Here vs There

So, if you don´t know already, this post is going to be one about the differences about things here and back home in sunny England. I really haven´t decided where I prefer, and seeing as I really haven´t explored that much of England, let alone the UK as a whole (London, Essex, Brighton and Hove, Cardiff, Loughborough, Leicester... Devon as a child, not sure I´ve actually been anywhere else!), and it does actually rain here, it wouldn´t be fair to make that kind of judgement yet.

Let´s start with stuff I prefer here:

1. Pace of life
2. Prices (in Balaguer things are actually cheap, in bigger cities this is mostly due to the exchange rate)
3. Less fear of having your stuff stolen (this definitely only applies to Balaguer and the villages I've been to. In the cities I am so careful of my stuff that drives me slightly insane)

And stuff I prefer in the UK... (might only apply to London)

1. Personal space (and the fact that people will move out of your way in the street instead of doing their best to walk into you or force you to swerve. I'm not even being dramatic!)
2. Ability to buy hair extensions!! (Check the post before this one to see the struggle of buying hair extensions)
3. Walking pace (Sometimes you actually want to go somewhere and need to walk at more than 0.0001 mph)

And here´s some stuff that´s just different:

1. People don´t have passwords on their phones! (I have struggled not to take advantage of this)
2. Please and thank you aren´t that important (if you want to be polite to someone you know, just make sure you speak nicely. Passing someone the salt isn't going to win you a plaque in your honour)
3. There´s dog shit everywhere (it's as if most people actually consider the pavement a toilet for their dogs. Thankfully, this wasn't the case in Barcelona)

Here are somethings I wanted to talk about in a tiny bit more detail. This post is a lot to write easier having been to Barcelona and spent time with my own family, as I've noticed what they've found hard to adjust to and they've picked up on some differences to!

Weather:

Of course I prefer the weather here than in London! It does rain (shock horror) but it's not the incessant, depressing mess of English weather that I'm used to. The sun shines. It's also cold and sometimes windy, so I'm not sitting on the beach tanning like I was in Valencia, but it makes getting out of bed in the morning much easier.

Buying drugs:

Well, that escalated quickly! Okay, so I don't know anything about where you can get your coke fix, but if you want some hardcore paracetamol, don't go to the supermarket. You have to buy drugs in the pharmacy and you can get more in one go than you'd get in England. They're bigger too, so you don't have to take two to feel like your headache might've got better. I prefer Barcelona for this, buying basic medication along with your bread and milk is all well and good, but if you're like me it's worth it to stock up and that's hard to do when you're limited to 16 tablets.

Everyone wants to sell you something:

This got pretty jarring pretty quickly. Cries of "selfie" "cheap price" will interrupt your conversations, meals and strolls along the beach. Some of them will push it, try to convince you to buy it by staying near you which is uncomfortable but I've never felt an urge to pay them just so they'll go away. The guys selling flowers are the most likely to interrupt your meal so if you're on a date, sit inside for a better chance of being left alone. Definitely prefer London in this case. No one's gonna try to get you to buy their stuff unless you're on a market or passing a promotional stall in a shopping centre.

Begging:

Homelessness looks absolutely pitiful in Barcelona, as it is in too many big cities. I found myself giving people a bit of change or food if I had it, but not to the people that actively begged. I don't know if this is bad, that people will come up to you and ask for money or sit on the street and wail "ayudame por favor" but something in me wanted to avoid those people. In London people beg too, but you occasionally get someone discreetly asking you for change rather than wailing on the street. In this case I prefer London because it's convenient that you can walk by and pretend you haven't noticed someone in need. But both cities need to do more to help people with nowhere to live. These are global capitals. There's no excuse. 

Museums:

Make the most of the free museums in London! And join any campaigns to keep admission free because it's really worth it. That being said, the museums in Barcelona were beautiful and I didn't feel too bad paying an entrance fee. Getting into the Picasso Museum was free because I'm at university but I was blown away by it, so paying wouldn't have been so bad. Anyway, the reason I prefer London in this case is because you can see as much or as little of as many or as little museums as you want, without feeling like it wasn't worth it because you couldn't see asmuch as you wanted. Basically, there are a lot of museums in the city and its hard to fit them all in.

Transport:

The underground system is definitely better in Barcelona. You can use your mobile, there's more space and the trains  come at least every 3 minutes (if there's not a strike!). Of course, London's system is the oldest I the world, but you would've thought they'd have modernised by now for the the price of it. However, I don't know if Barcelona's Metro stretches as far and wide as London's and the buses are apparently better there too. 

*If you have any questions or are curious about other things then feel free to comment or message me privately and I'll talk about it in the next post!*

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Antonia xx

Au Pair Experience is BACK

After my one week hiatus, I thought it might be time to update you all on what´s going on. I´m no longer counting each day because it´s been a month now and before I know it I´ll be back home. Still, blogging is not longer coming naturally to me right now, so forgive me if this post is substandard in any way. My energy is pretty spent lately because I have a social life now (and not just with MF). I saw a lot of this over the summer when I was doing my placement with the Business School analysing expatriate blogs -once you settle in to a new place the normal thing to happen is that you blog less. It might also have helped that I spent most of my free time during the week braiding my hair, but that's not the point!

