I know that it hasn’t been two weeks since I’ve been in Spain, but I think that Friday is a good day to say what has happened during my time here.
Maybe I should start with introducing myself, because I’ve no idea who is going to read this. My name is Nadja Rybin and I’m 15 years old. I like horse riding, listening to music and watching Netflix. All of these are rather normal things, I’d say. And that’s also one reason why I’m participating at this exchange: I want to do something special, something that I’ll remember for my whole life. I don’t want to sit in school and just listen to a teacher all the time. I want to make my own experiences. This is also one of my qualities. On the one hand, I’m curious, but on the other hand, I’m shy too. I know this sounds like a strange combination, but it is the way I’m. Another adjective with which I’d describe myself with is helpful. But enough about me. Let’s start with what I have done so far.
So, I arrived on Thursday 16th. My host family picked me up at the airport of Barcelona. I was very happy to see them again because I’ve missed them quite a lot. The only thing we did on Thursday was to go to the beach, because I love the beach and after this long day it helped me to calm down. On Friday we went to a park called Parc de la Ciutadella. We went on a small lake with boats and tried to not hit anyone (which wasn’t as easy as it sounds). On Saturday the 18th of March I went to the city centre with my host mother and she gave me a little tour there. That gave me a really good impression of Barcelona. On Sunday my host family showed me Sagrada família from the outside. After that, we went to a park called Parc Güell. It’s a park made by Gaudi. It was impressive and from the park we had a wonderful view over the whole city.
Because the weekend was over, I needed to go to school. I didn’t really know what to expect from a different school in a different county where I can’t understand what people say. I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ve figured out one thing: Sometimes it’s not that bad not to understand what everybody is saying. But now to the school. The school is really different from my school, starting with the fact that it’s a city school. There are less possibilities to go outside and do something there. It felt a little like I’m a prisoner, but from the inside you can see, that it’s a modern and pretty school where I feel quite comfortable. One difficulty for me is that I need to go to quite a lot of German lessons, and I should help the children there to learn German. To do that, I should speak German beautifully there and if there is one thing in the world, which I’m not good at it’s speaking and slow and neat German. For the rest of the school day, I go to the English classes and I get extra Spanish classes so that I can learn as much Spanish as possible. In my free lessons I walk with Cristina (my exchange partner) to her lessons and just do my stuff there or I go to an extra room, but sometimes I feel a bit lonely there.
(c) Nadja Rybin