Hi, my name is Siri, I am 19 years old, and I am from Stockholm, Sweden.

I’ve been living here for two weeks now. It feels like an eternity, but at the same time, it feels like I just left home, saying goodbye to my friends and family. At the start of the second week, I tried to regain some of the energy I had lost during the first week. There were a LOT of new impressions and so much information that all of us, at least in my apartment, ended up exhausted.

But this week has not been any less intense. It was my first week volunteering at La Fact Fupar, where I have met a lot of lovely people and taken part in many different activities. It has been both fun and challenging, especially when it comes to the language.
I studied Spanish at school for several years, but coming here to Spain has made me realise how different it is to speak with a real Spanish person compared to speaking with a Spanish teacher in class. I still have a lot to learn. Sometimes I even have a hard time understanding whether people are speaking Spanish or Catalan! But I hope to be able to speak Spanish at a good level by the end of the project. My first step was to buy a Spanish children’s book at a second-hand bookstore.

Of course, I have also gotten to know the other volunteers. One of my biggest concerns before coming here was what the other volunteers would be like. But, as far as I know, everyone has turned out to be kind and funny. Getting to know people from different cultures was one of my main reasons for wanting to go abroad. One of our favourite conversation topics has been talking about the differences between our cultures, countries, and languages.

In between all of this, I have also had time to do some other fun things, such as discovering Terrassa, going to La República, having picnics, going to a circus and attending a volunteer party for all the volunteers in Terrassa. We also went to Barcelona for the first time, where there was a festival over the weekend. We went thrift shopping and enjoyed the festival’s fireworks at the beach.

So, looking back at these first two weeks makes me feel really good about the following 10 months!