_  When my friends and family have asked me about Spain recently, they’ve all received the same answer, “Umm…It’s ok. I’m ready to come back home.” It’s been an unfortunate thing to tell people and I feel like I should be more thankful for this opportunity. But everyone has assured me that it’s ok if I’m not having the time of my life and that it’s an experience all the same. Today I think I had a moment of enlightenment. I was walking to one of my classes and on the way I saw a couple of my students. One of the girls was so excited that she ran up and gave me a hug. Later after my class I passed even more of my students and each of them greeted me by shouting my name and giving me a huge smile. It was in that moment that I realized their smiles are the reason that I am here. It’s not about me learning more Spanish or making lots of friends or about me traveling around Europe. I am here first and foremost to help these children learn English. It took me five months to realize that life is not always about me! So when I get frustrated living in a small town, or when I have troubles with my roommates or when the children don’t sit in silence during the entire class period, I’m going to think of those smiles. I’m going to think of the way the children shout my name when I walk in the door. That is why I’m here; not for myself but for them.

_  This weekend I met up with the Model UN for some salsa dancing. Julie couldn’t make it because she was sick but Laura’s roommate, Jessica, came along and added a second representation for England. We made an amazing cheesy pasta and garlic bread for dinner and got ready to go to Bora Bora. I had an amazing night as always.  I had a few dances with my latest salsa crush, a guy who has prematurely graying hair that we nicknamed Silver Fox. Plus Laura got out on the dance floor and showed off her moves. Jessica is a natural and although she didn’t dance with anyone, she knew all the footwork and could recognize the type of dance by the song that was playing.  Around 3:00 we said our goodbyes to Katie and went back to Rebecca’s house to sleep. The next day Rebecca had plans with a teacher so Jessica, Laura and I went to have breakfast before catching our buses back to our respective towns. We still had a little bit of time left so we decided to do some shopping to kill some time.  While walking I noticed this guy staring at us as we passed by.  As I said before, people stare at me a lot here in Spain and I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve just started saying hello to startle them a bit. So this guy is staring and I didn’t think he looked very Spanish so I just said, “Hello.” He looked a bit surprised but then said, “Hello! Are you from the states?” We struck up a conversation and met our new best friends Randy from Oregon and Cristian from Romania. They were from another small town called Garrucha and were in Murcia with one of their Spanish roommates.  We took them around Murcia and had some tea and coffee before heading to the bus station where they were meeting their roommate.  I didn’t really feel like heading back to Jumilla and the boys invited me to tag along with them to the mall. So we spent some time at the mall and went to a football game between Real Murcia and Cordoba (Murcia won!). And I still had time to catch the last bus back to Jumilla that night. So now I’ve got some new cities to visit! We made plans with the boys to go to Granada in a few weeks. The Model UN continues to grow!

In other news I finished my first book in Spanish last night! It's a book based on this Spanish series I've been watching called Los Protegidos.