Let’s see. What to write about? Well school is back in session (since January 7th) and it’s going well. I’m doing the same stuff I did last semester, work individually with the students, and it’s fine. We did change it up a bit for this past Thursday because January 30th is el día de la paz (Peace day) and so I helped the students put up decorations for this. They had already made in previous classes, tons of cut-out colored paper hands, so we put some as grass, and made some into flowers and placed them on the walls. With one class we made a tree for the wall by braiding three rolled pieces of giant brown paper and then putting the green hands for leaves. In order to incorporate English into this, the students weren’t allowed to talk at all in Spanish (though most slipped a bit in) and I would ask them what things we were using were called in English. I must say it is always refreshing to do something different once in a while.
I started back up with my lessons with the two little girls (María del Mar and Rosa) in the afternoons Tuesday and Thursday. They seemed excited to see me again and had fun telling me (and showing me) what presents they’d received from Santa Claus and the three Kings.
I went to the health center that is assigned to me based on where I live, not because I was sick, but to obtain a health card so I’m prepared in case I do become ill. Better safe than sorry. I wanted to do this in October, but I’d emailed the program coordinators to find out my social security number, which I needed for the health card, and I didn’t receive it until I’d returned from Christmas break. Now the program coordinators aren’t actually to blame because it turns out they’d mailed the number to me back at the beginning of October but the problem was they mailed it to me at my school in Mula. For whatever reason, my school didn’t get around to giving it to me till January, and I wouldn’t have known to ask them for it because I didn’t think it was going to come through them. The good thing is that I didn’t need it before now. So I went to the center, showed them all the necessary documents and received a temporary health card. I guess my actual card won’t come for three months, so I’ll barely have a need for it at that point, but the temporary one will work just fine.
Oh and this is kind of big news. I have a new flatmate! Her name is Ismehen and she is from Tunisia, a little country in North Africa. She speaks Arabic and French fluently (the two languages of her country) and a little bit of English. She is here in Murcia for the last year of her doctorate in Biology. Since she is doing all her studies/research here in English, she doesn’t need to know Spanish, so that’s kind of a bummer for practice purposes in the flat. But she is really nice and I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.
The best thing that’s happened since I’ve returned to Spain for second semester is that I’ve made a wonderful new friend. Before anyone gets excited, it’s not a guy. Her name is Tania and she introduced me to an organization known as Opus Dei. I’d heard of it, but didn’t really know all that much about what sort of activities they did. Well Tania invited me to come to their Saturday night program, which consisted of a talk given by a priest, then supper and since one of the ladies had a birthday, we played Just Dance on the Wii at her request. I’m not a good dancer. I definitely lack the coordination necessary to dance. Needless to say, my attempts were horrible, and I came away with the record for lowest score of the night. But aside from my dance fail, I had an amazing time. It is an only women group, (there’s a separate men’s group) and the age range was from college students to some who were mothers of college students. Let me just say that the older women tended to ace Just Dance. Everyone was super nice and I felt right at home. If I hadn’t felt so at ease, there would have been no way I would have willingly humiliated myself in front of them by attempting to dance. The great thing is that although some speak English in the group, not all do, so we had to speak in Spanish so everyone knew what was going on. Thanks to the invite from Tania, I met a lot of other great and like-minded people, and had an amazing evening full of Spanish and laughter.
I’ve since met up with Tania for lunch and she showed me a video about people from countries all over the world explaining the impact Opus Dei and its mission have had in their lives. The mission is essentially to sanctify every part of one’s life. We can have fun and still be living for Christ. When we are going through a tough time, we can make the most of it by offering it up. Most importantly, we need to make love the driving force in our lives. You don’t have to be Catholic to participate in this mission. The founder, St. Josemaría Escriva, known as the saint of ordinary life, believed that Christians could go out and change the world by coming together in this mission. I personally think it’s a great organization and am so glad to have an opportunity to get to know a bunch of really great Spaniards through it.
This past Saturday was my second time going to their Saturday evening event. It always begins with the talk, then supper and a fun activity. This time I was in charge of the activity: showing pictures of the US and more specifically, Nebraska and answering questions. When I had first told Tania I was from Nebraska, she misunderstood me and told people I was from New York. Then after I’d corrected that misunderstanding, someone asked me if it was near Alaska. No, not exactly. So I was more than happy to give a little informal presentation and they really seemed to enjoy it. After I’d finished, everyone was saying that now that they know a lot about Nebraska, that’s where they’re gonna visit if they ever go to the US. Yes! Maybe the word will spread and we’ll suddenly have a booming tourism industry in Nebraska. Okay, so probably not. But I was proud to have cleared up the question of where Nebraska is located in the US at least. Well that's it for now!
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