Sarah la Viajera
Sarah la Viajera

Auxiliar de Conversación Program

Bienvenidos! I participated in the North American Language Assistant Program from 2014-2017 in the regions of Galicia and Madrid, Spain. I taught students ages 3-12 and learned so much about teaching and living in Spain during that time frame.

Now I work as a freelancer in Madrid with her own service-based business that is primarily focused on translating, writing, teaching and consulting. In the coming months, I will be adding lots more content here about applying to the program, packing and preparing for your time here, applying for the student visa and later on, getting your temporary residency card, what it’s like to teach at a school, reapplying for another year in the program, how to enjoy your life here to the fullest and more!

Keep checking back to this page for more information.

What are you waiting for? The unique world of teaching English in Spain is waiting for you! (Photo from my first year in A Coruña)

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This time last week we were in Northern Ireland on our Gibraltar anniversary and traveling just a wee ways over to the location where we had had our wedding reception. While it was a special and fun day and our marriage legally began on Sept. 2nd, personally we had a few more weeks to go before our official married life. One of the most frustrating things of these last 19 months or so was having to stay put and when it was safe enough only travel locally (as in not leaving the Iberian Peninsula). I often thought of how couples who got married a few years ago or more have been able to go back to the places where they got married and have taken many more anniversary trips. And to think for us, simply having the ceremony and reception and bringing our two worlds together were miracles in and of themselves. It’s easy to fall into those ways of thinking and it is only human to do so. That nagging question of “well, when can we return to one of *our* special spots?” was answered last week when we were able to visit the lovely location where we had our wedding reception on 9/21/2019. The drive out to the forest, the gorgeous fields of dark purple heather (not to mention the sheep that held us up along the way 🐑🚗) and the forest itself were sights to behold. 😍 Stepping inside it and reveling in the greenery felt like I was taking a breath of the cleanest air I’ve breathed in in a very long time. 😌🍃 And don’t let my dress fool you, it was cold inside there too! As if someone had splashed a bucket of cold water on me. 🥶💦 It was a beautiful gift to both reflect on the memories of the past and make new ones at the same place, a couple years later. Swipe through for a few newer pictures from that day in Gibraltar. One of my favorites is the fourth photo because even then we were talking about the books I would write and smiling brightly thinking about the future. How wonderful to have gotten it forever frozen in time. ❤️ I could never have imagined what exactly we were embarking on back in September 2019 but there’s no doubt that I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else other than you, @andrewrgillan, by my side.💗 Happy belated “paperwork” day, mi amor. 💋👫💙💜
I am officially a published author! 🎉📖🥳 On the night of June 1st, I clicked publish on my first ever e-book, a massive 30,00 word, 121 page digital book that I have spent the last 7 months working hard to bring to completion. And it’s finally here! If you can believe it, I had to consolidate all the information I found but still came up with over 100 pages chock full of useful information, historical fun facts, descriptions, tips and links to all of the the transportation websites, articles, maps and much more. Not to mention pro-tips and recommendations you only learn from commuting around the city after almost 5 full years. There is something for everyone: first timers in Madrid, current residents, visitors and tourists, commuters, study abroad students, interns, languages assistants and travelers both young and young at heart. ❤️ But mostly it’s for the people who are or would be completely lost without a guide like this. To me personally, this book is for 21 year old study abroad Sarah who single handedly planned the longest metro trip from the Barajas Airport to the Atocha train station one wintry day in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio while reading her guide book. An actual paperback book with a map of the major metros of #Madrid and Barcelona. My goodness, how far she has come since January 2010. 😅 Madrid is a fantastic city with excellent modes of transportation, a city bike share system and buses that run on both electricity and zero emissions. There are still improvements to be made but I truly do love this city and how I wonderful and freeing it is knowing I don’t need a car to see it. Have you been to #Madrid before? What mode of transportation do you prefer? 🚇🚌🚊🚲 #madridmemata #ilovespain #newbook
Something you may not know about me is that I’ve never owned a car long-term. And what’s more is that I haven’t driven a car in almost 6 years now due to living abroad and not being able to make as many trips home as I would’ve liked to. It’s funny to me how half my lifetime ago at age 16 I was so dead set on getting my driver’s license before I got out of high school. But honestly, living in a suburb in southwestern Ohio, where was I really going to go? 