Day Fourteen - Tuesday

CLASSES – IT GETS EASIER (I HOPE)

Well, I have to say that I have officially adjusted to my class schedule. The novelty of these classes has worn off and I'm used to my routine. I thought it was going to be a huge pain to have the same classes every day for the first time since middle school, but really I like the intensive approach! I feel like I get more accomplished, and of course having everything in Spanish is really helping me with my comprehension.

Here are some goals for my trip:

• Improve reading comprehension
• Improve conversational skills, including relevant vocabulary
• Understand and improve all useful verb tenses and practice as often as possible
• Practice Spanish writing skills

We'll see how much of that I accomplish – I'd love to just feel competent in my second language skills, y'know? Being here with this group, there's only a handful of them that truly want to speak Spanish just amongst ourselves, and that gets frustrating when I came to Spain to practice my Spanish. I know that some people need to feel secure and like they aren't far away from their own culture (hello, me from Week 1), but the mentality “we speak English, not Spanish” while you're in Spain makes no sense to me. When we were in the US, speaking English made sense because it's the language spoken by most of our culture, but since we are living and interacting with entirely Spanish people, it makes no sense to close yourself off to everyone in this way. I don't mean to sound harsh, far from it – I just truly don't get why it's such a bad thing to practice your Spanish among friends who have relatively the same level as you.

SCHOOL'S OUT FOR MARIA AUXILLIADORA

After yet another almuerzo of fish (sensing a huge theme here), I thought about my students in my conversation class – we didn't have class today because of their patron saint's day celebration today, so I didn't have to go in to talk with them. I missed the group – they were some fun personalities! Still trying to work out how to get Ana to talk...

Jesus reminded us later that the school was throwing a mini-carnival for the school's saint day celebration and that there would be fireworks and a live band on a huge stage. Caitrin, Camila, Jen and I got really excited! I was interested to see what they meant by “fireworks”, considering we were in the middle of a highly-populated neighborhood and genuine fireworks were probably not permitted... but you never know...

BOB ESPONJA! BOB ESPONJA! BOB EEEEEESPONJAAAAAAAA!!!

After a delicious of – you guessed it!- fish and crab meat, I changed into a dress and ran out the door to meet the rest of the girls on time. They got there just before I did, and we headed into the schoolyard behind the colegio to immediately run into Jesus and his family! He quickly made introductions to his two young (and absolutely adorable) daughters, Laura and Sophia. We all cooed (in Spanish) about how beautiful they were and I asked Laura (in Spanish) “how old are you, sweetheart?” to which she responded (in [defiant] English) “I am seven years old.” Well then! Never judge an adorable Spanish book by its cover!

We walked around and saw the carnival games, the bar that it seemed that a great majority of the adults were crowded around, and then finally the stage, where the rather loud music was coming from. There was a band and three singers (two female, one male) singing. We thought that they were really good! They had incredible voices and were singing a wide variety of songs. We listened and mingled a bit with the crowd, but were all surprised to see that almost no one was dancing... strange...

My favorite moment of the night, hands down, had to be this: we were listening to the band, and the male singer all of a sudden yells, “OOOOOOOOOOOH...” and the crowd of teenagers went wild and I thought, “...no. There's no way.”

Oh yeah. The singer sang, in Spanish, “who lives in a pineapple under the sea?!”

The crowd screamed back, “BOB ESPONJA!!!”

And they went through the theme song to Spongebob Squarepants, who is apparently a rock star in Spain. And I almost wet myself from laughing so freaking hard it hurt to breathe.

After the singers wrapped up their number (ending with a song that didn't seem to get much applause – I wish I had been able to understand what they were saying...), they gestured to the side of the schoolyard where there were different boxes of fireworks set up! Everyone gathered around (at a safe distance) and watched as the fireworks technician walked around the set-up and lit different boxes and displays to get them to ignite – they were gorgeous!! Because they were being shot right above us, occasionally you might get hit by a piece of one (not too big) and the nearby apartments were protecting their windows with their metal screens over their windows to avoid potential glass-related accidents. During the show, the technician lit one of the displays to reveal a portrait of Maria Auxilliadora that had sparklers and green bulbs attached, which when lit made her portrait look ethereal and beautiful. Caitrin and I looked at each other and she said, “only in Spain would you ever think to mix religion with fireworks!”

Seriously. We are clearly missing out on what could be quite a thing.