... last week was awesome ...
Too often, lately, I've been writing only when I'm upset. Fear and depression permeate my words, and I become too ashamed to even share it. But not today. In fact, today that changes. Today I have so many happy things to write about that I don't even know where to begin. I guess we'll go in order then. Here we go - twelve reason last week was awesome:
1) Saturday Night - Neil Gaiman Speech
After a few hours had passed, sitting in bed and sulking had begun to lose its appeal. I decided I might as well learn something while I hid out in my Cave, so I did a quick Google search for free online classes. One of the top results was TEDed, which ultimately led me to Neil Gaiman's commencement speech on YouTube. And that's when I heard those six words: "Pretend. To. Be. Somebody. Who. Can."
The words made me explode with laughter, and then, seconds later, throw myself into my pillows, sobbing and clutching Wellington. I'd done it before (and it'd worked). Maybe I could do it again? Maybe it'd WORK again...?
I closed my eyes and imagined what a girl who COULD would do. An image of an MRI scan popped up behind my eyelids, and various areas began lighting up in multicolor. And suddenly I understood.
This girl had a unique faith in and love for herself; it didn't matter what changed around her, for she would remain the constant. As long as she had herself, she welcomed the craziest adventure you could throw at her.
I decided to I give it a week; I would pretend to be this girl. If it worked, I would continue. If it didn't, I had full permission to go back under the covers and sulk for the next two months.
2) Sunday Night - Skype
I'd just spent the sunshiny afternoon shopping and having tapas at Mercado San Miguel. I was walking home on Gran Via, taking in the picturesque scenery located just steps from my front door, when I got the text. "Skype?" We hadn't Skyped for more than five minutes since September, so the suggestion sent a little grin onto my lips, as my eyebrows raised in delighted surprise.
Three hours. Three whole hours of getting to be myself. Sonorous giggles between authentic conversations about our faults. Truth and honesty are easy when you know the other person knows you better than you know yourself. When you know that there's not a thing you could possibly say to cause them to love you any less.
3) Monday - Students
As soon as I walked in to 5th grade class on Monday morning, Carla (arguably one of the smartest girls I've ever taught) ran up to me and said, "Chelsea! I've spent ALL weekend thinking about this and I just don't know! The verb 'can'... it doesn't have an 's' in third person singular present, does it? But WHY NOT?!?!?!"
I wanted to hug that girl and tell her she was a total BAMF, but instead I just grinned and told her 'can' is a modal verb, and that modal verbs have their own rules. She scrunched her nose, not understanding what I was going on about, and I tried again, telling her instead that it was a great question and that I would respond to it more completely a little later on in the week. She smiled, satisfied, and trotted off to her seat to get ready for class.
By Thursday, three other kids has come up to me, asking about various things. So, during my only long break of the week, I printed out an explanation of modal verbs for Carla, a practice Cambridge exam for Alejandro and a list of txting abbreviations for two other girls. And when I took these printouts to the kids, their faces lit up like I was giving them the most elaborately wrapped birthday present. "THANK YOU!!!" they all squealed. Nerds. ;)
It wasn't just their intelligence or gratitude that gave me goosebumps of pure happiness; it was the fact that they had come to ME with these questions, knowing both that I would do my best to explain things AND that I would take their requests for knowledge very seriously, giving absolutely no attention to the fact they're "only 10 years old." They don't interact with me like the do their other teachers; they don't see me as above them. They seem, instead, to see me as somebody who is there to truly support them and is willing to do whatever it takes to do so. Unlike the other instructors, I have nothing to prove. I am not superior to my students. I merely have more years of knowledge in various areas than they do.
4) Tuesday Afternoon - Thailand
Upon mentioning that I was interested in moving to Thailand, my roomie Claire told me she had a friend living there who would be happy to tell me all about her experience. I wrote her immediately and within ten minutes had one of the most enthusiastic responses my inbox had ever seen. Over the next 12 hours, I was informed all about how amazing living in Thailand is, how to do it, and how much I would not regret the decision.
... It was the first time in months I felt excited, rather than petrified, of the future.
