Monday, February 10 // Lunes, 10 de febrero
ENGLISH
Padres Blancos is a school across the river in Los Remedios, a neighborhood in Sevilla. Today a few students and I went to the school to meet with a teacher to learn more about volunteering as an english teacher's assistant. I will most likely volunteer with middle school kids on Tuesdays or Thursdays after classes.
I have been here for two weeks and I still get very nervous to talk to anyone older than me in Spanish. It is already nerve-wrecking to navigate conversation with those who are my superiors, but adding a second language on top of that makes my cheeks turn red when I make a mistake or when someone starts speaking to me in English. I realized that in order to decrease this feeling of anxiety, I should increase my general use of the language. While I am constantly listening to others speaking in Spanish, I don't speak very often if it isn't small comments or responses.
Talia and I are making a point to speak to each other in Spanish in order to improve. I am also starting to take advantage of conversation with my host mom, because she is very kind and willing to help me with my grammar and confidence in the language. She is caring and patient, which can make for great conversations.
I can tell that I am finally settling into life in Sevilla. The honeymoon phase is still in process because I am still in awe of the city, but I have a skeleton of a routine which is comforting.
Today, though, I was present for one of my peers' small breakdowns. After we left the school, she started crying because she was overwhelmed by all the costs and didn't know if her experience abroad was worth all of the money that she was spending. We reassured her that while her feelings were valid and we're all in the same boat with similar thoughts bouncing around our heads, we have only been here for two weeks. It is difficult to adjust to the lifestyle of spending money on things you don't normally spend money on, especially when you might not have expected to pay for them.
However, each student in the program has worked hard to be here. We put in hours of work in order to submit the study abroad application, fill out the paperwork, obtain a student visa, etc., and now that we are here in Sevilla, we have lots of free time.
We discussed the issue of being busy. A lot of us in the program are used to taking lots of classes, working, participating in extracurriculars, and more. One of my friends said that she does not know how to relax. I related to this because when I first arrived here, I wanted to take advantage of my time here and felt guilty if I stayed inside and took a nap or wrote in my journal. Now, I have more of an understanding of the balance between taking time to reflect by myself, spending time in groups, and talking one-on-one with another person. Each setting is healthy for me, but I definitely need a dose of each in order to have energy.
The moments I loved today were the walk home from the school - we went to Triana (again), the neighborhood next to Los Remedios (where the school is located). Talia and I stopped to get churros con chocolate at a small place with a loud, grinding coffee maker and lots of local elderly couples. I loved it so much.
We also walked on both sides of the river and took time to talk, which was really nice. There is a grassy area along the river on the side that we live on, and there are hundreds of young people that lay out or spend time together on blankets, listening to music, smoking, drinking, and talking. It was so cool to see so many people our age, especially with smiles on their faces on a MONDAY! I wonder how many people are there on weekends if it was that busy on a Monday afternoon.