🤔 It wasn’t until just last week that I finally pinpointed why I was so fixated on getting my driver’s license back then. It wasn’t because I wanted to drive somewhere on my own and eventually get my own car. It had more to do with what that license would’ve represented for me. Freedom. ✨ Freedom to explore the world around me. Freedom to go somewhere because I wanted to go there. Long story short, I did eventually get my driver’s license a few years later but I just never got my own car. The desire for one started to fade with time once I studied abroad in the South of Spain in 2010, saw how people here lived perfectly normal lives without cars and then I returned home and later to Jacksonville, where I was studying at the time. After using metro networks in Madrid, Sevilla 🇪🇸 and Lisbon 🇵🇹, I wasn’t so afraid of using the ones we had around the US. Most are far from being efficient but learning to navigate them helped build my self-confidence. So much more than driving as a teen and into my early adult years would’ve. This is the underlying inspiration for my upcoming book focused on Madrid’s transportation networks. I’ve written it not just for audiences of all types (tourists, language assistants, young professionals, interns, residents, etc) but for my younger self. If she could’ve known that the world was still as open to her then as it is now, my goodness, what adventures would she have had? #Madrid especially has shown me just how far and wide you can travel without a car and how you can still live just as full of a life. I will always be grateful to this city for that. Can’t wait to share this book and all my in-depth research with the world shortly! 🔜📖🌃🚇🚌🚈🚊🌍✨ #comingsoon
A little bit of hope can go a long way. ✨ One day, and I’m actually not sure exactly when, in my American Literature class my junior year of high school, a small yet powerful thought popped into my mind. “I want to write a book.” The words danced across my mind for a moment but the roots of that thought started to sprout and stay with me in the back of my mind during class that day and beyond. I don’t know what exactly sparked that thought but I do remember how we were studying Whitman and Thoreau that quarter. (Still can’t say for sure if one of their works inspired me or not) What I can finally say is that yes, I did it. I wrote a book. Past tense. We did it, 16 year old Sarah! 🥳 It only seems fitting that I finished the last bit of the text and design components today on April 29th, 8 years to the day I flew back to Europe on my first post-study abroad trip. 🎉 Little did I know then that this is what my life would look like now. And that that dream I dreamed of so long ago is almost a very tangible, real-life thing. I still remember back then thinking about how I wasn’t a very good writer and that several other classmates definitely wrote much better essays and stories than I did. I’m glad I didn’t believe those lies from the past. Or get crushed by my own self-inflicted pressure to write a book before age 30. Most of all, I’m glad I kept at it in terms of writing. That was one of the key factors to my success today. I may not have been the best writer as a teen but take that experience and add 16 more years of practice and you’ve got yourself an experienced writer (who actually refers to herself as so and embraces it fully) 💗 You don’t know how long it will take you to achieve a goal or a dream. Just know that the time will pass anyway but when you get there, the reward will be so sweet. 📚👩🏻🤓📝 (First 📸: roses in my neighborhood blooming on the wall of a school; second 📸: 25 year old me in front of a tram in Lisbon after 30 hours of travel in 2013. I loved that layover on the way to Sevilla. Two places I’d love to go visit right now 😍😭)
In the last year or so, I’ve learned a lot of lessons that have had a profound impact on how I view the world today. In the year and a half that we’ve been married (though it feels like so much more time has passed), I never could’ve imagined myself not wearing my engagement ring for most of this time. It started as keeping it safe while we were on lockdown and home all the time to keeping it safe from sticky hand sanitizer and my absentmindedness, not to mention that it’s a very delicate ring. It has certainly been strange but I am not as sad as I imagined I would be the day I tucked it away carefully into its box. In hindsight, both of us putting our rings away for safekeeping is a small sacrifice to make, though, we don’t know how long we’ll keep them off. What’s the deeper lesson you can draw from my experience? ✨ I hadn’t actually stumbled upon what I’m going to share until about a week ago. The realization is that we don’t *actually* need external reminders of who we’re with and the commitments we make. How many movies or shows have we seen where one of the characters takes off their wedding ring and acts completely different around an attractive person? As I think I said last summer, ring or no ring, nothing has changed in my heart for how I feel about mi marido, @andrewrgillan, and the commitment we made to one another. I get that taking your ring off for some unknown period of time would devastate some women (thanks societal pressure) but it’s truly not the end of the world if you are remaining with your partner while it’s off. What if one day you break your hand or fingers? The more important lesson I have learned is to ask yourself (if you’re married) “how will you act on a daily basis around all types of people if you had to take your ring off for x time?” 🤔 It’s been a lesson about another side to integrity that I hadn’t even considered. (Photos from 2017: 1-Sitting in Puerta del Sol in the exact same spot we’d get engaged the following year, 2-the pier (muelle) walk one night in Huelva where everything changed for us and 3-strolling on the beach in Málaga with my engagement ring for the first time ever, a few days before Gibraltar)
