Just thinking about Spain and feeling thankful for such a beautiful adventure.
Para que salga en este blog algo que representa el <<último capítulo de Málaga>>, aquí os dejo el vídeo que hice sobre nuestro año en nuestra Málaga. Os quejasteis cada vez que os grabé con el móvil, pero veis que ahora y para siempre tenemos este rencuerdo!
Keep adventuring, loving, and laughing, my friends! I take you with me everywhere.
This past Saturday, I met with Graciela, a private student of mine, one last time before her Trinity oral English exam that we'd been practicing for together over the past few months.
Every week from January on, Graciela and I would meet to chat in English and put essays together about different topics that might come up in her oral exam. The topics were personal values, society, the natural environment, unexplained phenomena, public figures, the working world and a topic of her choice (Yes!! I remembered all of them!). Putting these personal essays together, we talked about jobs, our respective homelands, our hobbies, and our musical tastes. In one of my favorite classes, we worked on an essay about R&B queen Beyoncé Knowles. Not even my idea, I swear!
Graciela and I laughed so hard together on a lot of occasions, sometimes uncontrollably. On one occasion, I was trying to explain the difference between "take something out" and "leave something out," and my Spanish translation may have come off a bit suggestive. Word for word, I said something along the lines of "one means take it out, and one means don't put it in." It hit me later why that might've been something to laugh at.
I had so much fun hanging out with her once a week, and she taught me something important by example. Graciela is a P.E. teacher and also makes time to perform as a singer, dancer, and actress (and, of course, study English). She told me with such firm conviction that she could never just do one thing with her time. What a novel idea!
The example she sets really resonates with me, as do those of a good number of my friends and older mentors out here! Because there are things that I want to do in my life apart what I do to make money. I want to go to Asia. I want to get better at making videos and taking pictures. Maybe I'll take a dance class one day to learn how to move my arms and legs simultaneously. Who knows? I think getting to know Graciela and some teacher friends at my school has influenced my ever-evolving answer to that "how do I want to spend my time in this life?" question. It will be super important for me to enjoy my career, but of course that's not the only way I'll spend my time.
Sunday brought the news that Graciela passed Saturday's exam, which means she can now teach at a bilingual school like the one I work at! So in honor of this renaissance woman and all-around badass, please enjoy this video of her doing her thang:
Congrats, Graciela! Thanks for the memories and the wisdom!
Last month, my friend Lindsay sent me this "Journal of Awesome" in the mail that's full of doodles and space allotted for daily entries about whatever makes the current day awesome. It's gotten me in the happy habit of capturing pleasant thoughts that are the product of this time in my life.
Today I want to share something awesome! You know that Sunday afternoon feeling that makes you want cry a little inside when it hits you that the following day is Monday? I don't get that anymore. Every Sunday, I remember 'wait, my job and the people I work with are very pleasant'. That's no small deal! What does that say about what I do every day?
Time on earth's all about quality of life and enjoying the ride, isn't
it? So wait, could it be that there are jobs that allow for this kind of
experience back home? Something about being in Spain makes me seek things out that I wouldn't think of back home. But hey! They have cool jobs, nose piercings, hair
dye, messenger bags, and approachable strangers in the USA! Right?
I'll keep attempting to capture these memories in journal entries,
pictures, and videos so I'll one day be able to draw from this time in my life
and remember what made it work so well.
Dear future self, please take care of
your friends and yourself as you move forward, and keep Spanish in your life.
This past weekend, my buds Esther, Mish and I took a little trip out to Sevilla, which is just a two-and-a-half hour train ride northwest of Málaga. Here's a short videoillo of the weekend:
Rainy days like these make me wish that, just for a day, I was back home in my family room playing Roller Coaster Tycoon. Back home with Cali lying on the floor behind me and Mom walking by every half hour or so yelling a very staccato "sit up, sit up, sit up!" at me and my terrible posture.
Roller Coaster Tycoon was the first place I heard British words like queue.
But that was ten years and 6000 miles ago! Plus, computer games are for kids. I've graduated to YouTube and Netflix.
Tonight at 6:00 p.m., I had my last private English class with Pablo. Walking out his door down to my final half-hour bus ride home from his house, I couldn't contain the big smile that our goodbye left me with.
Pablo's a sweet, quiet, Dennis the Menace-looking eight-year-old Spanish kid. He likes great white sharks and aliens, and every Monday I get to hear how much he enjoys playing Xbox, football and pilla pilla (tag) on weekends. He wants be a fighter pilot when he grows up, loves Italy, and is on his way to being great at English.
During our weekly lessons over the past few months, what was going on in Pablo's head was usually a mystery to me. He's got this cool, unaffected thing going on that makes him so hard to read. His reactions (or lack thereof) to my sometimes outlandish conversation starters often left me wondering things like 'was that a ridiculous question to ask? Does he not want me to be here?' and 'who is the most mature person in the room?'
I didn't expect it, but tonight's farewell left me feeling sentimental! After spending our usual hour talking about bodies of water, animals, UFOs, and aircraft, Pablo's Mom came downstairs at 7:00 p.m. to say that our time was up. To my surprise, before I started to say my goodbyes he looked at me as he searched for the words to ask "what is your...number phone?" I told him through my ear-to-ear grin that his mom had it if he ever wanted to send me a message.
That gave me reason to smirk all the way home and reminded me how awesome my jobs are. I'm going to miss this kid!
So in honor of Pablo, please enjoy his favorite video of the Eurofighter Typhoon in action. You'll see him flying one of these in about twenty years.
