Volunteering as a social media and marketing assistant in Bilbao

When I first arrived in Bilbao, I hardly had any knowledge of Spanish and was a tiny bit nervous, but everyone at the Instituto Hemingway was very kind and accommodating and made me feel welcome in an instant. It was no problem at all for the volunteer program that my Spanish skills were so low at the beginning, as I could do a lot of the work in English, and while my Spanish skills progressed over time, I was happy to see that I could do more and more of the volunteering work in Spanish. The work itself was very varied - it consisted for example in creating videos for social media, planning the social activities of the institute, designing panels and pictures for one of the classrooms and assisting in examinations. Moreover, I also had language classes in the insitute during the five weeks that I spent there, which were virtually always a lot of fun and helped me greatly to improve my Spanish skills, so that by the end of my time in Bilbao I could even have longer conversations in Spanish with my new friends. I'm very grateful for this unforgettable experience and I'm sure that I will return to Bilbao - a city which I have grown to love - with its vibrant culture, nice inhabitants and picturesque landscapes surrounding it.