Hello and welcome to the Story So Far. On this page of the blog, updates on my gap year shall irregularly and randomly arise, to keep my massive and growing readership in the know about my various tribulations over the next 12 months.
My gap year proper began on Wednesday September 2nd when I swapped Brussels for Madrid. Spanish seemed a useful language that I had no idea of, and broadly seemed like a good move to kick off my year of freedom.
The primary objective was, of course, to pick up some Spanish during the 100 days I would spend in the capital, but I was secretly hoping to pick up a few other skills and experiences along the way. I moved in as a Jeune Garçon Au Pair with a Spanish family consisting of two high-paced parents, three raucous girls and two skittish dogs. My job description was to look after the three girls while teaching English to the four- and six-year-old, the two-year-old being more than content to teach me her particular brand of Spanish.
During the mornings I would typically go off in search of cultural stimulation, while the afternoons seemed to be filled with collecting the girls from various places and keeping them under a semblance of control. I joined a Madrid hockey team, which proved a great social success despite the regular sporting disasters. It also provided me with a few day-trips out to the further-flung hockey clubs of Spain. Other rendez-vous of the social kind included language exchanges, or intercambios in the local tongue. Culture shock was pretty much omnipresent for me, from what is eaten to when it is eaten, as well as the scandalised airs of what-is-the-climate-coming-to when it rains for more than five minutes. Gradually, I pretended to get used to all this, and settled into what was as near as an au-pair can get to a routine.
But time passed all too quickly and, after four months of struggling with the bizarre mealtimes, the language and the children, I returned to Brussels in time for Christmas, my luggage choosing to make a week-long detour via somewhere evidently dirty and smelling of fish. Christmas at home was an oasis of relaxation compared to my Madrid home, and I reveled for several weeks in the absence of small children and small dogs.
My dreamy planning of round-the-world travels was interrupted when the realisation dawned upon me that I had, much like the UK government 5 months later, no money left. So the quest was on to find a job – not easy for a completely unqualified 17 year-old. Yet somehow, a miracle occured, and, after several failed attempts, I was given a meaningless title in a Brussels office. The boredom and financial means produced by my 3 months as a “Management Assistant” motivated me all the more for my summer travellings – which began on 15th May, with a fortnight in England.
