Ashley Connelly, Madrid, Week 8

Hi everyone,

Guapos 

It has already been 8 weeks in Madrid, but it seems like no time at all. Over the past week, I´ve had to say a lot of goodbyes. My piso which started as 10 people has lost half of its tenants. And, since new people don´t move in until September, the emptiness is a sad reminder that my time here is almost up too. It´s been hard to see everyone leave, but it has been such a great experience getting to meet so many amazing people and share my time in Madrid with them.


As I say goodbye to my pisomates, the city of Madrid echoes the same sentiment to many of her inhabitants. Leaving town for August vacations, Madrid is starting to quiet down for the remainder of the summer. Many businesses and restaurants are closing as their owners go on vacation for the next month. This new atmosphere makes now the perfect time to take my own mini-vacation to Morocco, but it also makes new challenges at work.

Over the past few weeks, my office has been getting ready to move offices as the current office undergoes some renovations to make it more suitable for serving food and for how many people it must serve (we continue to get new users every week). The past couple days at work has mainly been a collaborative effort to pack everything in boxes and get it out of the office. This has included some interesting discoveries including the headrests to some car seats that no one is really sure which car they are from. Currently, the office is a mess, cluttered with boxes waiting to be loaded in the furgoneta.

In addition to the chaos of the move, we continue to serve meals to families as they come to the office to pick up their food. While the move has complicated this part of my job, the real challenge is in the following weeks. We normally get food from 8 hotels and restaurants and starting in August all but 2 are closing. This means instead of getting food twice a week, families can only pick up food on either Monday or Tuesday. While month long holidays seem nice, logistically a lot falls through the cracks and sometimes, there aren´t enough people around to clean it up.