Year Abroad: The post in which I explain what I’m doing here and where I’m doing it (part 1)

                So why on earth am I in a small/medium sized town that no-one has ever heard of, in a province in Spain that no-one has ever heard of? 

Well this is my compulsory year in Spain.  In order to obtain a degree in modern languages at a British university everyone has to do this year.  There are a few ways to go abroad and I am abroad as an English language assistant in a high school in Spain.  This is better for me as I’m not confident enough in my language to have went to a University and also it gives me enough income to achieve everything I want to do while I’m here, another bonus is that I’m still an ERASMUS student so above the wage I also get my grant money.  Another plus is that if I ever want to do TEFL teaching in the future I have classroom experience. 

I applied through my Uni to the British Council as they deal with all the applications from the UK and arrange the places etc.  They give you three choices for region, my first choice was Andalucia (tick), a choice about which level you want to teach, for me high school (tick), type of place i.e. city, medium size town, village and again I got my first choice as Baeza is, for the Spanish a medium/large town even though in the UK it really isn’t as it only has around 16,000 people.  I also mentioned that I had done a project about Moorish architecture in Andalucia, with a focus on the Alhambra – well I might not be in Granada but the city is only 146km from here and Baeza has a lot of influential history of its own.  So I really did get everything I asked for...mayhaps be careful what you wish for. 

You find out in stages your region and your town.  I was jumping for joy when I got Andalucia, and when I got Baeza I was terrified.  A small town without even so much as a cinema, that I’d never heard of, in a province I’d never heard of.  What made it more worrying was that my tutor had heard of Jaen but had never been and this is the man who told us about backpacking through Extremadura and who prides himself on having been everywhere in Spain…  But I had no choice because once you get allocated a school you can’t change it.  I Googled Baeza, found out that my school was inside the ancient university and that it had a pretty cool history.  I then got put into contact, thanks to my school, with the assistants who used to be here and through one of them got my flat arranged about a month and a half before I came.  I can tell you that arranging your accommodation before you go is amazing, if you can, as it takes a huge weight off of your shoulders.             

So that was me.  I had a job and an apartment.  Now all I had to do was leave and embark on this roller-coaster of a year.  It really messes up your emotional stability.  I have laughed, cried, been really embarrassed and angry, content, homesick, never wanting to go home....the entire spectrum of emotions, and I have only been here less than two months.