(upbeat music)
- Barcelona, I don't know exactly,
people upstairs were just talking about
how it just, some people just say
I wanna go to Spain, I don't know why,
it just had a pull for some reason.
I wanted to improve my Spanish,
I thought when I moved there, my Spanish
was okay but it really wasn't that great.
So I wanted to learn Spanish.
So I did it in July of 2013, and...
it was intense, it was a lot,
I had gone from having a month of just
la-la-la travel in Europe, and then
went into this 4-week intensive course
and so, basically we went into it right away,
I mean, it was content, content, right away.
We were teaching private... (stutters)
Student teaching within our first week too
and then we were also taking Catalan classes
to get an idea of what it was like
to be in a foreign language class,
and that all started in the first week
and so we were there usually from 10 or 11,
which is kinda Spanish morning,
until six or seven at night most days, sometimes later.
And it was a good group of us,
it was a couple Australians, a couple English,
couple Americans, an Italian,
and it was a fun group and we would go out together
and go to clubs, go to dinner.
Yeah, I get up, I have a coffee,
and sit on my terrace, hang out, whatever.
I usually have a class, or something,
like a Spanish meet-up or something in the
12 or 1 or 2 o'clock range.
So I'll have a class in the middle of the day, some days,
and then one or two classes in the evening.
So it's like three hours, three to four hours
a day, depending on the day, and then
after my classes I usually meet up with friends
for dinner, like 9:30 or 10:00,
you have dinner, drinks, whatever.
Sometimes I go to a movie, one of my pictures
in the slide was from my 30th birthday recently,
which was movies at this castle
up on top of a mountain, they do movies
three nights a week, and...
yeah, I go to the beach a lot
in between Siesta times sometimes I'll be
at the beach for a little while.
And, yeah, and I have stressful days sometimes
but it's pretty stress-free, I mean
the people value their time differently there,
and I'm not saying that there aren't people
that are stressed out, and there are people,
the economy's really bad right now,
there's a lot of unemployment.
I'm fortunate that because the economy's bad
there's a high demand for English teachers
and I have to try and look away.
I overstayed my tourist visa, so I get in,
when I arrive there nobody even
looked at my stamps, they just stamp me in
on some random page in my passport,
I can't even find my Spanish stamp in there.
And I just stayed, and had an apartment,
started getting students, had a bank account,
it's really just not been an issue.
Just going to the beach everyday,
meeting new people everyday.
I just took a road trip with a couple girlfriends
up to Cadaqués which is a coastal city
about three hours north of Barcelona,
and we were just in the car, jammin' out,
like stopping in these tiny villages in Spain,
and speaking Spanish to people,
we've both lived there a year now, over a year.
Had a great time stopping in these little
castle villages and just the experience
and also just the pace, I came from a very
high-stress working environment
and high-stress grad school and doing all of that
and just to be able to just
(breathes out)
just breathe, and relax, and
have time to myself, have time to enjoy my life.
My name is Lauren O'Rourke and I'm an
international TEFL academy graduate.
- Yay!
(applause)
- Well done!
(calm music)