On February 29th, 2020, we took what would be our very last day trip for a while and what would become the very last day I’d wear makeup in 2020. I had run out of liquid foundation that same day and spent the next two weeks not even wearing makeup. It wasn’t until Spain went into lockdown for what would be 15 days at that point (turned out to be a total of 50 straight days with no exercise privileges) that I consciously decided to not wear makeup. I didn’t see a point since I didn’t have any Zoom meetings to attend or a husband to re-impress (he prefers me without makeup anyway). And you know what? I’ve spent just over the last year not wearing an ounce of makeup. 😮💅🏻 ✨ I haven’t painted my fingernails since we got married. Haven’t worn lipstick 💄 since our wedding day either. The list goes on... How does it feel? I feel freer than I ever have in my life. I have sort of defaulted back to my early teen years when I wasn’t even into makeup, reading books, letting my imagination run wild and being my truest self. It has been the most refreshing feeling in the world and while I don’t know if I will fully return to it, I will savor how confident and free ditching makeup has made me feel. If I could go back in time and encourage myself to not conform to some of the lies society tries to shove down our throats as women (fast fashion, full faces and seeing who can have more flawless skin), I’d go back to when I was 23 and getting eyeliner put on at a friend’s wedding. While most girls had been applying that since they were like 15 or 16, I had not been and my eyes twitched like crazy. At the time I thought something was wrong with me, that I missed learning something so crucial to being a woman: knowing how to apply her own makeup. It turns out that doesn’t really matter in the long run and this past year I have been reminded what does: washing your face, applying moisturizer and sunscreen, night cream (hey, early 30s, sup?) and exfoliating to name a few. These are things I’ve already been doing for a few years but with consistent work since last spring, I’ve really noticed a new shine and glow on my face. Do you think you could last as long as I have? 🤔
Happy Birthday, @andrewrgillan! Where would I be without you this past year? 🤗 We’ve navigated some uncharted waters, lots of uncertainty and changes to last us for a long while since your last birthday. Thank you for making me laugh so much in the last 365 days and loving me so well. You joked way back before we were officially together that you were just looking for a woman who could put up with you but I often wonder how you can put up with me and my crazy antics and misadventures sometimes! 😂 I pray this year will be much more low key, you’ll get to do more of the things you love and that we’ll get to visit some new places together. 👫💜💙🦊🐿 I love you so much, mi media naranja 🍊😘
One night earlier this month, I dreamt I was trying to find my way but no place or path could take me there. Every place I tried felt like the wrong one and every path just brought me towards more people and problems I didn’t want to get myself into. But the most startling thing was that while in reality I was wearing a mask but in every reflection, in store windows and mirrors, I didn’t see it on my face. That paradox has been coming back up in my thoughts and haunted me the week I had that dream. What could that possibly mean? I have a couple ideas and many more thoughts to still share about last year but there are some things I’ve yet to fully process. Can you relate? Like everyone, I’ve been trying to make sense of the world we live in today for a long time now but I feel that based on that dream, my subconsciousness is finally trying to catch itself up. 2021 has gotten off to an odd start and while I vowed to stay cautiously optimistic about it, I’m only just beginning to feel like there are new possibilities around the corner. It’s funny how a blizzard hitting the city where you currently live dumping record amounts of snow (thankfully it is almost 💯 gone!) can make you feel like you have a clean slate and a fresh start. If you are uncertain or vulnerable in terms of health though, just know that I am thinking of you often. I have gotten a little too bit annoyed with the foggy state my mask 😷 leaves my glasses 👓 in the past couple of months but that doesn’t mean I want to take it off. As much as I want to at times, it’s not the right time yet. It’s gonna be tough road ahead but I will keep taking it one day at time. One step at a time. 👣 I hope you, wherever you are, will do the same. 💗🤗🥰
To think that last year I celebrated my birthday “normally” but back then I had what would be considered a quiet birthday. But with the state of the world today...going to teach one of my classes in person, munching on a chocolate chocolate chip cookie and drinking chocolate outside on a bench (RIP Calle Fuencarral Tim Horton’s 💔) and meeting a friend for a taco dinner are a few of the things I would love to do today, especially without foggy, misty glasses. Little did I know what the year would bring and I don’t think any of us truly did... 31 was an odd year in many ways. It’s similar to 21 (in my opinion) where you’re getting farther away from the teen years but you don’t quite feel settled into your new decade. Except when you’re that age, the excitement of being an adult stays with you. On the contrary, 10 years later you’re very much an adult but you’re not used to being this experienced. It’s a little hard to put into words but when you throw in a global pandemic (which is still going on) and still getting used to the newness of being married, it makes for quite an interesting year. Nevertheless while the past year did not look like I had hoped it would look, it was a year of exponential inner growth for me. A year where I could really take a step back from the big picture (and everyone), find time to rest, cultivate new habits and discover some new ones (🌱🖍 🖼 🏡) and never give up on old ones (📝📷☕️🙏🏻📚 🎶). I can certainly say I’ll never forget the things and events that came to pass while I was 31. But today I am grateful to be given the privilege of growing one year older. Not everyone was blessed with that this year and they will be remembered. 💗 32 has both scared me and excited me, and it honestly doesn’t feel like it’s time for my birthday just yet but nonetheless it is here. When I was 16 I thought of being this age because it would be double that age. I thought about it again when I was 27 because sadly my oldest cousin passed away at this age from battling cancer. 💝 Regardless of what this year will bring and if we will still be struggling with the challenges that 2020 brought, I hope you will choose to be grateful. 🙏🏻💗