Hola a todos!
First of all, I am very sorry for the break between this post and the last. You will always know when I am very busy as I tend to struggle to update my blog weekly. However, as a result of a two week gap, this post is going to be a long one so sit back, relax, and enjoy!
On Friday it dawned on my that it is now May which means that it is the beginning of my fifth month living in Sevilla (Scary right!!). Although I can't help feeling amazed and proud of myself for getting to this point in the semester once again, I also can't help feeling sad that my time in Sevilla will be ending in just five and a half weeks time. As those of you who read my blog regularly will know, semester 2 has been challenging due to losing my original Spanish work placement at the end of January. However, it has also been a time in which I have come to realize that I really can feel comfortable and extremely happy living in a foreign country which is something very important for linguists. This is because many of us will go into careers that involve travelling and experiencing different cultures, so feeling at ease and completely happy during a year abroad placement is definitely a step in the right direction! Although I really enjoyed my time in France as well, I have definitely found the semester in Spain more manageable which is natural due to it being my second semester abroad and having more experience with travelling and living in foreign countries. I am definitely going to miss the city when I leave but I am going to miss the people who I have met here the most as they have been incredible and made me feel so welcome and happy in their country!
Alongside absolutely loving my internship and day to day life in Sevilla, I have also kept up the travelling in recent weeks! We have had quite a few bank holidays recently due to cultural festivals in Sevilla so I have made the most of the opportunities to travel further afield. On the last weekend of April, I went up to Santiago de Compostela which is a city in the north of Spain in the region of Galicia. I really enjoyed this trip as my friend Alyy is doing her Erasmus placement there so I spent the weekend catching up with her whilst exploring the city. It was a very interesting experience because I was able to see how completely different the north and south of Spain are in terms of culture and climate. It was much colder in Santiago than in Sevilla and there was a lot of rain but it was a beautiful place and had a very individual feel to it due to the celtic influence and the Galician language which are characteristic of the region. Alyy and I even had traditional Galician Pulpo (Octopus) for lunch on one of the days so I truly felt like I embraced the culture in the three days that I was there. I also highly recommend that any of you who travel to Galicia in the future try the famous Tarta de Santiago. This is an almond cake that you simply cannot miss out on! Yum!
I got back from Santiago and worked for four days last week, and then set off to go to Italy last Friday morning and didn't get back until yesterday morning (Monday). I also have a friend who is doing an Erasmus study placement in Italy so I went to visit her in Bologna. However, we somehow managed to fit visiting Bologna and Venice into the weekend which was a real added bonus! My three days in Italy were again an interesting adventure as I had never been to the country before and could not speak a word of the language (luckily my friend Sarah can!). However, I saw how useful learning foreign languages is as I was surprisingly just about able to understand Italian due to being able to speak French and Spanish. As they are all Latin languages, they are all very similar so I found that most words in Italian were either similar to the equivalent in French or Spanish. Not bad going!
I am really glad that I visited Italy as it is a beautiful country and the food is absolutely out of this world (had to mention that!). And it was great to be able to visit Italy and Galicia within a week of eachother as they are two places that are completely different to what I am used to in Andalucia. I was particularly amazed at the way in which the city of Venice has been built as people literally step out of their front doors onto boats as the canal runs right through most of the streets. Incredible!
Anyway, I am going to finish there for tonight before this post gets too long. I am working as normal this week and then my friend Catrin from Bangor is coming to visit Sevilla this weekend which will be lovely as I will also get to see her again after not seeing her since June last year!
So you can see that it is a busy lifestyle for me at the moment. However, now that I am getting so close to the end of my semester in Spain I am really making sure that I make the most of everything here and get the very most out of the final days of this experience! I will be back again next week with more stories to tell you. However, for now I will leave you with this post and some new photos on the 'Extra Travelling' page of the blog which I hope that you enjoy looking at.
Hasta luego!
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