A Sudden Change of Plan!

Hola a todos!

First of all I would like to apologize for the silence in my blog over the past couple of weeks. I have found myself in an unexpected and difficult situation which is not something that year abroaders would usually expect to experience. In fact, I was highly unprepared for the shock and stress that was ahead of me. However, I would now like to share these experiences with you so that you can learn how to best deal with something like this.

To sum it all up, I was very suddenly informed last week that my job contract in Spain would be coming to an end the following day which as you can imagine was quite a stressful situation for an Erasmus student in a foreign country. However, I was very relieved to find out that this was nothing to do with me personally and was in fact due to economic problems within the company. After receiving the email informing me of this, I spent about two days crying and then realized that this would actually not get me anywhere with the situation. Those of you that regularly read my blog will know for a fact that I never ever let a difficult or negative situation ruin my experiences and therefore always find a proactive solution to the problem and you will soon find out what actions I took to sort the situation out. This time last week I was extremely fortunate to have my cousin coming to stay with me for a few days as this meant that I was not going to be alone over the weekend and it also meant that I could talk to somebody who has done a year abroad in the past to get a second opinion of my plans. So in between sightseeing and lovely meals out, we discussed the situation until I had made a clear plan in my head of what I would do next.

With the help of my cousin, my parents, and staff at my British university I soon found a practical solution to being without a job in Spain. This was because once I had clearly explained the situation to the university it came to light that the best and most efficient way to find another work placement would be to travel back to Wales as soon as possible and stay in my university town until I had sorted something else as this would mean that I would be in an environment where I could receive the necessary help in this situation. I have also been in very close contact with my parents which has also been very helpful. With all of this support, once I had got through the initial stages of stress I traveled back to the UK and very quickly started to look ahead and send off my CV to various companies in Spain but mainly in Sevilla. You will be amazed to hear that after only three weeks of living in Sevilla, I really did not want to leave. This is because the people that I have met there have been absolutely wonderful and the city is beautiful so I have found that I have subconsciously formed a bit of an attachment to the place. I have therefore been very much focusing on finding a way to continue my Spanish Erasmus experience in Sevilla in order to continue the incredibly positive experience that I had there.

I have now been in the UK for six days and am still spending most hours of the day hunting for jobs and trying to get back to Spain as soon as possible. I am also doing everything I can to end up back in Sevilla so I hope that once I am through this hiccup in my year abroad I will be able to blog from Sevilla to let you know what has come of the situation. However, for now, I would like to let anybody who is currently in the same situation as me or anybody who could have this experience in the future that it is not the end. I keep telling myself that although I feel stressed and quite disappointed that such a positive period of my year abroad came to an end so suddenly, I will find something else and I will get the best experience out of it even if it is not what I originally planned to do. I did try to change my placement to a study placement in a Spanish university but it is unfortunately too late to register and I would also have to change my Erasmus paperwork to a completely different form of agreement so I am continuing to search for another job. Although I am keeping positive, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family, friends, and the staff at my university for all of their help and support in the past few weeks. However positive I remain, it is still very comforting to know that there are people supporting me so I am very grateful for that.

I am going to finish here as I should probably get back to job hunting but I just wanted to update you all and also to let you know that I have added some more photographs to the 'Photos-Sevilla/Andalusia' page of my blog. So please feel free to take a look at those and I will hopefully be back with more adventures to tell you about within the next week or two.

Hasta luego!