Does that make me a local yet or am I still a blow-in?
After a couple of rough weeks, I'm finally beginning to feel like things are falling into place bit by bit. I'm still not there, but I'm getting there.
The first couple of weeks were a lot harder than I thought they were going to be. I'm not saying that I miss home and less now than I did 4 weeks ago, but I'm beginning to deal with it a bit better!
It's hard getting settled into a city and getting to know your surroundings when you're in college 5 days a week, working in the evenings and also working at weekends. I work in an Irish sports bar that opens to show the early rugby games at 5:30am. I'm lucky that I've never had to do one of the 4am starts, but I have had to do some 6:30am ones- which means getting up at 4:45am since I live an hour away from the bar by Metro. Not ideal, but it pays the rent (just barely! The minimum wage in Spain is a joke!)
I'm getting used to the language too- eavesdropping is still an impossibility, but when people speak to me it doesn't feel like a game of Charades anymore. Trying to mime out what you want in a restaurant can put you off your food (and food in Madrid is difficult enough to stomach at times!)
There are still things that I don't understand about the culture (obsessions with bidets and crazies- refer to previous blog) but in time it might come to me!
Last Sunday myself and Yas finished work at 3:30pm so we decided to go somewhere to get out of the house and out of the bar. We headed to Casa de Campo which is Madrid's biggest park. The Phoenix Park has nothing on this baby! The place is incredibly beautiful and it was lovely to get away from the city for a few hours. On the way in we walked past Madrid's biggest zoo. We continued walking around the edge and realised that you can watch the dolphin shows through the trees if you don't want to pay (I'm sure they don't encourage this...) and a little bit further on, you can see into the baboon enclosure- why pay €18.60??
Instead of crows, the place was full of little green parrots (the same kind of ones that we have outside the college- yes there are parrots outside my college.) We walked for miles and barely covered any of the park- I'm dying to get up there for a proper hike! As well as the zoo, it has a boating lake and a theme park (Jack, you better be ready to get your scream on! Forget about laryngitis!)
One of the hardest things about doing an Erasmus year is missing out on things that are happening at home. Seeing friends' Facebook updates about the great night that they just had, or talking to people on the phone about funny things that happened. I'm going to miss my little sister's birthday on the 2nd October and I feel awful about that! Sorry Jess! At the moment Daddy is sick too and I'm going to be over here while he's having an operation done. He chose the perfect time to lose a kidney!
On the other hand though, you start to get excited about the little things again. Every day I'm counting down to when the next person to visit is! Jack in 7 days, Lydia in 42 days... Andrea and Jess, whenever you book your flights I'll start counting! You too Mammy!
I'm still trying master the small things- like travel- not time travel, but just regular travel. The Metro is fine between the hours of 6am and 1am- but getting to and from work in the mornings and on the late evenings is a nightmare! The bus drops me off miles from home and without the GPRS navigation system on my phone I can't get back again. I tried to get a taxi to bring us to work on Sunday morning and almost messed that up too! I had to ring 11 different numbers before I finally got an answer. The guy agreed to pick us up at 6am so that we could be in work for half past. At 5:40am I looked out the window and he was parked outside. I can only assume he had the meter running... When we went downstairs to get in the taxi we realised that there was a second one waiting for us too... I have no idea why but it started a taxi fight. In the end we hopped into the first one and headed to work. I reckon he gave us a tour of the city before he finally dropped us off- costing €16.80. I miss €6 Maynooth taxis!
Another thing that I'm missing about Ireland is the rubbish television. I tried to set up Sky Go on my laptop last night (simply for an Idiot Abroad 2!) and after about an hour of trying, it told me that I can't watch it unless I'm in Ireland or England! Bleh!
After a month of myself and Yas living in our lovely, big, girly apartment on our own, our new room mate moves in today. I'm due to start work in an hour so I won't get home until about 2am tonight so I'll have no idea what they're like! We've gotten so used to just being the two of us that another person is going to be in our little home! Let alone another dude!
The toilet seat is not being left up. Just putting it out there.
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