On March of this year, I received an email from Spanish Minister of Education, about a scholarship, participating in an English summer camp for a week in some city inside Spain, full-board, paying only 100 euros and costs of transport.
Talk with native English speakers for a whole week? I had never done that before, not even for a day. I wasn’t sure if I should sign up for it. At the same time, I had already got a summer job for two months, and I had to figure out a way to put them together.
After doing some research, the reviews from the Internet finally convinced me. In the end, it’s my last chance (an undergraduate can’t apply for it). The result came out at the end of April. But it wasn’t until the middle of May when I could see all the available locations.
All of them are located in the South of Spain, in cities like Cuenca, Cordoba, Jaen, etc., where the temperature goes pretty high during the summer. None of the nine locations was near the beach. We were able to pick from four weeks of July. The camp starts on Sunday’s afternoon and ends on Saturday’s morning.
I had three days to decide the location and do the payment. I can’t drive, neither someone could give a ride, so my only chance was to take a bus or a train. I feel very dizzy on cars, especially when most of the bus trips would take at least four hours from Madrid.
So I decided to take a high-speed train (AVE). It goes much faster as you could guess, and the price goes higher too. Never tried one of these before, but it would be definitely better than a bus.
I had to investigate which place of nine had the best transport options. From Madrid is easy to reach all of those locations, but the number of the train is also an important factor for me. I had to be there on Sunday at 5 pm. It would be much better if the train drops me off like 30 minutes earlier. And I picked Cordoba – Canada Verde. It has more than ten trains from Madrid every day, and there is one with arrives at 16:17, perfect.
The ticket was booked on the 10th of June after I had finished the University Entrance Exam (a.k.a Selectividad). And all I had to do was to wait, until the 30th of June.