What I Learned from my Internship Abroad: Candidate Blog

Lulu R., 2021
Journalism Intern
in Madrid, and friends.

As I write this, my time in Madrid has come to an end. The three months have flown by and I know I would have happily spent another three months in this city. The more I got to know Madrid, the more I felt there was to find out. Madrid has also been the city where I have lived alone for the first time, and for that I think I will always remember it in a specific way, and will probably continue coming back. Throughout the duration of this programme, I have learned what it is like to explore a city and make it your own, as well as getting a healthy dosage of Spanish culture. I hope to take a bit of the madrileño “gatos” lifestyle back to London.

I think what I have enjoyed most from the programme were the opportunities I got to meet people through the shared accommodation, the language school and the internship. As opposed to if I had just come to Spain without the programme, I had numerous situations booked and arranged in which I could get to know and interact with lots of different people. I have also enjoyed the opportunity to learn a new language, and specifically the challenge of having to communicate in the language whilst I learned and improved. By my final month in Madrid, I felt truly at home in my internship placement, and I will miss not just the friends I made but my bosses at the language school, with whom I spent many an hour, both at work and in conversation.

Explore various internships in Madrid, Spain.

My primary piece of advice for Adelante candidates would be to do lots in your first month – sightseeing, travelling outside of Madrid on “escapadas”. I saved these things until later in my time here, and thus my last month was crazily and hectically busy. I wish that I had visited more cities outside of the capital earlier on, for example Córdoba or Segovia. Whilst COVID has in no way diminished my experience, hopefully future Adelante candidates will be travelling without such concerns. Travelling outside of the capital will be that much easier, as I had to wait until a month into my time here when restrictions eased. My favourite trip outside of the city, however, was probably to Barcelona. Instead of the one day that I spent in Toledo, for example, I set aside four days for Barcelona, and even that felt like it flew by!

The first thing I noticed about Barcelona was that it was more expensive than Madrid, with the sites and monuments being around 20 to 30 euros to enter. The city has much to see though – the obvious ones being Gaudi´s buildings, the Picasso Museum, the Miro Museum… Much of my four days, however, was also set aside for the beach, which was a nice change from the “piscinas de verano” of Madrid. It was wonderful to discover how the beach was bustling and alive not just in the day, but even at night, and we spent an amazing evening sitting on the rocks watching the sun rise over the Mediterranean. My time in Barcelona was also characterised by the Euros, several matches of which we watched situated in various pubs around the city. I was, however, happy to return to the “home” of Madrid, where I focused on enjoying my last few days, and furthermore was extremely sad to leave it.

-Lulu Rehman

2021 Journalism Intern in Madrid, Spain

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