Monday, July 27, 2015

EVS diary from Spain



I’m writing this as I have just seven days left of my EVS in Burgos, Spain.   It wasn’t always easy.


To start, the winter here is cold. It felt a lot colder than the UK, which was something that I wasn´t expecting. The language barrier was also very difficult and people from Burgos didn’t care too much for speaking English. At the beginning I felt a little isolated, living in a city of 180,000 inhabitants and not knowing any fluent English speakers. City living was strange for me as well, having lived most of my life in rural Devon. But I soon learnt enough Spanish to communicate, bought a warm coat and started to enjoy the endless parties! 
Pozo de la agua
Burgos is a handsome, authentic and traditional Spanish city with so much tradition and culture, from the food and architecture, to the Camino and fiestas. I had never experienced anything like it.

I’ve got to know so many interesting people from Spain as well as the volunteers from other countries, something which would have been very difficult to do without my EVS experience. I live with a French and Italian girl and have been able to learn so much about other European cultures and traditions. I’ve also been able to travel to many parts of Spain (I even managed to complete 250 km of the Camino de Santiago). It’s an incredibly dramatic and beautiful country which I feel privileged to have seen.   

It’s really hard to summarise the experience I’ve had, it’s the kind of thing that just needs to be lived. If you get the opportunity to do something similar, I would say you should (but obviously experiences will differ). In fact, enjoyed it so much here that I am hoping to return to Spain after my EVS is over. Un saludo!
On the beach of Malaga
James Hewitt