So, we'll run through the week then I have a kind of "Things at Home vs Things Here" post in mind.

Saturday

This was a big night out in the city with MF and a couple of her friends. Couldn't understand one of them at alllll. Imagine someone speaking a different language with a different accent and eating every word he's saying while mumbling. It was that. The bars were fun, especially the free sweets in one and the cute girl I had the typical drunk conversation with outside the toilets. In one bar they played a darts game but I was too anxious to join in (a dart flying through the air and stabbing someone seemed an all too likely reality). Then we went to a club until 6am which was quite fun, especially as everyone was dressed up for carnival, but while MF was wooed by the Italian Stallion of her dreams, short cowboy hat guy didn't impress me so much. It was a fun night, drinks were included in the €10 entrance fee which is pretty good considering the prices in the city.

Sunday

On Sunday I was completely dead. Somehow I managed to shower and change but other than that I was toast. There was family lunch but at home and just with Maria and Pol (tía y primo) and I skipped coffee and went to bed. The paella was good, it was different, more like soup which they eat a lot of here but good. The prawns were a bit scary for me though, absolutely massive with everything still attached, I didn't realise I was squeamish but their huge shrimpy body parts freaked me out a bit. I ate them though (well done me).

I felt a bit bad about going to sleep and I was not expecting a full house when I woke up! I'd heard a few voices but i didnt know another 6 people had been visiting and waking up just as everyone was leaving was so embarrassing.

Monday

Went to the library with MF which was needed because I'd not been study my classes as much as I needed to. Well, the library is actually closed Monday mornings but there was another place open, the cultural centre, where there are study spaces and WiFi. MF was reading a classic and helped me with some stuff I wasn't sure about, then I picked up the kids and their friends from school and as far as I remember, nothing too eventful happened that day. Class is still going too fast for me but I can catch up with some studying.

Tuesday

Made the most of my afternoon off by going to Lleida, though I was so shattered I thought about leaving it. I went with Jan and Abril´s dad, also Jordi (it´s the Catalan equivalent of George and San Jordi (St George) is the region´s patron saint, did I say that?), who works in the city and kindly offered me and lift there and back, any time. We spoke Spanish on the journey there and English on the way back which was all very nice, he told helped me navigate my way around the city and said I could call him if I needed anything (n´aww).

So, I'd had the same problem as when I was trying to find a black hair shop in Valencia - searching for them on Google is useless because you end up at your destination but the shop doesn't exist whether you type in ´black hair shop´, ´afro hair shop´,´tienda africana´or anything basically. After having this happen twice, I got desperate and walked along the main shopping street. Then I spotted a black woman with gorgeous brown twists and begged her, "Por favor, señora, sabe usted donde queda una tienda un que puedo comprar extensiones para mi pelo?!?!?!?!" (If it was in English I would´ve said "Please, Aunty, do you know where I can buy hair extensions?") Turns out her Spanish isn´t that great but her husband explained what I was bothering them for and she called her Aunty who directed me to her shop. We spoke in English for a bit, then they went about their business and I tried to follow the directions I´d been given. Eventually I called Aunty with the shop back and asked her to send me the location so I could use Google Maps. That took a little while, but lucky I´d only gone 5 minutes past the shop.

So, she was waiting outside the shop which was the only reason I knew I was going to the right place. From the outside, all you can see are freezers (full of fish) and rows of seasoning (I was tempted). Once inside, she bent down to a box of a variety of extensions and tried to convince me to take the purple ones but that was a big NOPE. I also bought some Vaseline which worked overnight on my cracked lips (Carmex, Lidl lipbalm, coconut oil, you can all shove it!) but it pained me that a small tub was 5€. Oil sheen spray was also 6€ but she gave me the flat, expired since July 2015 ginger beer for free (lucky me.)

After all that, I decided to get back to my tourist roots and do some sightseeing:

Then I made the most of the shopping district and hit Tiger for some hair tools, slippers and fudge and saved my last 10€ so that I´d be able to buy something in the cafe where I had to wait for Jordi. On my way there I spotted the library and figured this was the perfect place to have a break from wandering around. After informing the attendant (who honestly didn´t give a shit) that I can´t read Catalan and need some basic Spanish books pls, I found the language section she´d directed me to and picked up the first book I saw. It was a bit strange, an old man that looks a bit younger falling in love with a 19 year old and the town gossiping about it, even though she wasn´t interested. I also had to define every other word, despite the glossary so it wasn´t as relaxing as I thought it would be. The library was pretty lovely anyway and was actually silent, not like the ones we have in London. True, there were at least 3 floors and the children´s section was seperate, but there were no kids running around screaming either, so it was a nice change.

Once I got home I started my hair and realised that I really didn´t want to explain the ´here´s my afro, now here´s my braids´ thing to everyone in town, so I took out a section of braids, then redid them with the new extensions. Think what you will!

