An Italian girl in Spain, working in an English school

Hello everyone! My name’s Eleonora and I’m a 21 years-old Italian girl who lived in Spain for 2 months, working in an English school.

One year ago, I decided to apply for the Erasmus program offered by my university.

I was accepted, so I started to look for a company where I could have carried out my 2 months summer internship. After a long, endless research I read, in one of the Erasmus companies lists, “Hello School Salamanca” which immediately caught my attention probably because I had already been to Salamanca and I loved it.

I left Italy on the 28^th of July and I remember that I was overwhelmed by a mix of feelings; I was excited since it was my first time doing an Erasmus internship but at the same time, I was just so scared because I would have been completely on my own.

When I arrived, the first person I met was an American boy: my flat mate! I lived with him for the first month and then a Dutch girl and three French boys arrived; we were 6 and it was great because we got really close and had a lot of fun and I could also practice my English with them, even being in Spain.

At the same time, I could obviously improve my Spanish working at the school and talking to a lot of Erasmus students and people who lived in Salamanca.

At the school I did different kind of activities from writing for the blog to teaching English to a Spanish man; I recorded videos for kids in which I had to speak in English about different topics and I also helped doing different tasks in the administration office.

During these 2 months I visited Sevilla, Huelva, Segovia, Ávila and Valladolid and now I can truly say that Spain “me encanta”!

This Erasmus experience really helped me to be more confident while speaking in Spanish and most of all gave me the possibility to meet a lot of new people from all over the world. I think this is the best part of the Erasmus because I got really close to all my new friends and it was like I already knew all of them.

However, the worst part of my Erasmus was leaving Salamanca and leaving all the people I met there. I remember that the week before I went back to Italy, my head was full of different emotions: I was looking forward to going back to Italy, seeing my friends and family and most of all eating Italian food; but at the same time, I felt so sad and nostalgic because I knew I had to say goodbye to all the beautiful people that had become my friends.

Before leaving for this experience, my biggest fear and challenge for me was getting out of my comfort zone but it is exactly what I did (and also quite well I have to say) by going to Spain for two months, and it turned out to be easier and more pleasant than I thought.

Anyway, being an Erasmus student or intern is an experience that everyone should make: it is a real opportunity to meet a lot of new people, new cultures, new mindsets, to make new friends, to become more open-minded and to enrich your life by getting out of your comfort zone and explore the beautiful world out of it!