5) Tuesday Night - David's Bar
David had texted me to go keep him company at his new job at a bar in the neighborhood, and so I gladly went to drink a few cañas and chat after tapas. Although it's something that's become "normal" for me, talking for hours and hours in Spanish over beers and relentless giggles still gives me that blissful, fluttery "how did I get here?!" sensations in my tummy.
6) Tuesday Night - Photo Shoot Pictures
I've done two photoshoots, but this was the first one I did was a semi-professional photographer. No words can describe the excitement that bubbled up inside of me when I saw her email, and that ran over when I opened the links! Everyday I go to school with a greasy bun, glasses and a pimple or two on my face, so seeing Photoshopped Chelsea was pretty amusing (and totally cool).
7) Tuesday Night - West Coast Swing
When I am dancing West Coast, life smiles and surrenders. Each step pulls me away from my anxieties and into a world of whimsical enchantment. By the end of every song, I hardly remember where I am, but I know very clearly WHO I am. I am blissfully open to the unknown and patiently alert, waiting for the next movement, and then making it my own.
If I could live like I dance, I would undoubtedly reach a transindential state of nirvana. When I dance, it's all about enjoying the moment, and, while doing so, being ready and excited for the next step. And, at a certain level of experience, when you mess up a step, it actually makes the dance as a whole that much better. So there's no fear!
You can always tell a good dancer by their reaction to a flub. An inexperienced dancer will panic and either ashamedly apologize or immediately blame their partner. An experienced dancer, though, will crack a smile and go along with it, often coming up with an entirely new step that looks even cooler than what they were originally going for!
Another thing I love about dancing is there is no pressure to be "good." The only thing that matters is how much you enjoy yourself... And it simply happens that the more you enjoy yourself, the more often you do it, and the better you get. Unlike so many other things, I don't think, "Hey, I'm a dancer - look how good I am." Instead, I think, "Hey I'm a dancer - look how happy it makes me."
Anyway... Getting a private practice session at a dance studio with a fellow lover of WCS from 11pm until almost 1am was priceless. But to have the dance studio owner and another lady come in and watch me dance, then ask me to teach them all "my moves" and proceed to record videos of me so they could practice was INCREDIBLE. I felt like a pro, which is silly but a really unparalleled feeling! THEN for the studio owner to tell my partner to take me to Valencia on the weekends to help him teach...!!! What?!
Just a month or so ago I was laying in bed wondering what would be a sort of dream job. "Traveling and teaching WCS, totally." There are some things I really want and go after them with such tenacity that I end up losing myself. And then there are others that I smile at and figure it's a little too out of my reach, but in the moment that I am most authentically me, the branch lowers just a bit so I can grab it!
8) Wednesday Afternoon - Class Swap
As far as private classes go, there's always seems to be one each week I dread going to teach. I always thought those classes would be the little kid ones, but more often than not, they're the adult ones. And so, when my only remaining adult class texted me to say that they no longer would be able to have classes with me, I was overjoyed. Sure I'd be losing money from it, but the relief I'd feel not needing to go each week would be well worth it.
And then, I got another text. It was a mom that had gotten my name from another class of mine. She had two daughters, 4 and 8, who would be going to an English summer camp, and she wanted them to start getting comfortable being around a native speaker now. First classes are always nerve wracking, but these girls were so nice and happy that it was a total delight!
Swapping one class for another - amazing bit of serendipity!
9) Wednesday Night - Microteatro
I'd wanted to go to the Microteatro ever since David had told me about it last summer, and it was definitely met my built up expectations! There are four or five mini plays going on at any given time, and the plays usually consist of one or two actors. They take place in small rooms in the basement of the building, so only about ten audience members can squish into the room to watch the play at a time. The upstairs houses a quaint little bar where you can sip drinks while waiting for your next mini play to begin.
The one we went to see was called, "Te odio... casi" ("I hate you... almost"). When we shuffled into the room, we were told to sit on the "couch" (a bench with the image of a couch drawn on the wall behind it). The room was set up to look like a super tiny flat, with one girl sitting on the floor drawing and another sitting in her bed, writing. The 15 minute play was about these two girls - who at first seem to be roommates, but you soon learn they're ex-lovers who are still sharing the same flat- and how much they annoy each other. But, as they rant on about every little thing, they begin to realize these very things that piss them off are the unique things they loved about the other, and still sort of do...
