Day 30 (negative)

I've officially finished a full month here in Spain!

As I mentioned in my last post, I got Covid and was told to self-isolate for 7 days before retesting. Unfortunately, I still tested positive on Monday, so I called up the private health centre in Vélez who told me to keep isolating and do another test on Wednesday (today). Thankfully, I was negative, so I had my second official day of teaching! (If I had been positive, then I would have had to have waited until Day 10 before leaving.) Now, I have to wait 5 months before I'm eligible for the booster.

In class, I gave four presentations about myself and Australia. The most popular questions I received: how old am I (21), what is my favourite thing about Spain (the orange trees), and what is my favourite Spanish dish (Iberian ham).

For those who are wondering, this is my school schedule. In Andalucía, we work 12 hours/week (in the evenings for me because I'm at an adult language school), 4 days/week (Fridays off, wew!), and earn 700€/month.

The family I live with have been so kind to me by welcoming me into their family, teaching me a lot about Spanish culture, and looking after me while I've been sick. Originally, the plan was just two live with them for two months, but after chatting with them, I'm going to stay here until the end of May. Yay!

Notes:

- I still find all the different microcultures of Spain so crazy. The fact that my province, Málaga, has its own cuisine and slang terms that are distinct from another town only 20mins drive away is insane! And in other states, they have completely different traditions, accents, and sometimes even languages!

- I had been warned about this earlier, but managed to fall for it myself... I bought a nice-looking juice box the other day only to find that it actually contained milk! Not as refreshing as I had hoped, but essentially, it's just a smoothie in a juice box, so if you're prepared for that, then it's not so bad.

- They have a cool password system here for online platforms where instead of simply typing in your regular 8-character password, the computer only asks for 4 random characters. I wonder if it's safer.