One of Carmen's "segundo mano" presents

A lot has happened since I posted last, and it's only been two days! As I said before, Luis' birthday was Monday and it was a lot of fun. Maggie and I were so excited to give him the skittles, but we had to wait until after dinner and cake until we were able to. We had his favorite meal for dinner, which was a combination of fried eggs, french fries, fried peppers, and ham. Oh, and of course bread. That should go without saying at this point. His mom had gotten him his favorite kind of cake, and after a round of "Cumpleanos Feliz" we dug in. As I had the present almost in his hands, Carmen belted out that she wanted her present to be first. We had seen her "wrapping" her present earlier, but it was even funnier than I had thought it was going to be. She hands him two big bags with a big, excited grin on her face and tells him to open them. Out of the first bag, he pulls out an old slinky (that already belongs to him) and a movie that he already owned. Out of the next bag, he pulls out his own First Communion book. Carmen was so excited to give him these presents, and Luis was a really great sport about it.

His face after seeing our present

The best part of the night came when he opened our gift (I might be a bit bias). I have never seen someone so excited about a present. You would have thought we put 1,000,000 dollars in the bag. He immediately ran into the kitchen to show his mom, and dumped out all of the bags to count them. Later into the night he came into our room and proclaimed "I love you! I love you!" We were so glad that we got the perfect present, and that an American store happened to open up a week ago!

Yesterday was my first day of volunteering at a local school. Angeles, a woman in charge of our program, sets up a program with a school called Claret where we can go help the teachers in their English classes. After taking forever to figure out how to get to this school, my friend Miller and I finally found it. (Observation: everyone knows where the soccer stadium is. No one knows where random schools are). Although I think it will be a good experience, it has definitely confirmed that I do not want to be a teacher. The class I have is 14 year olds, and they reminded me of what it was like to be 14 and realize you have a substitute. It's a great feeling when you're 14, because you know that you're fairly invincible and won't have to do any work that day; but it's not a great feeling at all to be on the other end. Luckily, since yesterday was Valentine's Day, they learned about how those crazy Americans give each other Valentine's Day cards and how the children make boxes to put them in. Their assignment was to make English cards for their families, and we were just supposed to walk around and help them with Celine Dion playing in the background (the teacher's idea of a true American love song). From now on we are going to be teaching lessons and grading them on their participation. I'm not convinced that I'll be able to teach them very much when there are 16 of them at one time, but we'll see how it goes!

Skittles!

After Claret I rushed home and ate lunch before going back over to school and meeting up with my intercambio, Fernando. I felt like I was in one of those cheesy movies where two people only talk on the internet and then finally meet in person and stand there awkwardly because they don't know who they're looking for. I had no idea what he was going to look like, and we stupidly decided to meet outside of the University. Do you know how many Spanish looking boys walk by the front door of the University? A lot. Which basically left it up to him to find the American girl standing awkwardly by herself. He finally found me and we sat down to begin our intercambio. The rules are that we speak for one hour in English and then one hour in Spanish. While I'm all for getting practice in, two hours is a long time to talk to someone who you have just met. It was particularly difficult for us, because his English was a little short of horrible. That sounds mean...but I'm not sure there is another word to use for it. But even though it is horrible, he really wants to learn, and he wouldn't let me say anything in Spanish to help him out until the first hour was up. Naturally, we didn't get very far in the first hour, because I'm not sure we could have talked about much more than basic vocabulary. The second half was a little bit better, and his Spanish is fairly easy to understand luckily. We are going to meet once a week, and I'm hoping that both of us really improve.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Last night, in honor of Valentine's Day, a group of us dressed up and went out to get desert and wine. We found a nice restaurant in the center of town and got some really good deserts. It was a busy Valentine's Day for me, but also a good one. I could think of no better city to spend Valentine's Day in, especially with all of the street musicians playing as we walked to and from the restaurant.


This weekend we are going to Cadiz, a beach town near Sevilla, for Carnaval. It is supposed to be the third largest Carnaval in the world, and it is Saturday night. Once we find costumes, we'll be ready to go, and I'm pretty excited because I've heard that it's a lot of fun. Hopefully it warms up a little bit before Saturday, or I might be going as an eskimo.