(upbeat music)
- Good morning, buenas dias.
I take community.
My name is Selena and I am here in Madrid, Spain.
As you can see by my umbrella, it is raining here.
March is probably, March and April, along
with probably November are the rainiest months
here in Madrid.
Today is Thursday.
And actually I do not work on Thursdays, but come join me
for a cup of coffee at one of my favorite cafes.
Some of you may know me personally, or recognize me
either from other Instagram stories or from your newsletter.
I am one of your 25 alumni advisory board members.
I am 28 years old and I am from Texas originally.
And I've been in Madrid for three and a half years.
So obviously I am in love with this city.
I did ITA's part-time 11 week online course
back in January, 2018.
I finished the course itself
about April, May of that same year.
And I joined ITA's partner school here in Madrid to
finish my practicum when I arrived in September of 2018.
So I did six classes teaching practices
and right after that, I officially had my TEFL certificate.
So with it's partner school here in Madrid
I got my student visa.
It was important to me to focus on improving my Spanish
just for a personal reason.
That was always a goal of mine.
So I decided to go the route
of taking Spanish classes in order to get my student visa.
So my first year in Spain
I was taking Spanish classes with ITA's partner school
and I was doing my own private classes.
I reached out to my own students.
I made my own schedule
and I was working at private academies.
My second year in Spain was a little bit different.
I was basically the equivalent of a camp counselor.
So I worked with students ages nine to 17.
We would travel around Spain and we would do
all outdoor activities, which was conducted in English.
After the pandemic,
I was like, okay, I need something more stable
but I also wanted to continue my education.
So I decided to get my master's degree
in international education last year, along
with doing the ministry program,
that's when you're Auxiliares de Conversación
for nine to 10 months
and you make a salary of a thousand euros.
So as you can imagine doing that with that schedule
with kids plus doing a master's degree was a lot
but it was one of the most rewarding experiences
I've ever had.
Now going on my fourth year here in Spain, I actually
teach English online.
I work for a company called open English, and I normally
do my classes from Mondays to Wednesdays.
I actually don't work on Thursday and Fridays.
I actually do something else a few days a week,
which I will show you later.
Like I said, I am not working today
technically today's Thursday.
I normally work Monday to Wednesdays online
but here is my little home setup.
All right, so pretty standard.
Nice big living room,
please excuse the mess.
Nice big living room.
This is one hallway bathroom's, kitchen, room.
And all of these are 1, 2, 3, 4 rooms.
My room is the last one on the left.
There are only four of us here living right now.
All right, this is the famous Grand Villa,
very long street, shopping, musical theater,
nice tall buildings, lots of tourists.
This is one of the cutest cafes, in my opinion, in Madrid.
It is right here next to Bilbao Metro.
It is called Cafe Comercial
and it is so cute.
It's even better on the inside.
Great to take some wine.
Absolutely fantastic.
To just hang out with friends, have a good time.
And this is especially great.
If you have parents coming to visit
this is a very nice traditional.
For your first year, this is completely dependent upon you
and what your goals are for your first year.
If you wanna take Spanish classes to improve your
language abilities, because you feel a little uncomfortable
then go with Spanish classes.
With taking Spanish classes,
you will most likely have to find your own private classes.
It's not as hard as it seems, I promise.
But that schedule of private classes
can sometimes be a little more unstable.
So again, it just completely depends on what you want.
If you are more concerned about the money aspects
then I recommend going with a program where
you work 16 to 24 hours a week making a salary
of about 900 to 1300 euros every single month.
It provides stability, peace of mind
and most likely you'll have a great school.
I got my master's degree here in Spain
in a town just outside of Madrid city center
about an hour via train.
I got a master's in international education.
It was in person and the program was about 10 months long.
The course I personally took international education
was conducted in person over the course of 10 months
but the university does offer programs
fully online to get your degree.
For me personally, this did improve my career prospects.
My undergraduate degree is actually an exercise science.
And when I didn't wanna continue to pursue that route
of going to postgraduate school, physical therapy school
having a master's degree in education really helped
because for me, I no longer wanted to pursue
exercise science or go to postgraduate school in the US.
Therefore I needed a supplement in my mind.
I needed a supplement degree to help me be a part
of the career path that I really enjoy
and that I really wanted to be a part of.
So, because it's been over three years
I don't exactly remember, but I think it was somewhere
between 2000 and 2500 euros for the entire year.
This fee did not only include Spanish classes.
This included help with your visa process
any paperwork that you needed, help finding a job
and also your advisors would help you
with housing if you needed it.
So for me, this was completely worth the fee
for our first year in Spain.
I had a total of eight classes in my master's degree,
five were conducted in English
and the last three were conducted in Spanish.
That is specifically for my university
and my program that I did last year.
There are many universities that offer
Master's programs that are fully in English.
