On Wednesday, I had my first meeting with one of my intercambios. An intercambio is a Spanish student conversation partner who is trying to learn English. We each have 2 intercambios and we have to meet with them for a total of 12 hours during the quarter. Most of them are the same age as us so the idea is that we will make friends with some of the Spanish students here in order to learn more. My first intercambio’s name is Pablo and he is really nice. There was another girl with him that is learning English as well. Pablo gave us a tour of the campus and we spent half of the time talking in Spanish and the other half in English. It was actually just nice to meet another student at the college. I’m lucky to be able to talk to Maite sometimes, but other than that, we don’t really get to talk to the other students very much. Most of the time we’re separate and the rest of the time, no one really seems interested in talking to us. I mean, I guess I could meet more people in the bars at night when we go out, but I think I’d get along with and learn a lot more from them if they were sober.
On Monday, I met my other intercambio, Lorea. We met at the café at the University to get coffee. She was really nice as well and she’s really good at speaking English like Pablo was. They are both a lot better at speaking English than I am at speaking Spanish, but hopefully I’ll learn a lot from them. We talked about our families, traveling, and just a lot of general stuff. Lorea is studying law so she always has a lot of work to do, but we are going to meet again after Semana Santa.
On Tuesday, I had my first community service session. I am volunteering at the School of Languages which is about a block from my apartment. I go there on Tuesdays for 2 hours (4 half-hour blocks) and talk to adults who are trying to learn English. Sometimes they have a certain topic they are studying and I just ask them questions about it and help them if they don’t know how to say something or if they say something incorrectly. If they don’t have anything then we just talk about whatever we want. For my first session, only one person showed up in the 2 hours so I just talked to her for an hour. We talked mostly about the current events stuff that I was learning in my culture class. She knew a lot about everything so I was learning a lot and she was practicing her Spanish at the same time so it was good for both of us. I think I’m going to like it a lot, but it’s just a little awkward if they don’t already have something to talk about because I have to come up with something which I am not good at. Anyone who knows me very well knows that I have a fear, yes an actual fear, of talking to people that I don’t know. I do it when I have to, but I try to avoid meeting people at all costs which makes me a weirdo I know. I just hate the uncomfortable, awkwardness of not knowing what to say and everything that goes along with that. Oh well, maybe I’ll get over it eventually since I’ll have to do it many, many more times in my life.
Still to come…last weekend and the beginning of Semana Santa…
Oh, P.S. I added a link to a YouTube video on the first journal entry. You should check it out by just clicking on the picture that says YouTube. This was my last night in Athens and a bunch of girls crashed my room while I was packing. We stayed up until 3am together eating pizza and laughing, then Leah and I studied hardcore until 4am and we both had finals the next day at 10am! It was worth it though and I aced that final! I miss you girls so much!
