Welcome back to the Intensive Clare Unit!
First of all, I want to thank every single person who liked, shared or commented on my first blog post. It means so much and not one piece of feedback went unnoticed. People sometimes like to say that, especially in Ireland, we don’t like to see other people do well. I don’t feel as though that is the case and I am overwhelmed by all the support I have been given, especially on my very first post. Thank you all so much.
After suffering an unusual bout of homesickness this week for the first time since September, I decided that for my second post, I wanted to provide a bit of a reality-check on what living abroad is actually like. Yesterday, I posted a photo on my Instagram story of the view from the top of the Castillo de Santa Barbara, a medieval fortress perched on an urban mount overlooking La Playa del Postiguet. Many of my friends commented on how beautiful the view was, and how lucky I was to be there. And they were right, I was lucky to be there. But what they couldn’t have known is that I had taken the trip up to the castle with my friend to distract myself after a week of intense homesickness.
Now, I love tapas, I absolutely adore the weather, I thoroughly enjoy (attempting to) speak Spanish and I would die for a café con leche, but sometimes, I just miss home. I miss going to my granny’s house and listening to her talk about how her cousin’s neighbour’s dog has (tragically) passed away at the age of 98 (in dog years, of course). I miss my local nightclub whose clientele resembles everyone and anyone living in my town under the age of 25(ish) plus that one random old guy who has had a particularly colourful night and wants to relive his youth on the dancefloor. I miss waking up the next morning and cringing at the conversation I had with the taxi driver on the way to the club, and cringing even harder at conversation I had with a different taxi driver on the way home (we’ve all been there). And sometimes, most of all, I just really, really miss a roast dinner.
However, in saying that, I’m no stranger to homesickness. Moving to Spain wasn’t really my first rodeo. Last year, I lived in Budapest for four months during a study exchange and through both of these experiences, I have come to the conclusion that there is one particular problem that you can have while living abroad that massively exacerbates the feeling of homesickness. A particular problem that leaves you wishing you had taken the probiotics your mum insisted you bring with you in your suitcase. A problem that leaves you praying to God that if He fixes it, you will go to Mass twice a week for the rest of your life. One that leaves you yearning for a process that seemed at the time, like a dystopian nightmare, but one that you would gladly go through now (getting a GP appointment through the NHS). A problem that leaves you itching and burning and chugging litres and litres of cranberry juice in the hopes of salvation. A problem called thrush. And luckily for me, that is the exact problem that I had the privilege of experiencing during my first month in Spain.
You probably think that I’m being dramatic. That it’s not that hard to stock up on medicine at the pharmacy and wait for this particular ailment to pass. And yet somehow, this problem led me to experiencing the most embarrassing moment of my life.
Picture the scene: It was a sunny Thursday morning in the suburbs of Alicante city. The fruit and vegetable market was in full swing with stalls lining both sides of the street. Abuelos and abuelas were feeling their way through every peach, pear and plum in order to find the ripest and best quality produce, only to finish by piling all their purchases on top of each other in their ‘granny trolleys,’ and inevitably bruising everything to a point of inedibility.
I was on my way to one of the many pharmacies in my neighbourhood. An elderly lady was walking in front of me at a snail’s pace, dragging her overflowing trolley behind her and I became increasingly frustrated trying to avoid clipping the wheels of her trolley with my sandals. As I walked I racked my brain for any Spanish vocabulary that I had learnt over the past month that could possibly help describe my symptoms to a pharmacist. As I began to panic that I had no idea what I was going to do, the elderly lady pulled in to the side of the path, ‘Pass by me, pass by me,’ she told me. I thanked her and passed by her quickly. Google maps told me to turn left and before I knew it, I’m was standing in a bustling pharmacy full of people of all ages.
I stood in the queue and waited to be called. When it was finally my turn, I looked up to see two empty tills- a female pharmacist behind one till and a male pharmacist behind the other. I wouldn’t normally be religious, but I suddenly found myself praying. ‘Please God,’ I said to myself, ‘if you give me the female pharmacist, I promise I’ll go to Mass every day. I promise I’ll go to confession, I promise I’ll say the rosary every night, just please God, let me have the female pharmacist.’ However, it seemed that on this particular morning, God was otherwise engaged and from behind his mask I heard the male pharmacist direct a friendly, ‘Hola!’ in my direction. As I made my way towards the counter, I realised that I had absolutely no idea how I was going to communicate with the pharmacist. It was my second week in Spain, and at this point, ordering a coffee in Spanish was an achievement for me, how on earth was I supposed to describe thrush symptoms?!
What unfolded next was the most horrifically cringe worthy moment of my life. I greeted the pharmacist and struggled in Spanish for around twenty seconds before finally giving up. I was out of ideas but I could feel my brain whirring. Suddenly, to both me and the pharmacist’s extreme embarrassment, I began to mime out my symptoms one by one. A sound effect here, a bit of hand action there. The pharmacist watched my performance with a pained look on his face, and after what seemed like an excruciatingly long amount of time, stopped me with a short, ‘I understand,’ and disappeared to find the medicine I needed. He came back with a box and pointed to the English instructions. It was the right medicine. ‘Thank God for my GCSE Drama skills,’ I thought (not).
At this stage, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t just use Google translate and honestly, half way through my fun game of charades, as I was looking this poor man dead in the eyes, desperately trying to communicate what was wrong, I thought the exact same thing. In my stress and panic, I had got so flustered that I had completely disregarded Google translate and it seems, my own dignity.
It is in these moments that I question my decision to move abroad. I question why such mundane tasks become so complicated and in this case, so horrifically embarrassing. I think about how much more difficult everything is when you don’t live in your own country and how much easier my life would have been if I had just stayed at home. I begin to think about how hard it is to be a ‘real’ adult and how much responsibility it is to actually look after myself, especially in a foreign country. But then I remember all the amazing things about living abroad. The incredible people that I have met, the food, the culture, the language and the beautiful experiences that I would never be able to have had if I had stayed in my hometown. I remember how living abroad pushes you to do things you didn’t even realise you were capable of, simply because you have no choice in the matter, and how you have the opportunity to reinvent yourself time and time again without judgement. In the end, it becomes glaringly obvious that the good outweighs the bad.
P.S. Just in case anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation to me, the Spanish for, ‘I think I have thrush,’ is ‘Creo que tengo candidiasis.’
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