As I write this blog post I am a little more than 2 full weeks done with my time in Madrid. I am starting my second full week of work and have really settled into my surroundings and situation. This past week was a much quieter and calm week. My weekdays mainly consist of work, running, eating, and then resting, so pretty similar to my routine at home. This weekend I took a small day trip to see Toledo. Getting out of Madrid and going to explore a new city was fun and a nice break from my usual surroundings. Toledo was really cool to see as everything there was so old and different to anything that we have in the US. All the streets were so narrow and all the buildings made of old brick gave the city a really nice ambiance. It was however the first city I ever needed to pay to go into a church, but it was worth it as the church was made in 1226 and the inside of it was so ornate and massive. The amount of gold was crazy. It was really cool to be able to see the history and culture of a place where in the past 3 different, distinct groups of people lived together. The architecture reflected this. It was then cool to see how things and buildings had changed over time as the catholics in Spain grew more and more powerful. The day trip was a nice break to go and see a unique little city different from any place that we have in the US. It was also interesting as it was full of tourists, unlike the places in Madrid I frequent, such as my work, neighborhood, metro, etc. 

Outside of that, I didn’t do a ton of anything really touristy this week. It was a calm week and because of this I am starting to get a sense of what life in Spain is really like for local people. When you aren’t constantly moving around, doing activities, and seeing new things, you are really able to assimilate to the local culture and create a daily schedule similar to locals. Through this you get a new perspective on their lifestyle and culture. Instead of just seeing it from the outside, you are actually living it for yourself. 

Outside of my personal time this week and shifting gears towards my professional experience, work so far has been very rewarding. I am enjoying what I am doing and enjoy the projects I have been helping out on. I have a couple different things to do everyday and each one is related to a different project that the company is currently working on. This has given me a wide variety of things to do and topics to explore.

It has also given me the opportunity to interact with basically all the different employees who work at the company. This has been advantageous as it has allowed me to communicate and collaborate with many different people who all have different cultural and professional norms from me. Given this, and related to the blog prompt for this week about dealing with uncertain information or directions, I feel that so far I have successfully been able to navigate and discern what is being asked of me. Of course there have been some translation issues and things that immediately I am confused about, but by simply asking the directions to be clarified everything so far has been fine. Along with that, the employees usually go quite in depth when explaining what I need to do, so I have been given very specific information which has helped guide me. In addition,as I work with different people and projects also, I have been getting instructions and tasks from different people, which has also presented some challenges. When working with someone who I don’t know as well it can sometimes be harder to understand what is being asked of me as the employee giving the instructions is usually a little less clear. Again though, simply asking clarifying questions gets me through any misunderstandings and helps me understand what I need to do. 

I do enjoy conversing and receiving directions from different people. Instead of just having a notion of how Spanish companies and workplaces are structured by receiving info from only one person, I am able to compare how all the different employees work and give instruction based on what they need and where they stand. It has also really helped my Spanish comprehension by listening to a bunch of different voices and styles of communication, instead of getting used to and reliant on one specific voice, tone, pace, etc. 

So far this experience has been great and hopefully week 3 will continue with the same!