Tienes que ser positiva

Following my last post, which wasn’t written in the most positive of tones, let me preface this. I don’t want to sound ungrateful and I don’t want to focus on the negative. I’ve never been that person and I don’t want to start now. I do want to say that I’ve been here for a week as of yesterday and I’ve already realized something very, very important about myself. I noticed that when I focus on the positive, and think about the good things about a particular situation, it has a profound effect on my mood. I mentioned the “luck of the draw” aspect of the Auxiliares program, and I stand firmly by that theory. And there are, admittedly, a lot of things I wish could be different. I wish the school I'm working at were located closer to the city. I wish public transport were more efficient. I wish I didn’t have to rely on other people to get around. Well, look, I could sit here and wish for stuff all day. I also wish my best friends had been here waiting for me to arrive, and we could all live in a Spanish apartment together and it would be just like our old study abroad adventure and we’d all speak this perfect Spanish that came really easily to us. But I didn’t get here by wishing for it. I worked for it. And I’m not going to have a meaningful experience by having things fall into my lap.

Speaking of things falling into my lap, in a lot of ways, I am really lucky. My boss is a woman called Rosa, who from the very beginning, starting with responding quickly to my emails, has been amazing and attentive and hospitable and really patient with me. She and her husband Alfredo picked me up from the airport, let me stay in their home, eat their food, use their water, and have driven me around where I needed to go-all absolutely no questions asked. I did some researching on previous auxiliares (turns out we all write blogs), and many, many of them were not so lucky. They had some form of a safety net, but most of them got a hostel to stay in while they looked for an apartment. Rosa and her family went beyond… they helped me look online for apartment listings and called all the places I was interested in. This all would have been a lot more difficult if it weren’t for them.

They politely agreed with me (sincerely or not) that it’s better for someone like me to live in Vigo. There’s more to do, and it’s easier to find a nice, cheap apartment to share with other young twenty-somethings. I had a few in mind that I’d looked up online. But because I don’t have a car and because the school is far away from the city, I’m really limited in where I can live. I’ll have to be picked up by another professor at the school and if I’m not in a particular area, it’ll be really inconvenient for them to come get me.

Obviously, the ability to get to work needs to take precedence over my getting to live right on the beach with a great view. Rosa hooked me up with a deal so great it’s almost too good to be true. It’s a school right outside the city, and this particular campus is for nurses. However, when they can’t fill the rooms, they fill them with people like me: I have a particular skill. And I can teach that skill to the residents, and in exchange for that I get to live here. I hesitate to use the word “free” because it’s not “free;” I’ll be giving extra English classes to earn my keep. But in reality, no money will exchange hands…So that’s pretty rad, right? But it gets better. This all includes food (breakfast lunch and dinner), a gym, heating, laundry facilities, library, Internet, and security.

It’s far from perfect. In fact, it’s down right humble. I feel like I’ve stepped into a time machine and I’m back in the freshman dorms at UNCW. The room isn’t pretty.

Other drawbacks include: I have to tell security whenever I’m going on a trip, or if I’m not going to come home one night. All the students go home on the weekends, and the cafeteria closes. I don’t have access to a kitchen at all, so that means subsisting on pre-made food or going out to eat from Friday night to Sunday morning. But, whenever I get annoyed at the overbearing security or my having to sacrifice control and some freedoms, I just have to remind myself: I’m not paying for any of this.

When Rosa dropped me off on Tuesday evening, I sat on my bed feeling extremely alone. I didn't have an internet connection and the other students living in my hall haven't arrived for the school year yet. Also, by a horrible coincidence, they forgot to give me the key to my hall, so I was locked in all night. With nothing to do and feeling out of place and extremely doubtful of everything, I opened up my Duolingo Spanish app to get some practice, and this was the very first thing that came up:

You have to be positive. Not much more needs to be said apart from that, does it?

Something that's become pretty important to me is having a nice view. I don't want to be depressed when I look out the window. And yes, my window opens up right into the parking lot. But if you look beyond it, there's a stellar mountainous skyline glittered with the lights of the city below.

 (During the day)

(At sundown)

Alright that’s enough for now. I’m off to buy some stuff to make this room look less like an asylum.


"El mundo es un libro y aquellos que no viajan leen solo una página"