a while to get used to them eating so late. I have lunch at 3/3.30pm every day and I´ve been out for dinner with friends at midnight, which isn´t even unusual! Spanish timetabling is something else as well…it´s so relaxed and mightily inefficient – the amount of times I have complained about at it this year has led me to write my assessed university essay on the year abroad this year about it. We also have the culture of the men, the very pervy, very sleazy, very sexist men. In clubs they want to grab you at any chance they get, so much so that two of my girl friends have ended up punching men in the face, and I´ve left the club fuming ranting my traditional “I hate men” speech. In the streets they yell at you and ask you to sleep with them and the sad thing is, that you just kind of have to get used to it!

However, as much as I do complain about things though, and I do like to complain, Madrid is a great city. The madrileños are incredibly friendly and welcoming people and the city is beautiful and always thriving. It feels like a city that never sleeps and everything is also all so cheap (apart from make-up…almost every British girl I know here really misses Boots). I can´t really complain about the weather here either – blue skies and well today, its 27 degrees. Of course I am sunburnt, and of course the Spanish are still going round in their unfashionable polo-necks!

Anyway that´s me off for just over a week. A nice big lunch with Sanderson after work today to celebrate and then Newcastle tomorrow followed by HOME. Here´s to my final stint in Madrid after Easter!! Not much longer to go!!!