Last week I started my volunteer teaching job at a local school. For an hour once a week, I am going to spend an hour speaking in English to a class of 15-year-olds Spanish students. So far, it has been a lot of fun. FINALLY, I feel like I am "giving back" and doing something meaningful here.
Not that traveling and shopping and going out with friends isn't awesome...because it is. But I have definitely felt like something has been missing in my daily life. Because back in Denver, I taught swim lessons, volunteered downtown, and was an officer on the cross country team. Oh yea, and I was studying for classes. I was BUSY.
In Salamanca-----well, I don't have that same kind of structured life. As I've written about before: classes are much easier, there's no club sports, no gym to use, and legally, I can't work here. It's liberating, in a sense. But also scary, having so much free time.Such an Amerian mindset, I suppose!
Wednesday, though, I found something I love doing.
And because of this, I have seen that the world works in strange ways. What I'm trying to say is, I'm having a good week.
Like last weekend, before leaving to go out for the night, I decide to double-check my Skype before I signed off, just to check to see if, by chance, my sister was on (she never is!). And who was signed on instead? Tina, her close friend, my close friend, whom I hardly ever get to talk to! ¡Que guay! So I called her, and we chatted for 45 minutes about our lives. I love when that happens.
Then on Saturday night, when I wasn't having such a great night, who calls me but my Dad! Just to to say hi, because he wanted to talk for a few minutes. That hardly ever happens; it made my night!!
And this week, I have been meeting people in Salamanca who go to UVM, in Vermont. Meeting them and talking about home has been such a treat....how they make me miss Church Street, and Maple Syrup, and the Green Mountains!
I know, all these things are very random; teaching English classes; receiving calls from friends and family; making new friends. But together, they have made for a very good week. Now if only spring would hurry up and come....
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