Wednesday

Went to Jan and Abril´s for lunch and still have their mum´s cardigan because it was a bit chilly inside and I was trying to give it back all week but it´s still here. Basketball was cancelled which was a shame but also good because I was tired and needed to do more of my hair. Am I obsessed with my hair? No. But it takes ages trying to live life and do it yourself. I think this was the day when Natalia helped me with it, which was sweet and I was surprised she knew how to do it, but she´d had braids in her crazy 20s too.

Thursday

Finished my hair just in time for school. Went to school and got asked on a playdate which may or may not happen on Tuesday but it´d be cool if it did. The guy who always tells me it´s alright if I want to go into class now (the door is always shut) made a joke with me. I think I have fans now.

Friday

I think the kids and I continued our amazingly silly story on Thursday and started it on Tuesday when they were bored and being fussy at lunch. Susana´s idea, but who knew it was going to get so dark. I won´t reveal it all until it´s finished, but an elephant steps on a kid playing football and a dog eats a cat and they both die so it´s all about wow kids, some active imaginations you got there! In the evening, Roger was very good at drawing it on the story boards I´d printed out but Gina was having none of it (or anything, tbh.) Eventually she got interested in drawing and was also very good at it, but I had to sit at the dining table and do my make up ready to go out because we hadn´t finished when I´d planned and she needed help with the English subheadings.

Then it was time for coffee-not-date which I´d got a bit overexcited about seeing as there was actually not even a hint of it being a date and it was not a date in any form. Still, I put on a pretty grey skirt and borrowed a necklace from Susana (I picked one I was unlikely to break while I was paralytic off beer and that matched my simple outfit) and went to the same bar as last week. We chatted for a bit, my hair was mentioned in a wow you changed your hair, do you do it often? kind of way and eventually race came up. I did say that I didn´t wanna talk about it at all, then I heard him out and his pleas to be educated seeing as he´s more aware and concious of his own unintentional racism now, so I simply said that I was sure we´d learn a lot from each other. Honestly I´d rather just avoid the topic completely, but this is what comes with being a WoC (woman of colour) in this day and age.

Eventually London Girl joined us, then his mate from Barcelona and eventually MF joined us too (but she spent most of the time speaking to her favourite admirer which I will not forgive her for ever, this might even be worse than the olive thing). After a while they all left except for MF and after an hour of talking to her friend and his friend, I convinced her that midnight was a good time to get pizza, not go home. So we ate pizza and had a pretty fun time in Sulk Bar, especially because the bar staff also push this one boy to talk to me in English and it´s terrible, he ended up telling me ´good morning!´as I left. I also wouldn´t let him take my plate away for ages because I was undecided on the crusts and put half the pizza in my bag, in some tissue (LOL pls desperation) and apparently this was very embarrassing for MF (dunno why) but luckily I was extremely subtle and no one in that bar will ever know.

Part two to come and then you´ll get your Here vs There post! xx

Lleida Preciosa (Au Pair Experience Día 9)

On Saturday we went to visit Lleida, a city in Catalunya. Roger played football there (and scored an amazing goal from really far away) so we made it into a fun trip

St Martin´s school has won a lot of trophies

La Gina Preciosa

Waiting for coffe #couplegoals

So after football we drove to La Seu Vella which is the old cathedral in Lleida. It was magical. There's so much history there, it's been a prison during wars and overlooks the whole city. Of course I took some photos:

La Seu Vella

Lleida from La Seu Vella

Sibling love aww

Then we ate in a nice little restuarant called Iruña with cousin Pol and tia Maria. We shared plates of tapas including something that was really tasty and twice the price of the others. The family always share cultural information with me which is lovely because I really didn't know anything about Catalunya before I came. So it was also explained to me that pork from pigs that eat acorns and roam freely in fields is really expensive. (We saw some the next day in Carrefour and they were €200 for a leg! It must taste nice but it smelt kinda bad.) Sadly I only got a picture of my dessert but the food was amazing. (Except the calamari, needed salt)

Anyway, after lunch we went to the city's carrer major (main street) which is completely pedestrian and features tonnes of shops, the town hall, some churches etc.

I also bought some postcards to send to my grandparents seeing as neither of them can do WhatsApp calls. (Apparently my grandma's been asking about me which made me miss her. I miss my mum too but she's coming to Barcelona so not so bad.)

Finally there was a trip to a massive Sports Direct type shop and Carrefour. Carrefour is manic and probably the most tiring way to end the day. There are too many people in it at one time so you can't get past the ditherers and chatters. You have to put any shopping bags in a sealed clear plastic bag and not open it the whole time you're in there lest you wish to be accused of petty theft! (You can still slip some pick and mix into your handbag or pockets... Or mouth though!)

Once we got home it was kebabs and babysitting. The kids were perfect so I let them stay up til midnight. Gina flaked at 11 and Roger at 12. We chilled on the sofa playing on tablets and watching Blancanieves al reves which was strange and wasn't even backwards so I have no idea why it was called that. Susana and Jordi (there are so many Jordis here, it's George and Catalunya's patron is Saint George (San Jordi) as well) went out to eat with friends in a different village. I'm told there were many questions asked about me like what I eat (I eat the same as them) and how I am (perfect of course) and they had a lot of fun which made Saturday night in totally worth it :)