A Hard Days Work

It has been just over a week now in Spain and it seems like a month. My work at Just Landed started on Monday and my first day was a bit of a disaster. I discovered that I had lost practically all my Dutch writing skills as this last year I have been doing all my writing in English. The first assignment on the job was translating a section of the website from English to Dutch. This proved more difficult than initially thought. Because of my English Master my Dutch has ‘anglicized’ and this made my translation tasks quite difficult. However I mildly recovered over the next couple of days. I got some other tasks and I feel I am learning a lot working with computers.

Through my work my days all seem a bit of the same. I get up at about 9.00, stumble to the shower and leave the flat around 9.30 with some Magdalenas (Delicious Spanish cakes ideal for fast breakfast) in my right hand. I take the 9.35 metro (see photos) at Piramides which is very close to my house and arrive at Diego de Leon exactly 18 minutes. Luckily I don’t have to change from my Green line (number 5) all the more because the Madrid metro is rather similar to an oven at the moment (I can’t even comprehend how it will be when summer closes in!). From the other end of the tunnel its just a short walk to the office.

After muttering ‘Buenas Dias’ to the ever present doorman (portero) I arrive at my desk around 10.00. This is also the time that the others arrive. We are with about 7 people in the office. Work finishes at 19.30 for me and we have a generous break for lunch around 14.30. There are some nice bars down in the street where it seems to be common to drink coffee (often with something extra in it – though not for me!!) and have a small sandwich (bocadillo).

I arrive home at 20.15 and at this time Carmen hasn’t returned from her uni yet. This means that I often crash on the couch and open a Mahou beer (Heineken on special days!) only to watch Blossom reruns on television (oddly enough they show this 90s TV show on prime time hours) with Spanish subtitles. After Carmen arrives we have dinner and then again watch more quality Spanish television with great shows such as Supermodelo (Spanish version of America’s Next Supermodel) or the doctor’s soap Hospital Central. All very good for my Spanish!

And that’s about my day! It doesn’t get more exiting than that! No, to be honest…it does. Life in a new city makes even these repetitive days exiting. The walking through the streets, the Spanish language in the subway and not to forget the exotic soap operas!