Preparativos

In 2 days time I will begin my 5 weeks au pairing in Barcelona. As a language student, au pairing has never been something that struck me as a way of practising Spanish, seeing a bit of Spain and earning some money - this all changed after a conversation with my friend Tara at uni. Tara was telling me how she'd applied to be an au pair in Spain for the summer, after looking into it myself I decided I too liked the idea of it and also began to make a profile on an agency website.

I definitely didn't expect the amount of responses I received. I spoke to potential families from all corners of Spain but mutual differences and expectations always seemed to result in me getting absolutely no where for about a month or so (and me being me, I expected to find my dream family overnight). I began to give up and think maybe this wasn't for me until, with luck, a family in Barcelona wrote to me expressing their interest and after many emails of introductions and information about the job, my flight was booked and it was a done deal.

Those who know me will remember how gutted I was when I didn't get my first university choice for the Erasmus year abroad. I had my heart set on Barcelona but truth be told I'm not quite sure why. I had never been there nor did I have any specific reason why I wanted to go apart from the fact I was one of a few bunch of students studying Catalan (the official language of Catalonia), which I clearly thought made me the  obvious choice to be granted one of the 8 places out of the hundred Spanish students at Kent who also all applied to go there. Instead, I was placed in Granada. To cut a long story short, I was sad but I am now very excited to begin my year abroad there in September. The fact that the family that I am au pairing for live in Barcelona is a massive plus. I may have missed out on the chance to study there, but at least I am lucky enough to be able to spend some time there over summer.

Having never done anything like this, I am not sure what to expect from this experience but I am going with the intention of speaking a lot of (and improving) my Spanish, helping improve the children's English and just experiencing the Spanish way of life. Oh, and getting a tan wouldn't go a miss (never going to happen - ginger genes).

When I booked my flights back in March, 20th June seemed so far away but here I am 2 days to go and now I can't believe how quick it has come around. I've got loads of sun cream, a new camera and my suitcase is just about packed - I think I'm ready to go!

My next post will be from Barcelona. ¡Hasta luego!