Volunteering

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Yesterday I volunteered at a high school called Padres Blancos for the first time. I woke up at 7 a.m. (which is early for me) and walked the 50 minute walk to the school with 3 other friends. I was assigned two classes that were an hour each. The classes both had students who were about 16 years old in age, and both were enlgish classes. The students were reviewing for an exam that they took today, so I mostly just helped with grammar excercises. The kids were curious about me, but very friendly. One of the girls said that she had been studying english since she was 6, so their english was okay, but still far from perfect. Since it was Valentine's Day, we also made Valentine's cards with sayings about love on them. They kids were supposed to think of a sentence in english that they wanted to say to someone they loved, but I noticed a lot of them just stole enlgish long lyrics like "I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow." and "You are the best thing that's ever been mine." It was still pretty cute though. One of the boys wrote something like "You give me wings to fly" which was really adorable. Right now I'm only assigned this one day a week, but I'm thinking about picking up another day. We'll see.

Yesterday was the first time in a while that I haven't had a Valentine, but that was actually fine because they don't really celebrate Valentine's Day here. Of course restaurants and stores try to promote it, but apparently most Spaniards are simply uninterested in this holiday, which was fine for me. Actually, I met this Polish guy at a club a few weeks ago and went out for a drink with him 2 nights ago. He's pretty cool. He speaks 5 languages (Polish, Italian, Spanish, English, and Portugese) and is working in Seville as a personal physical therapist for a bull fighter. Anyway, he asked me if I was doing anything last night but I told him I was just going to stay in and study for an exam I had today. I don't really know if it will go anywhere, but he seems like a pretty nice guy, and I think it's good to get to know people outside of my study abroad program. Maybe I'll see him out this weekend?

In other news, my roommate's boyfriend broke up with her a couple weeks ago, so of course she was feeling especially sad about it yesterday. However, there is this guy in our program who is really good friends with her, and I think they would be a cute couple, so I decided to play matchmaker. I told him that he should ask Samm to be his Valentine, and he agreed. He asked me how he should ask her, so I told him exactly what to write, and he sent her the text. It actually played out really well because when she got home last night the first thing she did was come into my room and tell me that he asked her to be his Valentine. I could tell she was really excited about it. Neither of them will admit it right now, but I'm pretty sure they like each other. I'm such a good matchmaker.

I'm getting really excited to go to Gibralter on Friday. It's definitely somewhere I've always wanted to go, and it's pretty sureal that I'm actually doing it. Hopefully I'll get a picture with a monkey on my head! I'll have to be careful though, I heard if you're not careful they'll steal from you.

I think I'll watch a movie.

Ciao!

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