I have not really had time for anything to do with my blog recently because I was so busy with my college work and I was working in Spain, La Coruna for two months. But now that I am back, I am going to start concentrating on my blog a lot more while I am at University.
So I am going to tell you all about my experience in Spain. I heard about this opportunity from my college, as I went to Italy in April 2014 for two weeks, where I did Photography. I had an email sent to me this year about working in either Italy, Seville or La coruna for 2 months doing Customer Service or Marketing. For me, I chose to apply for Marketing in Seville for 2 months because Marketing is what I want to go into and I knew it would be really good for my CV. I am doing Fashion Marketing at University. I applied for it and I got an interview a couple of days later. It is with a company called 'Gecko Programmes'. I did not get a place at first but I e-mailed the woman who did my interview and told her how much I wanted it and I managed to change her mind. But I did not get the Seville one, I got the one in La Coruna instead as it was the only place left. It wasn't what I wanted but it was either to go to that one or to not go at all.
About 6 weeks later I was on my way. Within those 6 weeks I had to attend a course in Birmingham at the Custard Factory which was a Marketing and Digital Marketing course. It was very hard and I hated having to travel for like 2 hours to get there, but it was worth it as you gain a qualification out of it and I learnt quite a lot from it.
We had to travel about 3 hours on a coach from Digbeth to Heathrow airport, which went pretty quick, and then we got on our flight and got to our apartments for about 9pm. There was 8 of us altogether who went, 5 was in one apartment, 2 was in another (with 2 italians) and 1 was in another apartment (with 4 italians). I don't think it was fair that one person had to share with 4 Italians, because they speak a different language obviously, and I would have felt very uncomfortable not knowing what they were saying. They kind of took over the apartment when they arrived too, lol. Luckily, I was part of the 5 sharing and we were all English. However, we had some good memories with them and I am going to miss them a lot! They are in a couple of the photographs which are in this post.
The apartments were very nice, clean and tidy and had everything we needed, however, we had no TV or WiFi.. which is possibly the worst thing about the whole trip, as well as there not really being any sun (It's Spain for godsake, there is supposed to be sun, I was supposed to come back with a tan) and being put in a place which did not really have anything for us to do at all. We had a man called Martin come over with us for the first week, but he wasn't really much help, he just took us on fucking 5 hour walks which didn't benefit us at all, it just killed our feet off. We only saw him about 3 or 4 times for the whole week that he was with us. It was pointless him coming over with us really, any other person would have organised a couple of trips for us, but no, it was like we had just been thrown in a random city and left to figure everything out for ourselves. Not having no calls, text or internet on my phone was driving me mad, and not having anything to do in the area made it worse. We all basically wasted our days at Burger King which was up the road from us, just to use the WiFi.
However, my placement overall was really good, a couple of weeks I was given no work to do so I just sat on a laptop for 4 hours watching YouTube videos, reading blogs and watching my shows, like now, I am writing some of this while im at work, as I have nothing to do.. but the people are very nice and welcoming and I was lucky to get a good placement really as some of the others had really bad placements. They refused to go to them and they looked for a new placement, they did end up getting a new one but being here for 2 months, you would expect to be put in a placement which you are going to enjoy for 7-8 weeks. I was the only one doing Marketing, the others were in hotels or teaching English. I had the best placement. It was so laid back and relaxed, I was just given work to do and I was left to get on with it.
Another thing which I liked about being in Spain for two months was the fact I could learn more Spanish, I learnt the language in school but I never really paid attention to it because I was young and I hated school, and I never thought I would need it for anything, but now, I want to learn Spanish properly, and I have learnt a lot of the language while I have been out here because I have needed to use certain phrases and words to speak to some people (obviously). So, I have chosen Spanish as one of my modules when I go back to University, and I cannot wait to start it, I also listen to a lot of Spanish music now too, so listening to those may help me to improve my Spanish also.
The good things;
The Shopping Centre: everytime I went there I always brought something
The money: We were given 100 euros a week from the company
The weekends: The clubs were really good (but theres not much English music)
The alcohol: You get drunk quicker because they dont measure the vodka they put in
Overall, I am happy I did it, just because it will look really good on my CV. I never thought I would want to go back to England but being there made me really appreciate what I had back at home. I would not recommend going with the company I went with, I thought they were really unorganised with the placements and not giving us WiFi in our apartments, you would think they would because of us being there for such a long time. However, if you do want to apply for it, dont hesitate to contact me and ask me for more information and I will give you their contact details. I went to La Coruna, so maybe Italy or Seville was better. 1 month would have been long enough as well, luckily I found an app that i could download series on when I was on WiFi but once they were downloaded, I could watch them offline. I have so many memories from there which , I am so happy to be back home.
My email is ashleighj0nesx@hotmail.co.uk
Ashleigh x
