Ashleigh's Blog

My second week in Madrid has just come to an end and it feels like it's been non-stop busy. This week kicked off with a few mental breakdowns - a cheerful start. I was really stressed about organising my classes and my timetable, because it isn't at all what I expected and trying to maintain the balance between having free time, doing things I enjoy and avoiding clashes was really challenging. I also noticed that things which would not normally bother me were really making me a bit nutty. I got all the way to campus one afternoon only to find out that my French class wasn't on and usually, being the lazy sloth that I am, I would've happily skipped back to an afternoon of napping. But instead I found myself ranting and raving on the phone to my mum on campus with several confused Spaniards watching me. By about Wednesday, although my classes had actually been really enjoyable, I felt run down, demotivated and I was longing for a bit of my own culture back. Final...

I just woke up from a typical Spanish siesta, and as I'm sat on my bed watching the golden colour of the setting sunshine transform the colours of the buildings, I couldn't be more in love with this city. What a week it has been. I arrived in the city last Friday with my parents and I was immediately greeted by the heat. It got worse, as we soon discovered that we got catfished by the website which boasted a "loft apartment" but ended up being more like a cupboard without any aircon or windows. Having not yet found a place for me to actually live, it's safe to say I was immediately concerned that I'd be spending 4 months in a similar stuffy shoebox! For this reason, day 2 was probably the first time I experienced a feeling of panic. We travelled up to my university campus, which is very much in the middle of nowhere, and then walked for hours around different parts of the city (unsuccessfully) trying to find somewhere for me to live.  Eventually...

I'm back and I've been saving all my writing genius for the next insane few months of my life because I am MOVING TO SPAIN IN 12 DAYS.  I currently still have nowhere to live, I've never been to Madrid and after a summer with zero Spanish speaking practice (apart from a lovely chat with an Uber driver in Miami) I'm beginning to panic that I won't even remember how to speak Spanish. But with all that aside, I wanted to talk about how I'm feeling, what I'm expecting so far and what I hope I'll learn from the experience - kind of like a time capsule to look back on.  Firstly, it makes sense to tell you where I'm going and what I'm doing. I'll be studying at la Universidad Pontificia de Comillas which is a very prestigious university in Spain, and I'll be based in the Cantoblanco campus for Las Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (Human and Social Sciences) (see some lovely google images below). In terms of what I'm studying, it wor...

This is the final post that I'll be making in this series, and it's probably the one that I find most important. Strength is something which none of us seem to think we have, particularly as women. We have this idea that our reserve of strength is so small and if something bad or upsetting were to happen, we would never cope. But that's just not true. Strength, to me, means supporting yourself. If you can go through hell and pick yourself back up and carry on, that's the ultimate sign of strength. There are so many of us that, whether we know it or not, find it easier to rely on others to hold us up or just plaster over the issue, and I'll be the first to hold my hands up and say that I was guilty of this for a long time. But what takes real strength is looking after yourself and holding yourself up, facing your issues without fear, whilst also asking for help but only when you need it.  The reason I left this particular theme until last, is because this is a trai...

For the second post of this series, I wanted to focus on the topic of dedication. This is a quality which isn't often recognised, but the fact remains that hard work pays off and being dedicated to something important to you is an extremely admirable quality. Just like my last post about confidence, I asked women close to me what their views are on the subject, but first of all, I’d like to talk about what dedication means to me. From my point of view, you can be dedicated to anything – your career, hobbies, relationships… some people are even dedicated to being an arse! Dedication is about finding what you’re good at, what you enjoy and what you stand for and pouring your all into it. For me, I've always been extremely dedicated to my studies and that's been an outlet for me, even in the toughest times. I love languages and writing and I know with certainty that they are my passion in life, so I will continue to dedicate myself to them as much as possible. It’...

The past few weeks I've been feeling much more confident and t o celebrate this sudden and welcome change, I'd like to start a series on my blog to empower women and invite them to feel proud to be confident. After reflecting on why I struggled with this for so long, I realised a lot about how our society views confident and powerful women, and often, it's not in a particularly positive light.  One time, after I was kind of feeling myself (I promise, a rare occurrence) a boy actually said that I should be careful because men don't like confident women. I think that we as women should just take the time to think about that. This is the world we live in, and we should have the strength to challenge it, if not for ourselves then for our daughters. AND as I post this, it is International Women's Day! I'm going to hop off my soapbox for now, but for this series, I will be asking different women close to me what their views are on different topics and what the...

To be perfectly honest, I have no clue what I'm doing. I'm not technologically gifted, I've never made a blog before in my life and I'm more than slightly worried that I won't have anything remotely interesting to share. But nevertheless, I am here.  Probably the biggest reason I wanted to make this blog is to get back into writing. I've always enjoyed telling stories (although they were usually fictional ones, given that they are more interesting) and that was one of my biggest resolutions for 2019.  On top of this, I've got a lot of cool things coming up this year - one of which being moving to Spain later on for my year abroad, so I wanted to record those memories in some form and I'm much too cringey for a YouTube channel.  Not really sure I can give a sure answer on what you can expect from this blog, but I know I'm definitely interested in giving a record of stuff I'm getting up to and advice on different life topics (possibly a bit h...