Taking the Reality Plane Back to England
Firstly within those three months I finished being a
conversation assistant at my school, secondly I completed five weeks as a
monitor for the English summer camp, and finally after surviving those tiring weeks, I have migrated back to England. Now I find myself in my usual position
for blogging, slumped comfortably but lazily on my double bed. There isn’t much
inspiration being drawn from my bomb site of a room. I don’t even over-exaggerate when I describe it in this way. It resembles the illusion of an
explosion taking place both from my suitcase and wardrobe. This is Laura Whitehead's attempt to clear out her room. Of course it’s not organised, I can’t seem to do that.
Instead I just pull everything out and make dysfunctional piles of shit. Why am I so messy, and why do I own so many things? So now I have let my mind wander, away from the mess surrounding me. With music on, this is when my writing begins to flourish.
The reason I’m making such a conscious effort to clear out
my room is to help clear my mind, and organise myself...haha. I just finished almost ten months in a
foreign country where I learnt lot about myself, fell in love, discovered differences
between Catalan/Spanish life and English life and got a stupidly burnt on the last few days. Something I cannot, and will not forget about living in Catalonia was the generosity of the people I met. They were so open minded, as well as helpful, and I also had about five different people offer me rooms in their house for whenever I want to return. I must have done something right to receive those offers!
Just like this time last year, I
once again have big life decisions to make which terrify me. Do I move back to
Spain? What job will I have? Where will I live? How long will it be? What makes
me happy? How can I be less pale and not look like a tourist? Life is always full of questions, and sometimes not all of them are
answered, however I know that decisions can’t be made over night, decisions
come with time and thought – everything slowly falls into place.
Since coming home I have been really appreciating my ability
to understand everything and everyone around me, except maybe those with very
strong Essex accents. I find myself talking to almost everyone I possibly can. It’s
crazy how language barriers can have such an impact on life situations. It's really difficult. Unfortunately my Spanish did not get to a standard I hoped, and my Catalan consists
of a phew phrases learnt from students in the summer camp such as ‘tinc set’ (thirsty)
or the more frequently heard ‘tinc pipi’ (I need to pee).
It’s really true when I say how isolating it can be not
understanding the people around you, especially when you can be sat clueless
for long time frames, whilst those around you have full-blown conversations. It’s
not a case of being rude, it’s because sometimes it’s impossible to constantly
translate a conversation. I also developed the skill of switching off, the
Catalan conversations became background noise to my own thoughts. A lot of the
time the background noise of Catalan conversations left me feeling disappointed
in myself for not knowing more of the language. More than anything, it made me feel useless. At various occasions I reverted back to a child, needing someone to speak for me. I hate feeling useless, but there wasn't a lot I could do. The thing that is extremely frustrating is that when you do pluck up the courage to speak Spanish, you are shot down as they automatically reply to you in English.
I was very lucky to have a host
mum who always encouraged me to speak in Spanish, and even to points where she
would pretend she didn’t understand English. I also met a great woman called
Chus who became my language exchange partner. We would speak 45 minutes in
English, and 45 minutes in Spanish. She helped increase my confidence in
speaking Spanish. I think at the beginning it’s important to find someone you’re
comfortable with to practice and help the language flow, and I had just this.
She always reminded me that even if I don’t think my Spanish has improved, I
just need to reflect back to when I first arrived to notice just what I have
actually learnt.
Now I'm home I still write in Spanish to my old host mum but
unfortunately I don’t think I will find any time to practice Spanish orally. My
plan is to go back to Catalonia towards the end of September but I won’t talk
too much about that yet as I don’t have a concrete plan, and when I begin to think about it my head hurts. I had an interview for
another assistant job in a different school. It’s not exactly the same role,
but it would be nice for a new environment and the pay is very good, however
alone the job is not enough for me to live comfortably. So this is where the
problem develops, but I can’t apply for anything else until the start of
September.
I’m going to enjoy the next few weeks I have here before I
start to panic too much. It’s really nice being home, seeing my family, friends and
honestly, just being immersed in comfort and the English way of life again. I
will admit I have missed England but it’s the strangest feeling being away for
such a long time and then coming back. You realise that nothing has changed
that much, and furthermore it's as if your time away was actually only a dream. Thankfully it's the moments when I speak to my host family and boyfriend that I realise
that dream is still waiting for me in Barcelona. We will see what
happens…
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