Well, my last day teaching English was today. Things are coming to a close so quickly it’s hard for me to take it in. Today I walked out of the apartment in the old city center that I teach at 2 days a week with a smile on my face. Normally I walk out the door and take a deep breath either because the temper tantrum that I just endured is over or because I’m relieved that the kids remained happy the entire lesson. I never know what to expect when it comes to children and English. But today I walked away with the knowledge that I will be missed, and the kids, inspite of the tantrums, will remember their time with me with a smile on their face. I was so surprised to have trouble getting out the door because the kids wouldn’t stop hugging me as if they were trying to soak in their last moments with me. I honestly thought these particular kids would be glad to see me go and not have to endure an hour of English twice a week anymore. But I was wrong.
Jake and I will be headed to a Paella Pool Party next weekend at the house of another family I’ve be teaching since October. I’ve grown to love the whole fam, grandparents and all. I’ve been seeing them so often that I almost feel like I’m a part of the fam. They wanted to have a proper goodbye so they invited Jake as well to a fun farewell before we leave. This family, along with the grandparents, came to my recital. Since then, they asked if the last few weeks with them I do music lessons instead of English lessons. I felt so revived with my teaching in the last month because of this opportunity. I realize teaching things in the arts gives me more life in comparison to just straight up language. So that was a really nice way to go out.
One other student left for a trip to Denver last week, and her father sent me pictures of her there. I was surprised because he didn’t seem like the type that would want to have anything to do with me after my job was done. But in actuality he contacted me trying to see if I was interested in taking on more students because he and his wife had recommended me to several other people. Well, I guess that won’t work out. But it was a nice gesture.
All in all, teaching has been a good experience and I’ve met some really nice families that have shared with me on more than one occasion that whenever I come back to Valencia, their house is my house. Of course, I was more than happy to offer the same hospitality for whenever they might find themselves in the states, or if they ever want to send their kids for an American experience.
Teaching hasn’t been the only thing consuming our lives. We’ve continued spending our time with friends from church. This weekend of was fun with Jake and Sofia’s birthdays. Sofia is Bonnie’s daughter who turned 5 on Jake’s 35th birthday. On Sunday we had a birthday party for Jake at our place. We thought we were going to finally intermingle our church friends and our Berklee friends. But it turned out that all the church people arrived at 8:00pm and left around 10:30pm, just as all the Berklee people were walking in the door. So we basically had two parties in one night. But either way it was a fun night, and Jake felt celebrated. And then the following night, we went out for drinks with all the church people (including the pastor and fam) for Sofia’s birthday. We went to a cafe near church and sat outside as a huge group. Sofia just became a big sister a couple of weeks ago, so a few parties to celebrate her was probably just the right timing considering her world has been turned upside down recently.
Bonnie gave birth to Vera 3 weeks ago. I went to see her in the hospital, and had a great time by the time I actually got there. The hospital is called “La Fe” and when I looked it up on the map I saw that it was very close to Bonnie’s house. I thought, “Of course. How convenient for them.” Well, when I got there, and saw weeds grown over and hardly anyone in sight. I became a little nervous for Bonnie thinking she gave birth in this run down hospital. I finally found an open entrance, and was rather confused that there seemed to be absolutely no workers or patients anywhere in sight. I made it up to her floor, and became much more concerned considering it seemed more like an abandoned, haunted hospital with lights flickering on and off. Yes, just like a scary movie scene. So I went back down to the lobby and found one worker (the only person I saw the whole time) and asked if there was another campus, figuring I was in the wrong place. The answer was yes, and unfortunately, a 45 minute bus ride away! This was the old “La Fe” but a new one was opened this year across town. Someone needs to inform Google of this!! So by the time I made it to the new “La Fe” I was pleasantly surprised by the facility. I stayed with Bonnie a couple of hours and met Vera, their new daughter. It was a happy end to my “haunted house adventure”. Although our friends won’t let me live it down as I’ve heard this story pop up on several occasions amongst different people since this episode occurred. At least I’ll be remembered. :)
As for other friends, I’ve continued to see MariEli 3 or 4 times a week between church, parties, and her work on this online language course that she’s brought me into. I still go there twice a week and go through the almost-beta mode of this language course, while suggesting certain corrections and changes. And we still go every day for almuerzo (between breakfast and lunch) at the local bar with her bosses where I get my conversational Spanish practice in. Since I’ve been around, they’ve begun considering more American English in their program, so they asked if I would come record some things with my American accent. Everything else in English on their program is with a British accent. My childhood dream was to be a studio singer and voice over artist, so any chance I get to record in the studio I’m there in a heartbeat. I recorded about a page’s worth of dialogue in this really nice studio across town. While I was recording, the professional British V.O. guy came in the studio and asked if I was a professional. Ha!! I left the studio beaming. It was a brief bit of dialogue, but it seemed to whet my appetite for more opportunities.
Speaking of being inspired, Berklee put on a TedX event last week. It was a project that one of the business students took on and morphed into a potentially annual event for the Berklee music business department to put on every year. MariEli caught wind of the Ted talks at Berklee via local advertising and asked if there was any way we could get her a ticket. So the 3 of us went to the inaugural TedX event, and met up with some other Berklee friends while we were there. She was sharing about all the talks the next week at our work almuerzo, so I guess the Ted talks did their job in passing on inspiration.
Jake is in the final stages of his Master’s. He’s almost finished with his final thesis paper. He’ll be presenting on Monday, and after that he just has a few more classes to attend, and then he graduates!! We don’t even know what to do with our thoughts! A wide mix of emotions as I have mentioned before. All we can do is try to take in every moment. It’s been a wonderful year.
