TrendyTripTricksMy Erasmus in Madrid – Expectations vs Reality
Let’s begin the series of blog posts about my Erasmus in Madrid, Spain. In this article, I will share with you what I thought I would do vs what really happened during my time there :
- Make Spanish friends
- Improve my Spanish
- Enjoy sunny Spain
- Fall in love with Spanish men
- Become best friends with my flatmates
Make Spanish friends
Expectation : Before going to Madrid, I thought that I’d meet many Spaniards, I believed that I’d be friends with them, go out with them, fall in love with them (lol) … to sum up – do anything with them.
Reality : I only stayed with other non-Spanish students. But in the end, it didn’t matter because they were lovely.
Sometimes, we went out with our Spanish classmates but we didn’t really connect.
To sum um, I stayed with everyone but Spanish people, including French people when I initially wanted to avoid them.
Improve my Spanish
Expectation : As I was expecting to be friends with Spanish people, I was also looking forward to improving my Spanish. Spoiler alert : I started learning Spanish after leaving Madrid – I am such a genius, I know!
Reality : I did go to a language exchange event to find myself a language partner during my second day in the city. But it turned out that everyone was kicked out thirty minutes after the event started. I did try another one a few weeks later but that is another story…
Enjoy sunny Spain
Expectation : Because I live in France and the south of the country is mostly sunny, I thought that Madrid would always benefit from the warmth and the light of the sun.
Reality : I arrived in late August, it was very sunny and warm until mid October when we lost 10 degrees overnight. From then, it rained almost every single day. However, when I came back in Madrid in January, it was all sunny and lovely.
Fall in love with Spanish men
Expectation : Considering that I was madly in love with Roberto in “Un Paso Adelante” and obsessed with Enrique Iglesias when I was a child, I was expecting every single man to at least look like Mario Casas… which was not the case because life is not a movie
I have to say that almost every woman I saw was absolutely STUNNING, wooow (but women are so much prettier than men in general lol)
Become best friends with my flatmates
Expectation : It was my first shared flat, I met my first (and last) flatmates and I was already living in a fairytale – I imagined catching up with them every day after school, watch TV, organise dinners, chill in the living rooms
Reality : I had classes in the evening and they were going to the university during the day so I never saw them! We weren’t able to bond although they were really nice, but once I had found “my people”, I didn’t really care about my flatmates.
I was going to say that maybe I’ll be able to create meaningful relationships with flatmates but I WILL NEVER LIVE WITH STRANGERS AGAIN.
So here are my “expectations vs reality – Erasmus in Madrid edition”. I would love to know if you already went to study abroad and what were your expectations.
See you later xxx
