As my week at home running into the long Easter weekend,
Tuesday coming round meant that it was back to the daily grind, with the added
fun of being a commuter now that we had moved office. At the end of my 20
minute metro journey, I spotted a girl from work getting off the train ahead of
me, and so was able to follow her to the office, nicely avoiding the difficult
first navigation to work experience. However, once there I discovered that in
the chaos of moving last week, my desk didn’t have a phone line put in it,
which meant no internet nor access to the company programmes. In between lots of
phone calls and trying to find various people, I had to spend most of the
morning just twiddling my thumbs. I eventually found a desk I could work on
(with a computer screen = massive bonus when working with spreadsheets all day
as sooooo much easier to see everything than on a laptop screen!!). However,
the desk is only free until 3pm, and so I am now a little nomadic in day to day
life as every day after lunch I take my laptop with me and change desks!
On Wednesday evening, I met Alex and her parents again for
dinner by the port as it was their last night. It was a lovely mild evening, I
had a very yummy steak and it was great to see her again, although very strange
to think that the next time will probably be back in Durham in October.
 |
| Reunited, albeit briefly! |
Once I sat down and thought about it, I realised that I
didn’t properly have any of my own friends here in Barcelona, which was a
pretty overwhelming thought. In Paris and Salzburg, I essentially had it handed
to me on a plate. I already knew people in Paris, plus was working with younger
colleagues so they were easier to make friends with. In Salzburg, I met all of
the other TA´s in the very first training week. Here I have lovely flatmates,
which I am VERY glad for, but I don´t know anyone else on a YA here, and
although everyone at work is very friendly, they all seem to be quite a lot
older and so not as easy to connect with. Despite being a little taken aback by
this realisation, I tried not to dwell on the negatives, and instead got
straight down to trying to find a couple of tandem partners, as I figured that
would be a great way to meet new people while working on my Spanish at the same
time. I also worked out that I only actually had April to get through, as from
May onwards I had lots of visitors to look forward to.
By the next day, Thursday, I had arranged my first tandem
meet-up (it turns out there are lots of people in Barça keen to practice their
English!). I went to meet him after work, and we did half an hour of English
and half an hour of Spanish. Again, he was a little older (ie. married with a
child!), but seemed friendly and so we arranged to meet at the same time next
week. To be honest, it was just very nice to be doing something social
independently. Things also seemed to be looking up at work on the social front,
as since moving desk I had got to know a new group of people and I was now
going for breakfast with them every morning. These guys were actually much much
older (ie. near retirement…), but as my mother said, “Take what you can get!”.
The huge bonus about getting to know this group is that they only speak
Castellano, whereas a lot of other groups either constantly switch, or only
speak Catalan with each other, and as they´re older they’ve got a bit more
patience if I stutter over some words, which is helping my confidence when
talking Spanish.
On Friday one of Raul's friends was DJing in a pretty exclusive club and we were going along to support him. We went for drinks first in 'La Obeja Negra' (The Black Sheep), which is themed like a German beer hall, and actually did the best beer I've had since arriving in Spain. After that we went to the club. We arrived early, at around 11pm, so that we could say hi to his friend before setting up etc, but it was absolutely dead in the club! We had a few drinks and around 1am the club slowly started filling up. The Spanish, true to the stereotype, are much better dancers than the English. They are a lot more relaxed on the dancefloor, plus have a lot more natural rhythm! I was encouraged to dance with them, but surrounded by people who can actually dance felt a lot more self conscious than usual and was quite reluctant to. I ended up leaving with Cecilia at around 3am, and we had a mad hunt through the rain for some food which, for such a big city, proved very difficult to find. We eventually find a little cafe still open near the house, bought some croquettas and empanadas, hungrily devoured them on the way home, and then fell straight asleep.
On Saturday I had a nice long lie-in, and then headed into
town with my flatmates. As my flatmate Cecilia had just gotten back from her 3
weeks in Mexico, this was the first time we were all together as a flat. We
went to one of their favourite places in the Gothic area, which is a little
hole in the wall place called La Alcoba Azul.
It’s quite a narrow restaurant, with stone walls but a really cool
atmosphere. They give you free tapas with every drink, as well as doing some
great nachos and hummus which we shared to start before having our own main
courses. That evening, I headed out into town with Cecilia, her boyfriend and
his 2 friends from Germany. We had a nice night bar-hopping around the Gothic
area, as well as a cheeky visit to my favourite shots bar.
On Sunday morning the flat got together to hit the town
again, but this time quite literally, as we were headed to a PILLOW FIGHT. We
got on the metro with our pillows in toe, and were a little worried we were
going to be the only ones there, as no-one else had any form of even cushion
with them. However, as soon as we got to Plaça Cataluña, it became clear that
our fears were unfounded as there was music blaring, lots of screaming and
feathers flying. It was absolutely hilarious; hitting strangers with pillows is
seriously underrated! The ‘organisers’ had brought fog horns with them and when
they sounded them everyone went really quiet, and then they sounded them again
it was all arms up, pillows in the air and everyone went charging again. The
funniest time was when they sounded it and really spontaneously everyone lay
down on the ground and started to go to sleep with their pillows. I know the
idea of a pillow fight with people you don´t know sounds strange, and I admit
that I was sceptical at first, but it was genuinely a hilarious afternoon and
I´d fully recommend going to one if you can!
We went to an Irish pub for a
couple of drinks after, and then Raul and I finished off the weekend with a
nice KFC bucket.
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