So after a few days in Madrid, I hopped a bus to Barcelona, where John met me at the bus station eight hours later. I have never been so glad to see a friend before, and I’m still indebted to John and his buddies for letting me crash on their couch for the first couple of weeks. During that time, I hit the pavement in search of a place of my own.

That hunt proved to be surprisingly simple. I narrowed down a few places from a mass of fliers posted at the University of Barcelona and various coffee shops and Internet cafes, also great resources for travelers looking for places to stay for weeks or months at a time. (CyberMundo, an Internet café located near the University, is an excellent spot to look for housing, as well as post job offers and other info.)

Usually, individual rooms in apartments, mostly furnished, are rented out separately. Renters sign a simple contract that outlines monthly rates (mine was about $250 a month), pay two months’ deposit up front in cash, then get the key. It's much simpler than the complicated contract legalese, financial background checks and security deposits that bog down the process in the States.

There are drawbacks, though. The most common is finding out that future roommates -- who sometimes meet the moment they move in -- aren't up to ideal standards of cleanliness, morality or sanity. Also, with the absence of locked-in leases and contracts, it’s a revolving-door situation. I call it roommate roulette -- someone who you moved in with might not be there the next month, and it’s anyone’s call what the new incomer will be like. Those going at it alone, as I did and as many other international travelers do, should meet potential roomies and take a hard look at landlords beforehand. That can save them from telling horror stories later. 

Thankfully, I have none of my own to relate. In 11 months, I had four roommates - girls from the United States, Sweden, Germany and Norway. They became a huge part of my life abroad, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have met them. We formed amazing friendships, and now I feel part of a kind of international sisterhood, thanks to our bond built through sharing a tiny bathroom, a closet-sized kitchen and dozens of memories.

Working Girl

After finding an apartment, the next crucial step was getting connected. Yes, like most of Europe, Spain is infected by the cell-phone bug – and it’s great for foreigners. Land lines are expensive, difficult to obtain and overall just unnecessary, especially when mobile phones are cheap, efficient and convenient. You buy prepaid phone cards – no contracts or unused minutes -- and pay for only as much as you talk. 

Once I had a phone, I was more than ready to start hearing it ring with prospects for work. So for the first few weeks in Barcelona, I did little more than hike my way around the city, posting up fliers advertising my services as an English teacher. At first, the process was daunting: My little piece of paper seemed to be swallowed in the sea of others just like it. But I also realized that wasn’t exactly the case: I did a little extra work to make sure my fliers stood out, printing them up on the computer and adding color, and putting my phone number on little tear-off sheets on the bottom. I also hadn’t made the huge – and ludicrous – mistake of advertising myself in English. I wanted to ask my competition: “Ummm, don’t you realize that if your potential clients could read this, they probably wouldn’t call you to learn English?”  But, hey, it was fine with me --  in the end, it only meant more business.

And business I had. It took a few weeks for the calls to come in, but once they did, I found myself with all types of students: business professionals, teenagers and 20-somethings, all of whom became integral parts of my overall experience in Barcelona. Initially, I tried to get work at several of Barcelona’s large number of English-language schools (a search through the phone book will turn up dozens of listings.). This is a great source of work for many English teachers, because it’s steady, it pays well, and it offers the possibility of private tutoring on the outside. More established schools like Berlitz and the American British College will only hire teachers with work permits and teaching degrees, but plenty of others will take teachers with proven experience and/or an ESL (English as a Second Language) degree of some kind. It just takes some legwork and pounding the pavement to find them. 

Private students is another viable option. Though the money is a little less steady than classes in schools – students often cancel or postpone their lessons – the flexibility is a lot greater. You establish the hours and the rates, and you can take on as much or as little work as you want.  Just by self-marketing, I found more work than I could handle. However, it’s important to remember that teaching is much more than spending an hour or two chatting in English. Sure, that’s all some students want, and conversation classes are fine for that. But preparation is necessary for everything: you have to have a lesson plan and exercises in place for every single class. The competition for students is high: To retain them, you need to keep your classes informative, interesting, and fun.

One of my students, Eva Piqué, and her family became my surrogate family in Spain. From the start, they extended me an anytime invitation to dinner in their house after Eva and I finished English lessons. I eventually came to realize that I spent some of my most memorable moments in Spain -- a trip to their summer home in the Costa Brava, dinners in some of Barcelona's best restaurants, a visit to Andorra, the tiny country between Spain and France -- with Eva and her family. I considered her more like a sister than a student, a relationship which would have been impossible had I been working within the more formal boundaries of a school.

Having Fun

Meeting people -- one of the biggest concerns for many globetrotting travelers -- was surprisingly easy in Barcelona. The city has a considerable transient population of students and international travelers, which translates into an open and carefree atmosphere in social settings. Factor in the abundance of holidays, outdoor concerts and student parties, and making friends from all over the world becomes a delightful reality.

Besides my longtime friend whom I bunked up with initially, I had only two other contacts upon moving to Spain: two American women -- neither of whom I had met prior -- who were living in Barcelona. One of them provided me with valuable insight about teaching English, and the other introduced me to what would become my close circle of friends. That group included two Argentinians, Clara and Fernando; Paulina, a woman from Chile; and several crazy Brazilians. Despite my shaky Spanish at first, our friendships grew so strong that I felt I was saying goodbye to family when I left.

Socializing in Spain, especially in Barcelona, is a subject that garners plenty of space in the travel guides. Bolstered by a large student and international traveler sector, Barcelona's locals like to go out, and they like to go out late. A night out on the town usually lasts well into the morning, thanks to Barcelona's nonstop circuit of bars, clubs and after-hours locales that give the city some of the best nightlife Europe has to offer.

Possibilities abound across the spectrum, but some can't misses include La Paloma (a huge ballroom dance locale), La Oveja Negra (a Medieval drinking hall with the best sangria in town that attracts travelers from all over the world), Margarita Blue (a Mexican restaurant-bar with some feisty drag shows), Limon Negro (an offbeat, funky bar with changing decor). 

Saying Goodbye

During my last few days in Barcelona, I realized how I had come nearly full circle from when I first arrived in Spain. From not knowing anyone except for an old friend from home, with no prospects of a job or a place to live and only a small knowledge of the language, I tearfully said farewell to an apartment that had become home, a job and students I had come to cherish, and people from all over the world who became dear friends. Looking back, my year abroad was so much more than that -- it was a lifetime's worth of experiences and memories.