(upbeat music)
- Hi guys.
My name is Saskia and I'm coming to you
lemme get to position this,
from Aguilas, Spain.
I'll be doing the takeover
and telling you guys a little bit
about my experience here, living here, my apartment,
the work that I do,
and anything else that might be interesting to you guys
to know about the experience here.
So I'll start by saying that I am an alumni of ITA.
I did...
Today's a little bit weird because typically,
my day is a lot busier.
I wish I would have done this maybe yesterday,
because my day is usually busier.
So I'll start by giving you guys a tour of my (indistinct)
So here's my living room area.
There's some workout stuff right here.
There is my computer area with some books,
some of my stuff that I used to teach online,
I teach online,
but I do not teach children most of the time.
Most of my students are adults.
And I'll explain that more later.
This is my area, my dining area.
This is the rest of the living room, my door, my shoes.
Here's my kitchen.
I got a gas stove, I don't have an oven.
So here's my kitchen.
And then out there is where my washer and dryer
and like drying my clothes,
'cause in Spain, usually you dry your clothes outside.
Here is the hallway, there the back room is,
is the bedroom.
I have three bedrooms and one bath.
I live on my own.
And if you're wondering how much I pay for rent,
I pay 200 Euros.
You see my home,
let me give you a little bit more background about me.
My name is Saskia.
I am originally from the U.S.
My parents are from Haiti
and I'm a first generation American.
I was born in Stanford, Connecticut
and then I moved to a town outside of Atlanta, Georgia
at about the age of six,
so I moved during the 1996 Olympics.
We lived there.
I lived there up until two years ago.
So I lived there for 22 years,
and then I moved to Spain.
I have my Masters Degree in International Relations,
and I have my Bachelor's Degree in World History.
And yeah.
So that's a little bit of background about where I'm from
and anything else.
Let's talk about the program I'm in.
I am in the North American Language Assistants Program,
and it's available to people in North America,
which is in Canada,
English speakers in North America,
which is Canada and the U.S.
You have to have a college degree,
which can be an associates degree.
You have to have a passport from these countries,
you also have to be...
They want you be at a native level,
but they've opened it up a lot more to other levels.
What else you do you need to have?
You need to have I said,
have a degree.
Teaching experience in Spanish is not required.
It's just kind of a add on,
I've improved my Spanish,
but I didn't have much Spanish before I got here.
And yeah. So that's about it.
What it is like?
So you usually work about...
In the region I'm in it varies by region,
the region I'm in you get 875 for 15 hours of work.
I'm divided this year about between three schools.
The first year it was four, last year it was two,
and this year is three.
So each year you get assigned different schools
and you speak with a coordinator,
and you go in the classrooms
and you kind of just assist the students in talking,
make sure they're maintaining English,
help the teacher make any corrections that she may have,
or they may have in their writing and stuff like that.
So it's pretty simple, it gives you a lot of spare time.
So I've also been able to find other work.
So I work online
with a company called Engoo
which is focused, it is...
Philippine based company.
And most of my students about 95 to a 90%
of them are adults.
And then I just pretty much have conversation
or different types of lessons based in conversation
or like a focus study.
Then,
I also found you can work up to 20 hours
on top of your student visa.
And I found work at (indistinct) Academy
about 30 minutes away from where I live.
Hopefully I'll be able to share...
Outside of teaching on Engoo,
most of my students are children.
I've only been assigned one adult school,
and that was my first year.
And they're called EOI's
(speaks foreign language)
which are school language schools.
I did that for one year, but last year I was pretty much,
and it's about an hour and a half
from the capital city of the region.
So I really like it, it's small.
It's known for carnival.
And carnival is like, well,
you guys are familiar with carnival.
It's a big celebration before Easter.
And they have many traditions.
I will show you around my city
and go shopping with you guys a little bit later
'cause I'm going to go practice some roller skating,
'cause it's my day off,
and I'm gonna do some grocery shopping.
