Lost and found in translation. Kika in Madrid

My first week in Madrid

The best place to start is always the beginning, right? So let’s begin our journey back in cold Latvia, where I was packing for 7 month trip to one of the greatest cities in the word for my EVS project «Enjoy Madrid».

On the first of February I was saying goodbye to the life I had before and saying hello to new adventures and possibilities. I had no idea what I was getting into, and probably still don’t, but this definitely will be a life changing experience and I can’t way to start my journey.

When I first think of Madrid, I expected it to be like any other European city, but on my first day when I wanted to buy a still drinking water at my local supermarket and none of the 5 people understood me,  I was like – „oh, this is going to be a problem!”. But there are solutions to every problem, so day by day, word by word I’m finding my solution.

Talking to people on the streets, asking for directions or even driving the metro. There are so many possibilities to learn a language. There is a huge difference between learning language in classroom and learning it in the real environment, talking with native speakers.

So for my first week I’m starting to understand Spanish culture and everything else that it has to offer, for example – food. On my second day I had the opportunity to try some traditional Spanish food at “100 Montaditos” during the siesta time. That’s so nice. As I later found out, that Spanish and Latvian “time standards ” are completely different, here people have dinner at 22:00 and for us Latvians it’s almost bed time.

I also was so surprised by the fact during the night the city changes. The streets are packed with people, old young everyone is so friendly and having fun. City is so welcoming in any time of day or night. I have heard about it before, but to see it with your own eyes, it was incredible. You could just feel the great energy of the city and I was happy to walk around and be a part of that.

So far my time in Spain was full of adventures and it feels like every day here is a new chapter of my life and thats the way to go…