In case this wasn’t obvious, moving to a new country in the middle of a pandemic is a bizarre experience. I’ve already been here for several weeks, but it feels like yesterday I was uncomfortably sleeping on the plane over to Spain. Although, I’ve certainly come a long way from that point.
My first day in Spain consisted of me desperately trying to find food at the airport, rambling bad Spanish at very polite train workers (who all ended up speaking English), nervously ordering a taxi to my Air BnB, and briefly crying in the lobby because I thought that I was lost. So, all in all, a pretty successful journey!
But seriously, one thing that really stood out to me was how unsupported I felt during my first couple of days (which, to be clear, had more to do with the pandemic than any fault of Fulbright in my opinion). When I traveled abroad before, there was always an orientation to meet the other people in the program, most people arrived on the same day, and we usually had our housing set up in advance. But this time, I had absolutely none of that.
I flew over alone, found food alone, caught the high-speed train alone, and then arrived at my Air BnB — you guessed it — alone. Normally I don’t mind doing things by myself. But as I was standing in the lobby of the wrong apartment building with no phone data and no one but my Air BnB host to call for help, I had to ask myself: “why the heck did you do this?!?”
But as soon as the first tear defeatedly slipped from my eye, my Air BnB host called me and spoke perfect English. Normally, I don’t like having people speak English abroad, but dang I really needed that. She was so nice and really made me feel welcome (plus, she gave me cheesecake). So already, my time in Spain was going uphill.
One of the major intersections in my lovely city of Ourense!
The next step of getting settled was setting up my phone and bank account. I immediately went to the Orange store because I definitely didn’t want another “getting lost without data” situation. Over the next couple days, I set up my bank account and mainly lounged around because most businesses were closed for New Year’s and Epiphany.
Speaking of New Year’s, I consider myself very lucky to have my Fulbright Mentor in my city. Instead of spending New Year’s alone like I anticipated, my mentor and I got coffee at an outdoor cafe together. We talked and laughed until our hands and feet nearly froze off, which was so much fun.
Something pretty interesting that I didn’t expect when I arrived is that the Christmas Holiday goes until January 6th. Originally, I thought that I missed all of the Christmas celebrations, but I certainly did not. The city hung Christmas lights everywhere and performers played music on every street corner!
Christmas lights were hung all over the city!
During the second week, the other Fulbrighters started to arrive! It felt so good to have more people around. As people arrived during the week, we would meet up, get food, and explore the city together.
A super fun thing to do abroad is understanding the menus at restaurants. In Spain, there are a lot of different foods than in the U.S. so eating out is really exciting. While my friend and I were out for lunch, we decided to order zamburiñas a la plancha and patatas bravas, even though we had no idea what zamburiñas were (disclaimer: don’t do this if you have allergies), and it turned out that they were scallops! Neither of us had tried them before so we were fully like 👁️👄👁️. But I’d made it that far, so I had to give them a try. Although I didn’t think that I would like them, they were AMAZING. The scallops and potatoes were the perfect combination.
During this time, I was also apartment hunting, and wow it was so difficult. Normally, the Fulbright grant is nine or ten months long. But this year, the grant was only six months because of COVID. Since we are staying for such a short time, it was impossible to find landlords willing to rent to us. Pretty much all the grantees — including myself — ended up negotiating with Air BnB owners for discounted monthly prices, which was a great alternative.
The Air BnB that I ended up moving into was perfect. It had a TV, a desk in my room, a dishwasher (a rare find in Spain), and was directly next to As Burgas, the iconic thermal baths in Ourense. Plus, our landlord is SUPER nice and brings us lots of sweets and liquor haha! Now that I have a place to stay, I’m excited to start at my new school!
My delicious Zamburiñas
Feel free to check out my other Fulbright experiences here!
Disclaimer: This is not an official Department of State publication. The views and information presented are my own and do not represent the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, ECA, the Post, or the Fulbright Commission, or the host country’s government or institutions.
