How did it all start aka I am going to move to SPAIN! 🇪🇸

Posted On August 8, 2019

Anyone who knows me, probably knows about my passion for travelling and Spanish. I think I have been going on and on about living in Spain for (…EVER) many years. Of course, I have travelled there a couple of times and this is when I fell in love with the most magnificent city ever – Barcelona! There are not enough words to describe how beautiful and perfect this city is, how it makes me feel when I am there… I had the worst post-vacation depression when I visited Barcelona for the first time… Anyway, I didn’t want to make this post all about Barcelona…

When I go back in time, rewinding to 1999, right back to my childhood, I remember watching all these Mexican telenovelas and then there was this one that started with Enrique Iglesias singing “Nunca te olvidaré” (I will never forget you). For a little girl, his romantic voice and brown eyes was all she needed. After that, I bought all of his CDs (back then he had released 3 and all in Spanish) and it did not take long before I knew all the songs by heart, but I did not speak a word of Spanish. I only knew these common phrases from soap operas – “¿por qué?, dónde está mi hijo, estoy embarazada!”(“why? where is my son, I am pregnant”) etc. To sum it up, this is a very cheesy story of how I discovered Spanish. 💓

Moving on to my university years, I chose Spanish and culture as my minor subject (was not possible to take it as major back then). I never skipped Spanish classes, regardless of early hours (language classes always started at 8 in the morning and I love sleeping, 9 hours, 10 hours, 11 hours – you name it!). I think I was so motivated to learn it that I was literally just sucking in all the information, words and rules and facts and everything. 😄 I loved my university years with so much Spanish and Spanish people! There’s a saying don’t bite more than you can chew, but I definitely bit it all! #greedy

It is always about the FEAR, people are afraid of new things, stepping out from their comfort zone, making big life changing decisions, moving on and leaving behind their lousy relationships (you know who you are), boring jobs… We are always thinking – what happens next, will I cope, can I really do this? And then there is this WHAT IF…? What If I can’t do this? What if I fail? Well, guess what? You will never know until you actually try it, nothing will ever change until YOU change it. No one else can live your life. It is your life, your decisions, your happiness depends only on yourself. To be happy and pleased with your life, you need to live it the way YOU want it to be! It is that simple!

I am definitely not some kind of a motivational coach and not trying to teach you how to live your life, these are just my thoughts. It’s not like I have always lived my dreams and followed my heart… I quit teaching which I loved so much because of a shitty pay and low appreciation from society. Moreover, I have not really taken any real actions to get my flower shop started. I mean, to really contribute 100% and open a physical flower boutique. I have had all kinds of excuses and fear and then of course, a lack of knowledge in so many things, e.g. I know nothing about bookkeeping and running a company. If someone saw my entries of different transactions they would laugh out loud. 😁 Furthermore, I hate numbers, they confuse me and I am really bad at mental arithmetic (BUT I have worked at finance for 5 years). On the other hand, I have always believed that anything can be learned, if you are motivated and really want to do this. Therefore, I am pretty sure that if I put more effort in my flower boutique, it could be well executed. BUT! I need to fulfill my other, biggest dream first – LIVE & TRAVEL IN SPAIN! 💓

Now, when I go back to the beginning of this post, I took the first real actions towards my dream in autumn. I started reading about EVS (European Voluntary Service) and how the process works. So, I realized that it was high time I went to Spain as a volunteer, as 30 was the limit. Of course, the current situation in life gave me the extra push. By this, I mean the constant feeling of “why am I doing this? why am I not doing something I am really passionate about?” – accompanied with a lot of stress and sadness. Also, when getting older, I feel that time passes by too fast… I am planning this wonderful trip to Bali and a year from now, like a blink of an eye, it was just a nice short dream. Thus, why not live some time of my life in Spain? This is nothing! If I didn’t do this now, I know I would regret it once old and grey, unable to move, physically, I mean. I would think, how stupid of me not spending some time in Spain and not following my dream…

Anyway, I then wrote my motivational letters and started applying for different positions only in Spain. You would think that people go nuts to get a volunteer working for free at their organization, but no, you are wrong, it is not that easy! I think it was harder than finding an actual job. I applied for months and filled in different forms and questionnaires about “if you had only 15 minutes at a huge mall, which 3 things would you get for free? if you could have a dinner with a celebrity, who would it be and why? Upload two photos of yourself, one in which you like yourself and the other one which you hate” etc. I put so much time and effort in these forms and questions, but mostly I didn’t even receive a reply. Of course, as I speak Spanish, I applied and wrote everything in Spanish and thought that this would be a great advantage, but guess again… It did not impress anyone…

FINALLY, when I was already thinking about giving up, I got this really nice email with a Skype interview request for English teacher’s assistant position. I thought that this would be something really “creative” again, but no, it lasted only for 10 minutes, they asked about my experience in teaching and some other very normal questions and that was it. I was sure that I failed or something like this, as they didn’t ask much and it was a very short call in general, so, probably they didn’t like me. The following day, I got an email with the “Congratulations” on the subject line and before opening the email, I was already feeling crazy and surprised and excited and thinking “this is impossible“, but then I actually opened the email and I felt soooooooooooo happy. They chose ME! Hell yeah! After I calmed down, I had, of course, so many questions. I was in contact with the Estonian girl who is doing the same thing now and she was really nice to answer all my questions and gave me a long overview of everything I wanted know. Thank you again!

After a couple of days, I gave my answer, but as this is Spain and paperwork takes a lot of time, I still needed to wait until April (I confirmed my participation in January) before I received the confirmation that the project had been approved by their National Agency. In the meanwhile, only a few people knew about this at work and some closer friends too, but I didn’t want to say anything to my family before I could rest assured that the deal had been closed.

Some people asked me why are you doing this now? You have built up your life here and now you’re leaving everything behind. Honestly, I don’t think that I am leaving anything behind… Only my friends and family, but it’s not like were are not friends anymore. Like one wise woman (Terje Trochynskyi) once said – “the greatest decisions in life should be taken following your heart, not putting financial matters first“, and I could not agree more.

While waiting for the paperwork, I was also imagining this worst-case scenario in my head that what would happen if something went wrong and for some peculiar reason the project got cancelled… This seemed too blue…

I hysterically checked my phone every time when the new email notification popped up and my heart skipped a beat when I finally received the long-awaited letter about confirming that everything had been approved. It was definitely one hell of a day! 😁

At the moment, I am really excited and part of me still can not believe it. Am I really going to move to Spain and starting a totally new life? What will happen there? What kind of people am I going to meet? Will I return to Estonia? I kind of like this ignorance. Feeling nervous and thrilled at the same time! 💓 I don’t have any plans for what will happen after the 10 months voluntary service is done. I don’t rule out the idea of staying there for a longer period of time or coming home right after the project ends. I guess we will see how it goes, what life has to offer and just go with the flow and trust our gut! Feeling excited indeed! 😁