El mundo es un pañuelo

This past week has been full of success and fun! First, I got more tutoring jobs. During my breaks at school I will be teaching English to one of the pre-school teacher´s husband. And on Mondays and Wednesdays I will be tutoring a 9 year old boy and a 7 year old girl in the evenings.
And it looks like my Spanish will be making progress at a quicker pace very soon!! One of the teachers at my school has volunteered to stay after school once a week to help me with Spanish.

On Friday night I finally got to meet up with my friend, Eric from college! He is also from Sacramento but we met in the dorms freshman year of college. Then senior year of college, he ended up living across the street from us in Pacific Beach. And now we are in the same city in Spain! So crazy! (the title of this entry literally translates to "The world is a tissue." But here in Spain it has the same meaning as "It´s a small world") He has been here for a few months interning at a company and we hadn´t been able to meet up. It was nice to see a little piece of home in Madrid. Maggie, Justin and I met up at his apartment with his roommates. It was quite an international group. There were people from America, Australia, Sweden, Iceland and France! We all went to a club to see a DJ from Belgium perform. There was a huge line outside the club and a 12€ cover to get in. But the next thing I know, we are all inside the club without paying and we even received free drink coupons. Apparently the Australian guy went to the bouncer and told him that we were all from an Australian magazine and we wanted to write an article on the place. And the story worked! haha

On Saturday we met up with our friend Justin (he is also from San Diego! We were at a café one morning and he heard us speaking English so he came up to as and asked where we were from. Turns out the world is smaller than we think and we have probably crossed paths before in San Diego. We have all been good friends since then!) and one of our Spanish friends. He took us to one of his friend´s rugby matches. Although he tried to explain to me what was going on, I am still clueless to it all. But, that pretty much explains my life in Spain-constantly confused. Luckily, the Spanish people I have met have been very patient.

Last week I mentioned that one of the waiters at our local bar approached us about practicing eachothers languages with one another. It started off a bit intimidating. He had called me earlier this week and for those of you who have tried learning another language, I am sure you know that speaking on the phone is one of the hardest things to do. There is no context or nonverbals to go off of. Then combine that with someone who speaks lightning fast and you are set up for disaster. Needless to say, everytime I saw him calling I about had a panic attack and had to always text him after to debrief the conversation. But tonight Maggie and I met with him and it went really well. We ended up talking with him for over 3 hours! Luckily he is very nice and jovial which made speaking to him easier. But he speaks close to no English, therefore Maggie and I are really forced to use our Spanish. So hopefully he will help Maggie and I get closer to fluency!

I will leave you all with a song that I hear everytime I am out in Madrid. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!