Protests. Lockdowns. Snowstorms.
These words pretty much sum up life abroad for me these past three months since my arrival to Madrid in late October.
If you haven’t read my reasons for traveling to Spain you can do so here.
All the hype and hysteria surrounding the pandemic had been taken into account well before I’d boarded the plane. That said, anything I’ve encountered relating to the pandemic since I’ve landed hasn’t been a surprise.
In fact, many occurrences have been similar to what I remember before I left home. Closed business, masks increasing the anonymity between people, and curfew regulations keeping us confined at home when the night comes alive.
The backdrop is different but the conditions are the same.
I make sure to follow all the advised safety precautions, such as using hand sanitizer when I enter any building, as well as my own cautious methods, like not opening any train doors unless necessary.
I’ve also been pretty active, out and about around the city. I run in Plaza Mayor on some mornings, where the homeless find space to sleep. Many of them without mask. I train at a dojo in the north of Madrid, a neighborhood called Chamartín, and at a gym on Gran Via downtown. Both places are high traffic with many people in and out.
The threat of commuting in a city with a high infection rate hasn’t affected my daily routines, you could say that I’m living type normally. These things considered, I’m fortunate to not have come into bad contact with anything.
People are also not only out and about here, but traveling as well. A cool dude who runs with me in the mornings hosted two of his friends at his apartment during the week of the New Year. They flew in from Paris. My roommate and I also had friends come by from Segovia, a nearby small city, for Christmas Dinner. They returned home the following day.
Some of my coworkers also traveled back home to the states to be with relatives for the holidays and traveled back.
I’m not sure if these one-off examples are representative of similar activity taking place on a larger scale but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Speaking of coworkers, teaching English has become somewhat regulated since my first year here back in 2017–18. It seems that many gigs now require you to be “autonomo”, which basically says that you have a Spanish Work Permit. To get that permit you need a Spanish Social Security number, which is a complicated process in itself.
Again, I’m not sure if this related to pandemic or if this is part of larger changes that have been developing over time since my departure.
Either way, finding private classes now takes more effort on the part of who’s looking.
One last thing that I’ll mention, which I didn’t take into account, is the effects of the Brexit on European culture.
English might actually be declining in popularity among Millennials in the work force and older Gen Zers in their final years of Secondary school. English was seen as mandatory because of a program titled Erasmus which allowed citizens of the EU to study/work in the UK and vice versa. That program has since dissolved with the Brexit. As an unforeseen result more students are interested in learning French, Italian, and German.
There are other aspects to this that I’m certain that I’m not clear on but when I have more information about this, I’ll dedicate a full piece to it.
I’ll wrap this up here.
Until next time.
