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!!!

DAY 145: Estoy harta de España

Yesterday I was helping out at an event for people who claimed they had "too much money". Our business was to advise them on what they could invest their money in or spend their money on. As I arrived at 7.30am at the office, there to help out with the setting up as per usual, Mabel came up to me and said "So Sarah, do you have a boyfriend? There´s a lot of good looking rich men coming and you know, you could do well here". Bingo Mabel - you wise wise owl. Luckily, as it was an event, I was dressed smartly and had tried making an effort with some sexy (yet murderous) red heeled boots to top it off. These boots seemed a bit of a stupid idea later on in the day, as I ended up with blisters after walking to and from to and from to and from the meeting room with clients. Anyway, to my disappointment, all these men were really a bit too old for me....and married, so my dreams of being spoilt rotten with Michael Kors, fancy restaurants and romantic getaways went out the window. 

Apart from that, work has been pretty shit lately and I´m not enjoying myself as much as I was previously. I´m working with this girl Marta, who is lovely and all, don´t get me wrong, but she really is not the most interesting/logical/organised person to work with. My days are filled with checking bloody excel sheets against databases to make sure that all details of clients are correct and honestly, after doing about 2, I´m checking Facebook as a way to "interest" my life. It´s a shame because I liked Marta before, I´ve been out with her and she was very welcoming, but working with her is a whole different matter. This is why maybe its good not to "mix business with pleasure" - my social life and my life at work are two different stories.

I´ve also been ranting recently about Spain in general and how backwards I think the whole country is. Horrific timetables of businesses prove inefficient; the service industry cannot even compete with that of the UK (which only in comparison I have now noticed is much superior); men are sexist; and women are far from equal both socially and in the working world. There are a lot of other things that spring to mind, but I´ll save that for another day...

Living alone can be quite hard too. Yes, most of the time I like it, I can do what I want, have my own space, not care about washing up etc etc etc, but it does get lonely. It´s probably not the best idea that I spend my "lonely" time streaming episodes of 90210 instead of doing anything sociable or productive, but sometimes after work, I just get so tired (and fed up) that my wee bit of "relaxing time" turns into hours of tv, sleeping and eating. There´s a reason why I am getting so fat here! And socialising here, from my experience, consists mainly of drinking beer and nibbling on the free food they give you with it. Not that I´m complaining, I love my beer, but my belly really doesn´t and my professors back at uni most certainly wouldn´t either...

Anyway, fed up of all this, I have decided to go home this weekend, take a break from Spain and spend some time with the fam (and my dog...). Of course Mabel was fine with letting me off yet another day to go home early (she really is the most chillaxed boss) and my mum has been asking what I want in the fridge for when I get home (ahh Mummy you treat me well). Djibril (my dog) will be awaiting, and my Harry Styles cardboard cut-out from my 21st will be standing there beautifully. I´ll have the car and not be afraid to use it because of crazy Spanish drivers and my tv will be just a little bit bigger ;)..the only thing lacking is the beautiful Spanish sun - but I´ll be back in front of that next week (to "top up" my (very very fake) tan)!

DAY 8: La Mierda

Being a Scot, it´s understandable I find the heat here difficult. That is why last night my stomach was tossing and turning for hours whilst I huddled over my toilet. How grim. I blame dehydration and my habit of drinking beer instead of water. However, it could also have been the ´tuna´empanadilla I had at lunch...tuna is meant to be red, right? I was so gutted as well. I had been invited out for drinks with some Erasmus people that night, MY FIRST FIESTA IN SPAIN!!! Instead, I lay in the fetal position in bed, watching a partiuclar home comfort of mine, The Great British Bake-Off. Moving on from that, I feel so much better today and I am even considering going out for drinks tonight - you can take the girl out of Scotland...

The past two days at work have been just a little bit better. I emailed a Madrileño from the office in London who I met this summer and asked her if she could "hook me up" with anyone in the office here. I met Laura, a lovely, younger, Spanish girl who said that she will show me around the city. It´s been with this that I´ve been thinking how important it is to push yourself in these situations. You need to ask people about things and express when you´re unhappy. Otherwise, like before, you could just end up sitting at a desk all day doing nada.

The boss still isn´t great though. However, I did get some slight satisfaction over her the other day. As I implied previously, she´s one of these people who is quite up on her high horse. As I went to the office loo and waited as the cubicles were all full, my boss then appeared out of one. Seeing me there waiting, an embarrassed expression spread across her face - that's right, she had done both a stinker and a floater! 1 - up- slaw. Don't look at me like shit babe if I have to look at yours. And oh, I waited until another cubicle was free...faeces makes me gag.