Sometimes, there are so many things that happen to you all at once that it is almost impossible to put it into words. Well, that pretty much sums up how my year abroad has been for me so far: it has opened my mind up to so many new things, has made me learn things I would never have imagined, and has, in the space of only 4 months, started to shape who I am and what I can become. Even the department that I have been working in, as a marketing intern at La Manga Club Resort in Murcia, Spain, has helped me to think about the future, and give me a taste of a career path that I might, finally, be interested in pursuing.
Working at La Manga Club has been a dream of an experience, much more so than I had initially expected. It is crazy now for me to think that I had not even heard of this resort before I applied to work here, and only came initially because people told me that it is, in fact, very well known around the world and would be a great place to work in. How right they were! Learning about marketing: the strategies, the components that make up a department and the creativity of it all has really allowed me to use and develop skills I didn’t really know existed inside of me. I have been able to develop my writing abilities: coming up with catchy captions for posts on social media; have had to communicate with other departments around the resort to collect various pieces of information here and there; and have, most importantly, been responsible for the translating of the entire new and official company website in English. So, that is definitely something I can take from the experience: knowing that I have done something truly valuable for them here.
Although I am still far from being fluent, and find it difficult to understand and communicate in Spanish to my colleagues for the majority of the time, I feel that my own abilities have gradually started to improve. Of course, sometimes, there are days when you are not always in the mood to make that effort to speak a foreign language because, as I have learned, it is sometimes exhausting to spend your days not being able to fully express yourself because you don’t literally have the words to. Nonetheless, I can truthfully say that I feel I will return to England feeling more capable than before. After all, that’s what the year abroad is for, right?!
For now, I only have 3 weeks left in this gorgeous environment, and will definitely be saying adios to it with a heavy heart. I have made friends here that I know will last me a lifetime, (with the full intention of this being the case, realistically speaking), and have had experiences here that I know I will never be able to recreate and have again. Spending 4 months of my year abroad here has been the best decision I could have made.