Yes and no. You get to pick your region,
they put it in columns and you get to decide
on which region you want.
And then you'd get to decide what kind of environment
you like to live in like the country or the city.
And then from there, they kind of just pick
what best fits there.
No real guarantee that you'll get like in the city center
of anywhere.
They may put you, even if you say you want the city,
they may just put you on the outskirts of the city.
I told them I didn't mind,
I told them I wanted to be in Murcia
because I knew the cost of...
I knew the cost of living and everything would match up
with how much we're getting paid
because everywhere else usually is about 700.
And I also didn't like mind.
So they put me in Aguilas, so yeah,
you kind of don't really get exact city,
but you get at least to pick your region most of the time.
Yes, I've met people from the Philippines that are here,
doing Language Assistant Program.
And I know that they've just recently opened it
to India as well,
but I don't know anything about the visa process
for non-Americans so...
It depends on your region,
nobody that I've met has struggled to pay their bills.
I got lucky, I got a really good deal on my apartment
through word of mouth, I got a really good deal.
My landlord's really nice,
and I've been able to find able to find multiple streams
of income.
Like I said, I teach at the Academy,
which is 10 Euro an hour.
And I also teach online, which I make around $10 an hour,
which is about eight euros eight, give or take...
Program I'm in starts applications
in middle to late January.
And it goes all the way to middle to late April
is usually the timeframe that they do.
Each year it changes a little bit,
it's either a little bit earlier, or a little bit later but.
The program I'm in is called
the North American Language Assistants Program.
And you can Google the
North American Language Assistant Program in Spain,
and you should be able to find the application
or the program route to that.
Program is not through a school,
this is through the government.
So you're doing this through the Spanish government.
It is not hiring year round.
The timeframe or you have until between the mid,
you have until between mid January to late January,
to mid April to late April.
And it's not the schools that are hiring
and you start your school year in October.
So October 1st is when I start
then I end the school year on May 31st
is the last day for me,
but it changes each region,
but they don't hire you directly.
You have to do it through the program.
That's how I did it with my visa.
Let me answer some questions, cause I might be a bit vague.
So I did the ITA online course in 2017,
and then I applied in the beginning of 2018,
in January, 2018 for the program,
the North American Language Assistants Program.
When I applied, I chose my region
and I placed a top three choice.
So my first choice is often honored,
but sometimes it's not depending on the popularity
of the region.
I got here by getting a student visa
based on my acceptance letter into the program.
And I had to do that since I'm from Atlanta,
I had to go to Miami
and get it done at the Spanish Consulate there.
After that, I had to pay for my flight here
and I had to find my own accommodations
and set up my visa in my national...
I did that all on my own.
And it was pretty simple.
It's just the language barrier
and a little bit of bureaucracy,
'cause it's a lot of,
they do a lot of this stuff not as digital
as it is in the U.S. and other places.
So you have to do a lot of paperwork.
And that takes a while.
I chose Spain because I just wanted to live somewhere
where I could travel easily,
and the cost of living was cheap.
And it is.
I'll show you guys that my cost of living.
I'm on a student visa. I wanna reiterate that.
So it is as if I'm in school,
I'm only able to work outside of the 15 hours, 20 hours.
And I can't like secure a job or do anything major.
I can just live here without being more worried about
getting like deported for not being on an actual visa.
Yeah. I told you guys that my students range from all ages,
like I've had all ages students
and I work online with Engoo,
I can make anywhere from,
I would say depending on how much effort I put in,
if I'm free, I have a lot of free time,
I can make up to 1,000.
If I don't have that much time, I'd say about 500 to 300,
depending on what effort I give.
So I choose how much I make with that.
With the Academy I make about 600 Euro, which is the bow.
It depends on the exchange rate.
So it's about, I would say
$700, $735 more or less.
I get about,
I get every vacation that holiday that they have here off.
I have two weeks in December,
two to three weeks in December,
I have a week for spring break in April,
I have summers off
and there's like other holiday sprinkled in there as well.
