Enero y Febrero

Hello again, this post is long overdue...many apologies to all my avid blog followers :).

A couple days after the new years celebration Natasha and I took a trip to Vigo in the region of Galicia, located in the northern part of Spain, to visit our good friends Miguel, Jacobo, and Isaac. For those who don't know of our Spaniard friends, they are three guys we met the summer before our freshman year in college, and spent about a month showing them around LA. They came back a couple times to LA, and so they were very excited for us to come to their hometown to show us around! Vigo, is an incredible town, home to one of the most important ports in Spain. It reminded me a bit of San Francisco, slightly hilly but near the water. I can't wait to go back there during the warmer months, because the beaches are beautiful! We felt so at home, we met Jacobo and Miguel's father and brother and it was so good to finally see where they came from! It was a short trip but we all felt so happy to be together again. Isaac lives in Madrid, and the other two come to visit pretty often so I've been lucky to see them and spend time with them!

When I returned from Vigo I was sick with a bad cold, but had to recover quickly as I started my job working as a teaching assistant. I got accepted into a program I had applied to last March, and I'm so happy I got selected. I was placed in a public school in El Molar, a small town 40 min north of Madrid. It is quite a commute by metro and then by bus, but it is so worth it. I work Tues.-Fri. from 10am-2pm. with children in infantil (nursery school) all the way through 6th graders. I work in the class with the teachers, or I will take out groups of students to practice English. We are preparing the second graders for the Trinity exam, an spoken English language exam, so that is really fun! I am supposed to not speak any spanish with the kids, but sometimes when a little first grader looks up at me blank faced, I have to repeat myself in Spanish....so believe it or not listening to the kids and sometimes talking to them, I'm learning more and more Spanish. The teachers and staff at the school are so amazing, and the other two auxiliares (assistants) are really nice, and also happen to be from LA too! I also recently got a job taking care of a 5 year old, Paula, to make some extra money during the week. I only work 3 days for the family, who want their daughter to practice English. I'm very grateful to have work and I'm getting very used to have a routine, although I do have a lot of time to enjoy myself! :)