Taking the Reality Plane Back to England

 I’m getting really bad at this whole blogging thing, I always find the first sentences of a post are devoted to my sincere apologies for not blogging earlier, and here I am repeating the same thing. I had to check the date of my last blog post and that was almost three months ago. That’s extremely bad and once again a lot has changed since then.

Firstly within those three months I finished being a conversation assistant at my school, secondly I completed five weeks as a monitor for the English summer camp, and finally after surviving those tiring weeks, I have migrated back to England. Now I find myself in my usual position for blogging, slumped comfortably but lazily on my double bed. There isn’t much inspiration being drawn from my bomb site of a room. I don’t even over-exaggerate when I describe it in this way. It resembles the illusion of an explosion taking place both from my suitcase and wardrobe. This is Laura Whitehead's attempt to clear out her room. Of course it’s not organised, I can’t seem to do that. Instead I just pull everything out and make dysfunctional piles of shit. Why am I so messy, and why do I own so many things? So now I have let my mind wander, away from the mess surrounding me. With music on, this is when my writing begins to flourish. 

The reason I’m making such a conscious effort to clear out my room is to help clear my mind, and organise myself...haha. I just finished almost ten months in a foreign country where I learnt lot about myself, fell in love, discovered differences between Catalan/Spanish life and English life and got a stupidly burnt on the last few days. Something I cannot, and will not forget about living in Catalonia was the generosity of the people I met. They were so open minded, as well as helpful, and I also had about five different people offer me rooms in their house for whenever I want to return. I must have done something right to receive those offers!

Just like this time last year, I once again have big life decisions to make which terrify me. Do I move back to Spain? What job will I have? Where will I live? How long will it be? What makes me happy? How can I be less pale and not look like a tourist? Life is always full of questions, and sometimes not all of them are answered, however I know that decisions can’t be made over night, decisions come with time and thought – everything slowly falls into place.

Since coming home I have been really appreciating my ability to understand everything and everyone around me, except maybe those with very strong Essex accents. I find myself talking to almost everyone I possibly can. It’s crazy how language barriers can have such an impact on life situations. It's really difficult. Unfortunately my Spanish did not get to a standard I hoped, and my Catalan consists of a phew phrases learnt from students in the summer camp such as ‘tinc set’ (thirsty) or the more frequently heard ‘tinc pipi’ (I need to pee).

It’s really true when I say how isolating it can be not understanding the people around you, especially when you can be sat clueless for long time frames, whilst those around you have full-blown conversations. It’s not a case of being rude, it’s because sometimes it’s impossible to constantly translate a conversation. I also developed the skill of switching off, the Catalan conversations became background noise to my own thoughts. A lot of the time the background noise of Catalan conversations left me feeling disappointed in myself for not knowing more of the language. More than anything, it made me feel useless. At various occasions I reverted back to a child, needing someone to speak for me. I hate feeling useless, but there wasn't a lot I could do. The thing that is extremely frustrating is that when you do pluck up the courage to speak Spanish, you are shot down as they automatically reply to you in English. 

I was very lucky to have a host mum who always encouraged me to speak in Spanish, and even to points where she would pretend she didn’t understand English. I also met a great woman called Chus who became my language exchange partner. We would speak 45 minutes in English, and 45 minutes in Spanish. She helped increase my confidence in speaking Spanish. I think at the beginning it’s important to find someone you’re comfortable with to practice and help the language flow, and I had just this. She always reminded me that even if I don’t think my Spanish has improved, I just need to reflect back to when I first arrived to notice just what I have actually learnt. 

Now I'm home I still write in Spanish to my old host mum but unfortunately I don’t think I will find any time to practice Spanish orally. My plan is to go back to Catalonia towards the end of September but I won’t talk too much about that yet as I don’t have a concrete plan, and when I begin to think about it my head hurts. I had an interview for another assistant job in a different school. It’s not exactly the same role, but it would be nice for a new environment and the pay is very good, however alone the job is not enough for me to live comfortably. So this is where the problem develops, but I can’t apply for anything else until the start of September.

I’m going to enjoy the next few weeks I have here before I start to panic too much. It’s really nice being home, seeing my family, friends and honestly, just being immersed in comfort and the English way of life again. I will admit I have missed England but it’s the strangest feeling being away for such a long time and then coming back. You realise that nothing has changed that much, and furthermore it's as if your time away was actually only a dream. Thankfully it's the moments when I speak to my host family and boyfriend that I realise that dream is still waiting for me in Barcelona. We will see what happens…