Well, friends and family, one of the days that I have been dreading since about January 7 is upon us...the day I must leave this beautiful city. It´s bittersweet, though. I mean really, who am I to be complaining about leaving when I have a month of backpacking through Europe before me?! I have been blessed with all of these great opportunites and I find myself at a complete loss of words describing my emotional state and how truly amazing this experience has been thus far.
In my past blogs, I have forgotten to mention the French students that have been staying with us over the last month or so. We had our first batch arrive on March 21 and the two 14-year-old boys stayed until Friday of that same week. They are still my favorite. I don´t remember their names which is probably a combination between the amount of weeks since their departure and the very French nature of their names. The following week we didn´t have any students and then we made up for it last week with three boys ages 14, 15 and 16! It was fun, but we were all rearranged at the apartment as my mom gave up her own bedroom to accomodate them. This past week we have two girls for the first time. I have since come to realize that I am partial to the company and presence of the boys better; they were nicer and didn´t steal my bathroom time! They were all great, though, and spoke little to no Spanish or English for that matter. Therefore, dinner converstation was interesting to say the least. It was nice to have bigger family for a change as well!
Speaking of kiddos, this past Monday and Friday were my last days volunteering at the elementary school. This was a great experience overall and I really liked being able to see the way their classes work here in Spain and how they learn English to be able to compare it to how I learned Spanish. We took pictures, exchanged email addresses and received many hugs from the students; they really didn´t want us to go! I don´t blame them, I don´t want to go either.
On Monday night we had a group dinner to celebrate our time together at Hotel Linajes. We had a social hour and took many pictures on the patio with our moms and of our group. The dinner was tasty; I had eggplant and a varity of apetizers! We chatted with Brian, Terese and Carolina who were seated at our table along with Carolina, the Linguistics professor. Brian, Migue and Jenny all gave speeches and Jenny ended most appropriately with,¨"Somos una familia," or English, "We are family," Which is so true, I´m really going to miss these people and all being in this same wonderful place. I am sad because like all great things, it is ending and it will never be this way again. Dr. Suess helps me in these times though as I remember, "Don´t cry because it´s over, smile because it happened." Tuesday was a day were this quote didn´t help me too much as my computer crashed on me. It couldn´t have been better timing because the bulk of my final semester projects were finished and I only had three more classes remaining when it happened. Luckily I wasn´t planning on bringing it traveling and it will instead sit in my backpack here in Segovia until I come back to retrieve my things and eventually get it to a technician in the States that can help me out. Tuesday during our seminar class our slideshow finally made its debut. It was a smashing success (though I am a bit biased) and everyone really like it. We even made some people cry, success! Michelle and I are currently posting it on youtube for the world to see, it´s in three parts and you should most certainly check it out!
As for me, I have a million things to do between now and 4:30 when my friends are dragging me to the bus station. We fly to Milan, Italy tonight at 9:30 and will most likely be spending the night in the airport. We will hopefully catch an early train to Cinque Terre. The list of our (Michelle, Libby and I) destinations are as follows: Cinque Terre, Pisa, Florence, Rome, and Venice in Italy, Interlaken in Switzerland, London, Dublin, Munich, Paris and then Nice. Please message me with ideas or suggestions about things to do, places to see and yummy things to eat. I promise to blog at least once a week and apparently email my mother once a day (how inconvenient! Just kidding, mom!) to keep you all updated on my livelihood and whereabouts. Thank you all for your love and support during my time in Segovia. I couldn´t have done it without you and you, too, have helped make this an experience of a life time.
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