Relaxing into the Spanish lifestyle including tapas, siestas and aprender español!

This week we have been settling into our new lifestyle. I shall try and update this every weekend and let you know how we are all getting on. First of all here are the people that I am living and spending time with for the next three months :) I think we are going to have a good time!

There are many differences between the UK and Spanish lifestyle. I am slowly coming around to the fact that everything shuts for the siesta and not only that but nobody can be seen on the streets during this time. Therefore anything you need done during the day either has to completed by 2pm or you do it when everything opens around 5 o’clock. Staying up casually until 1 or 2 in the morning is something that takes getting used to.  

Moving onto tapas, this is essentially free food! You buy a drink and get a tapa with it for around €2. This is not just with your first drink but all night if you are hungry enough. This is something that I can definitely enjoy! Talking of food I have been pushing my boundaries when it comes to what I normally eat and drink. So far I have eaten olives which I normally hate but these ones are so fresh there is no way you could resist, I also tried goat meat and it was a bit too chewy for me so I think the ones at the farm should be safe! Red wine and coffee are normally a no go for me but out here they just feel right!

The weather has been more like home rather than exotic Spain but it is winter here and the surroundings make up for it! Today we went for a walk around the olive fields ( I didn’t think that would be a sentence I would ever say) and the weather changed from glorious sunshine to pouring rain but it all added to the experience! We came across an abandoned train station which was pretty awesome! 

The learning Spanish is proving to be quite difficult seeing as I have not learnt a language since I was about 15. I am slowly getting there with the understanding of words but the grammar has completely thrown me. We are only 2 weeks in so I am pleased that I am making progress knowing my abcs and other basics but I really do hope that by the end of my time here I can answer someone rather than stare blankly at them and say ‘no entiendo’! The level of English spoken here is limited so we have landed very lucky with the guys in our flat speaking large amount of Spanish and being able to help us out when we get stuck.

Yesterday we ventured out without them, dictionaries and phrase books to hand we were good to go! Or so we thought all was going well until we tried to get one market stall owner to not take the tops off the carrots and resulted in Marcus saying ‘keep’ in different pitches in order for them not be thrown away. We failed and it resulted in a lot of laughter and us knowing that saying an English word a different way makes absolutely no difference!

Alongside our tours around the town, learning Spanish and getting to know each other with some cheap vinos and cervecas, we managed to go on a day trip to a nearby town Corzola. This is the gateway to the largest protected area in Spain. We have yet to visit the park but we did get to learn about the history of the town. We went to a cathedral that had been destroyed by a great flood in the 17^th Century, it had a really cool staircase that you could look all the way down the middle but I had forgotten how much I dislike spiral staircases! La Yedra is a reconstructed Moorish castle that we got to explore, it was awesome to learn about a new culture and the history behind it. Next time we go we are going to see the amazing lakes and take part in activities such as caving and gorge walking (hopefully it will be a bit warmer by then).

I have been enjoying taking photos in the area and this week I got to play with my new zoom lens and it has come out with some cracking results!

With and without zoom lens!

Overall everything is going well so far and I am away to make dinner for the group before we head off to a hip hop night in town. I will meet the goats and see the farm next week but for now we are making the most of our time off! 

Laura xox