Okay, this right here, this delicious place
this is the second to best taco restaurant in Madrid.
If you're craving tacos, Spain, unfortunately does not
have a great variety of Mexican food
but this is your number two spot to go to.
Number one is listed here.
For me personally, no
a thousand euros is not enough to just live on.
It does cover basic expenses, but I love to travel
and I love to spend money on experiences as well as food.
So I like to supplement my income.
I personally like to sit
at the 1500 Euro range, obviously more is better.
And in the next slide you'll see a cost breakdown
of what it costs to live in Madrid.
The one thing on that list
that I personally do not partake in is a gym membership.
I do not have one.
I am personally not motivated in the gym.
I prefer to exercise by playing team sports.
So what I did when I first got here is I networked
and I reached out to other people
and I started playing soccer with a big group of people.
We, most of us are native English speakers
and we play every Fridays and every Saturday.
And I've been playing
with the same group of people for three years.
And it's been a great way to make friends build a community.
And also of course, to exercise
and get your heart pumping.
The name of the university
where I got my master's degree last year is called
Universidad de Alcala Instituo Franklin.
And it's based in, Alcalá de Henares,
a small town about an hour outside of Madrid.
If you are from North America
the easiest way to stay in Spain, short term or long term is
by doing either the student visa that gets you to
take Spanish classes
or the student visa that gets you a part
of the ministry program.
The North American language and cultural assistant program.
Research is your best friend.
And also not to be biased when I say this, but ITA has some
of the best free resources that you can use
and look up all this kind of information about Spain.
It is one of the reasons why I chose ITA
as my TEFL program back in 2018 because they have the best.
I was waiting for this question.
Unfortunately, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it
because it's not all sunshine and rainbows here.
Unfortunately it is not quite easy.
You will have to put legwork in
and be organized and give it your all.
There are two websites that I do recommend.
One is specifically for, if you are not yet in Spain
and you do not speak very good Spanish,
I will link that right here.
The second one that I will link here as well.
This one I recommend if you are comfortable
with speaking Spanish, and if you are located
in Madrid or just in Spain in general, it's best
if you are here in person to use this website.
The first website it's much easier.
There are many options to where you can instantly
book an apartment and get a contract.
The second website is a little bit harder because most
of the time you will have to go through an estate agency.
They make it a little bit more difficult
and you have to have a lot
of documents to prove you can pay.
I also recommend joining
as many Facebook groups as possible, especially
when it comes to housing in Madrid
or just in Spain in general.
Many people will have rooms that open up
or they'll have the entire apartment
that's gonna be vacant soon
and they will post those listings on Facebook pages.
No, open English is just a freelance teaching
platform that is done online from anywhere in the world.
My visa is a student visa.
It is sponsored
by a local language academy based here in Madrid.
I am required to take classes at least twice a week.
My master's degree costs about 4000 euros.
The visa that you get initially
at the US consulate is the most difficult
and the most time consuming.
Once you're in Spain, the process is a lot easier
and you can renew it here in Spain.
You don't have to go back and forth.
The paperwork you need is similar-ish.
There are a few different requirements
and a few of the same,
but the process is a lot easier to renew once you are here.
I promised I'd show you what I do
with the other half of my time.
And here it is.
So I dog sit regularly
at least once a week for this little guy Leo, hey buddy.
Yeah, it's super fun.
I really love dogs.
I miss my own dogs at home.
So this is a really great, great way for me to spend time
with dogs and also make a little bit of extra money.
Very good question.
At first, the website that I used
that I mentioned earlier, spot a home.
I did not know my roommates.
I did not know who I was gonna be living with.
I was very fortunate.
I booked a room
and I got to live with some really, really nice people.
And we are actually still friends to this day.
So I took a leap of faith
my first year didn't know my roommates
didn't know where I was gonna be living.
Second year after I networked
and I made a lot of really good friends.
I would just ask, I asked around, I said,
hey, do you need a roommate?
Do you wanna live together?
Let's do this.
And that's kind of how that happened.
Glad you asked that question.
So this little guy is really small.
I'm again, just the dog sitter
but Madrid is a very dog friendly city.
There's all kinds of breeds, big and small
and it's amazing.
Because I did the part-time online course,
my whole process took
I started the TEFL course, January, 2018.
I moved to Madrid September, 2018
but I took my time because I needed to save money.
Getting ready to close out the night.
It's almost 8:30 here in Madrid.
Please, if I didn't get to your questions
because there were quite a few, some of them were repeats.
Some of them were new.
Please feel free to follow me
at my travel Instagram account.
I'm happy to answer any DMS.
And also you can follow along.
I try to post as much travel content as I can.
I love traveling.
Spain is amazing and it's also a fantastic gateway
to the rest of Europe.
So I try to post as often as I can.
And I'm absolutely so happy to answer any questions
that I didn't get to via DM.