Malaga, Spain

by Toni St.Clair on Monday, September 1, 2008 at 12:28pm via FB

I arrived in Malaga around 5pm (so about 9am in Calgary) after travelling for about 15 hrs and I was surprisingly ok. Not too tired, despite not sleeping on the plane. My apartment is quite a bit smaller than my Mexico one and not as nicely furnished, but it’s a block from the beach so that’s a bonus!! And I actually found out today that I am supposedly moving in a coupleweeks to another place anyways; I guess my company has been having some problems with the owners of this building. Right now I have 2 roommates: one is from Holland, here on vacation until October, the other from Turkey, here for 2 more weeks finishing his spanish course...so neither are coworkers. I was a bit disappointed in that area b/c I was looking forward to having people to chat with and such, but I'll survive. It won't take me long I'm sure... ;)

I found out what I am exactly doing for my company, OnSpain (www.onspain.es). I am in charge of the marketing campaign in Canada, so I will be sending a campaign flyer to many private schools in Canada with information about OnSpain and the programs we offer, as well as personally talking to the schools sometimes. I also am supposed to be doing work on the campaign in France, however, this will be VERY dependent on how good my French becomes...I am re-teaching myself right now, and I'm practicing with some of my friends so we'll see...I also found out that I will be in the office by myself for the most part. I will be with coworkers on Mondays and sometimes Fridays, but the other 3 days I am alone...I guess there is another intern coming from Germany in mid-September and she'll be working with me as well so that'll be good. I am also in charge of making a GPS map of the downtown area for the upcoming tours we have. I will have to spend a day or weekend or something walking a map for the kids on the tours to find, so that'll be a good way to get to know the city too.

I went for a walk on the beach last night and discovered many shops,restaurants and outdoor cafes and basically all of the restaurants and cafes are outdoors on the beach boardwalk!! I have no internet in my apartment (and I'm not sure if the new one will), so I have been visiting this little cafe called Namaste for hours at a time. However, b/c of the time difference there’s not too many people online when I’m online so I guess maybe hours is an exaggeration.

Right now I live in the area called Pedregalejo (used to be a fishing village outside of Malaga), which is a little suburb off of the center of Malaga, where my office is. It only takes me about 20mins on a bus to get downtown and it just so happens that my office is right in the Plaza de la Constitucion, one of the main tourist attractions and also happens to be about 30mins from all the other main tourist stuff. Tomorrow (today depending when you read this) I am planning on visiting the huge Castle de Gibralfaro, the Picasso Museum, maybe seeing the bullring and basically doing the main tourist circuit. Should take almost all day and I will more than likely be pretty brown/red!!!

The weather here is hot, hot, hot all the time. And I mean ALL the time...for example right now it's about 8:30pm and it's still 28 outside...not like sun hot but muggy never wear pants or long-ish pants ever hot!!! It's AWESOME!!! I'm not a big fan of sleeping in it but I'll get used to it... ;) Small sacrifice right?! Not many places have airconditioning either but at night it does cool down quite a bit b/c of the sea breeze...

- xoxo