Making Memories in Murcia: Memorable Moments at Every Turn

Why do I like my job? Well aside from providing a way to live in Spain and earn some money, there are also the special moments that make all the repetition of basic English phrases worth it. This past week one of my favorite little second graders, Marcos, came in to talk English with me. He is super sweet and also pretty advanced for his age with English so I always look forward to working with him. Anyway, he came and in and answered all my questions quite well and the last question I usually ask the students is “Have you got any questions for me?” to which he came close and whispered “Te quiero”. Okay so that wasn’t a question, but it was definitely a heart-melting moment for me. And for anyone wondering, “Te quiero” is “I love you”. He’s just the sweetest little kid and if I could, I’d adopt him. All I can say is that it’s gonna be awfully difficult to say goodbye to these students when the time comes. After working with them and getting to know them, I find myself wondering what the future holds for them. They have so much potential and it will be tough not to be around to see what’s down the road for them. Goodbyes are never fun, but it’s just so much worse when the goodbyes are for certain, permanent. But this wasn’t supposed to be a sad paragraph. I just wanted to share how precious these kids can be and I’ll definitely treasure the memories I take away from this experience.

Speaking of goodbyes, Cecilia left on Sunday. We tried to do a few things together before it came time to bid farewell. We went to an Italian pizza place and each got “individual” pizzas that seemed a little bit too large for an individual. It felt like Milan all over again. Not that I minded at all. The part that differed from our Italian pizza experience was the price. It was much more affordable in Murcia than in Milan, and what was a more than ten euro meal in Italy was only a little over five euro in Spain. Later in the week Cecilia made a lovely supper for me, two guys from Britain (Jonny and James) and Clement from France. It was sort of strange to have people over and not have another language besides English spoken. Usually our dinners involve more French-speaking people, so there’s a mix of French, Spanish and English in order for everyone to fully communicate. But aside from being sort of strange only speaking English, it was a pleasant evening. The day before Cecilia left we went out for tea together. She had a cold and I was quickly following down the same path so tea was just what we needed. Then before I knew it I was bidding farewell to a great flatmate and friend. While it was sad to see her go, I’m grateful that I got to know her and my other flatmates from last semester. We had some good times together and that’s what counts.

with Cecilia at the Italian pizza place

Okay now for some events of the past week that weren’t school or goodbye related. This past Wednesday, I was invited to have lunch with Tania and Sandra (Tania’s flatmate). We had arroz cubano, which was a dish of rice, egg and fried banana. The combination resulted in an unusual but pleasant flavor. Then I hung out with Tania awhile and later in the evening I had an English conversation with Sandra, who had spent six months in London and wanted to see if she still had a sufficient grasp on the language. She’s hoping to improve her English skills in order to get a job as a nurse in a private hospital. I think she did very well for not having spoken or studied English in awhile and we were able to understand each other without a problem.

On Saturday I went to the weekly talk and supper at the club (location of Opus Dei organization). This week we had breakfast for supper. Nutella sandwiches, toast with cheese, crepes, donuts and banana milkshakes made up the meal. Definitely an impressive and filling breakfast/supper. Then in honor of Paula (one of the members) who’s birthday was in a couple days, we watched a funny video that we all helped create. Tania deserves all the credit for the video. She found a ton of random funny clips off the internet and in between these she had clips of us wishing Paula a happy birthday. But they weren’t normal clips of us. She used the video settings to distort our faces (I looked like an alien) and distort our voices (really deep or really high). In my clip I sang the Happy Birthday song in an incredibly deep voice. Overall the whole combined video was more than forty minutes long and had us laughing the whole time.

On Sunday I went hiking with four members of the Opus Dei club (Tania, Lina, María Jose and Uge) and Uge’s friend Nuria. We went to an area known as Calblanque. It had small mountains (more like really huge hills) and was right up against the Mediterranean Sea. Needless to say the scenery was breathtaking, especially when we were at the top of one of the hills. However, I could have definitely been more in shape than I was for the hike. I started feeling faint (mixture of being out of shape, hot, and maybe hungry/thirsty), so I ended up taking a siesta on the peak of one of the giant hills. Tania, nice person that she is, kept me company rather than continuing on with the others. We had a grand time lying in the sun and eating lunch and just taking it easy. Thank goodness we stayed back, because when the others finally returned for the journey back to our starting point, we ended up getting lost and I would have died from exhaustion if I hadn’t had a nice long break in between. Like literally I would have died.The path back wasn’t marked all that well, so we ended up taking this trail up one of the steepest hills and pretty soon realized we’d never been that way before. Then the path stopped and we tried to at least move in the right direction to get back but that involved us dealing with the steepest/roughest climbing of the whole day. We almost thought we were gonna be stuck out there over night because it was close to sunset and we got to the last hill and realized it was way to steep to try to go down. We started to turn back, but then Uge decided we should go a little further to see the other side of the hill. Thank goodness we did or who knows how different this story would have turned out. It was much more gradual on the other side and actually even had a path. Needless to say, we were all super relieved to be on level ground and heading in the direction of the vehicles. And just before sunset! After that experience, as much as I love the beauty of mountains, I found myself thinking that the flatness of Nebraska is quite a wonderful thing. Let’s just say I’ve had my fill of hiking for a while. It was most certainly a memorable experience!