We only work, my program only works four days a week.
So I have three day weekends.
So that's also a great opportunity to do day trips
or travel nearby.
You can go to Portugal, you can go to other regions
and you can also go to Spain,
I mean, not Spain.
You can go to France and other places.
The airport here is not that great,
so I have to go to Alicante,
but like, if you're in Madrid or Barcelona,
of course they have way more connections than here .
I live on my own and I...
And if you guys are like,
"wow, she spends a lot more on food than she does rent."
I eat at home a lot, I am vegan
and there is not many vegan locations
because in Spain, they are just now getting on
like the vegan trend and they love their Jamon,
which is ham.
And they love their tapas and seafood
'cause I live near the coast of the Mediterranean.
And I'll show you guys that later, but yeah,
I eat mostly at home.
So I spend a lot of money on groceries.
That's why I don't go out to eat.
The thing I noticed with kids they're less inhibited
and they were more willing to make mistakes and talk.
With adults they have more to talk about
'cause we have more similarities
because of our age similarity,
and generate less of a generation gap.
It's an amount of engagement that you can get out of them.
I noticed with adults,
they are more engaging online than they are in person.
And with kids, they're more engaged in person
than they are online because you know of course why.
Because kids, yeah,
you have to grip their attention more.
Hey guys, so I'm gonna tag my actual Instagram here,
so you guys can go and follow me or talk to me there,
and I'll put more on my stories there
'cause I have more space.
So I'll see you there.
My dating has not been successful.
I am single, but I don't mind it.
I like to sing to myself
I use dating apps of course,
but I haven't really met a lot of Spanish guys
that I'm compatible with, so no.
I'm out and about,
this is like walking around my city center,
center of this town
and I'm going to go do some grocery shopping
and then go skate a little bit.
And I'll show you guys how that it is so stay tuned.
Pluses I live very close to the city center,
like I'm about five minute walk to the city center,
so it's not that bad for us here.
There's a lot of options.
It's like tobacco shops,
if you smoke cigarettes and stuff like that,
there's banks everywhere,
everything is open now
but we are required to wear mask everywhere we go.
Because of course.
So I'll show you guys,
so you guys can see
it's a very small traditional Spanish city,
very small, well, not very small.
It's not the smallest I've been to,
but I'm going to the health food store
to get some vegan stuff.
This is the coast, the Mediterranean,
which is where I live on.
I live in more sea region.
So you can see the coast,
it's a little bit windy today.
like Fall hit hard.
And then right there,
(wind howling)
one of the school's I worked at.
It's the high school I was at last year,
I'm not returning there this year
but it's right next to the beach.
So you can see the coast and everything.
And it was really nice.
And here is another side.
This Island right here is called Del Fraile,
Island of the Friars.
And it's really nice.
Little beads down there really secluded, but...
I'm going here to practice.
Changed locations because I couldn't get
into the other spot.
But if found somewhere with play ground
to practice roller skating.
The inside of the store, like I said,
it looks pretty much like Walmart.
It's about the same size as a Walmart,
they even have clothing and like home stuff over there,
the frozen food, organic stuff
and then, yeah, I don't go over there 'cause I don't eat.
Actually wrote an article for ITA about this experience
that I've had here has a person of color.
So I'll post it or share the screenshot of it,
so you can look it up and you can learn more
about my experience as a person of color.
So the last two points I'm gonna make
is I do have a class this evening.
I'm waiting right now for the class to start,
and once I'm done with the class,
I'm gonna take you guys up to my rooftop
so I can show you guys a surprise.
Dishing the notes for the lesson,
after leaving notes for each student within 24 hours,
so I can get paid for the class.
And I leave a note
and then I'm gonna take you guys upstairs.
I've been talking a little bit too much
'cause I just get excited about sharing my experience.
So I'm gonna again, you can follow me
and I'm gonna talk a little bit more on my direct page.
So I'll put it right here, right here.
(upbeat music)