The humor was great, but even better was the acting. At one point, the tension became so real - and being just a foot away from the actresses, I felt utterly sucked into it, like either I was a close friend in the room, or I was one of them, detaching myself from the situation for a split second to calm down. Having been in that same scene in real life myself, I think I appreciated the actresses expertise and the writing all the more - because it PERFECTLY captured the confusing mixture of feelings, humor, sadness, anger, hope and fear. Amazing.
10) Thursday Morning - Churros & Picasso
Thursdays are my favorite day at school because of my newish schedule:
1.5 hours of class
2 hours of break
1.5 hours of class
Perfection.
During that two hour break, I sneak off campus and have breakfast at the neighborhood churrería! The churros are über greasy, the chocolate kinda watery and the coffee terribly bitter, but I absolutely LOVE it there. It's like the "Cheers" of Alcalá, only instead of serving pints, they serve chocolate; the staff knows every customer's name, family members and current life events, and they always wave a warm hello or goodbye with a big smile on their face at every single person that goes through their doors.
I worried being the only foreigner in a joint for once might be a little weird, but it's just the opposite! I've only gone four times, but I already had "my" server, "my" seat and "my" order. Holy awesome. Everytime I'm there, I feel like I'm living in one of the super cheesy "culture corner" photos from my middle school Spanish textbook, and I couldn't be any happier about that! Me from the past would FREAK OUT if she knew one day she'd be another regular at a quaint churrería in Spain. ;)
11) Thursday Afternoon - Picasso
During my churro break, instead of reading or doing cryptoquips, I planned my first social studies class, which I would be giving in just a few hours. The teacher had asked if I'd be interested in giving class for a change, and I'd jumped at the opportunity! The topic of the class would be Picasso, she said, and I'd have 45 minutes to cover everything their textbook wanted them to know for the exam.
I sit in on three social studies classes a week and know that the standard way of teaching seems to be reading a page aloud and then "silently" doing the exercises at the bottom of the page. I get so bored just watching the students do this that I always have to bring paper and makers to class to draw or write. Surely it must be even worse for them.
So in my class, I didn't even let them take their books out. Instead, I told them all about Picasso, as if I were telling a really exciting story about a friend. I drew shitty maps on the board to illustrate the story, let them in on interesting facts (like, Picasso had 20 names on his birth certificate - his parents gave him lots of middle names taken from important relatives and saints) and asked them to guess what would happen next, or guess why something happened like it did, throughout the whole thing.
The kids seemed to love the class, and even the most troublesome of them were listening intently and participating! They were all giggling along, and some were even taking notes without being prompted to. For the final five minutes, I played a little review quiz game, and to even my own surprise, everyone's hands shot up to answer every single question! Yes!
After the class, the teacher congratulated me, saying she'd never seen the kids so engaged in a class and asking if I'd be interested in giving more classes. DUH!!
I LOVE teaching - which still confabulates me, because I never wanted to like it...
12) Thursday Night - Angela
I got to meet up with one of my Narwhal Girls (what I call my students from summer camp last year) who was in Madrid for a movie premier. I'd been hearing for months about how excited she was about this movie through txt messages and snail mail! She had talked her dad, who I found out is a journalist, into bringing her here on the high speed train from Malaga just to see it. But he'd done way more than agree - he'd used his journalist contacts to get her into the photocall earlier that day, and into the press seats at the premier that night! Best dad ever. :)
Anyway, between the two events, we got churros and walked around Gran Via chatting. I was so excited to see her and was transported back to how happy I was every single moment during camp last summer. She told me all about school and friends, and I did the same, giggling the whole time. What was so cool was listening to how much her English had improved since last summer - and, not only that, but how perfectly she used every single thing I'd taught in our English classes at camp! She told me how she and her friends still sing all the songs I taught them, and how excited she is for camp this summer.
Perhaps the cutest part of hanging out was when her father said to me, "You know, Angela's been really excited to come to Madrid for this premier, but I think she was even more excited to come to see you."
Awwwww!!! <3
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