Coffee with Friends

Our prayers have been answered! Matt and I prayed diligently and we thank you for joining with us in our prayers regarding my work teaching English at the language academy. To our surprise, it turned out to be a terrific experience.
On Tuesdays, I worked from 4:30 until 7:30. The last group of students was a group of adults; I enjoyed that hour of class the most. It felt so fun and so comfortable that I could easily imagine myself sitting in the Writing Center at USD instead of in a small classroom in the northwest corner of Spain!

I also worked with a kind man in private conversation lessons. Jose has a competent command of English and he was brushing up on his skills before going to Germany for a work conference where lectures and information were to be given in English. We chatted for an hour one night and happily agreed to bring our spouses the next evening.

What fun that night was! Matt and Jose held a long conversation about technology and the details of Jose’s job as an engineer while me and Patricia, Jose’s wife, listened with respect, realizing our own incompetence in the subject. By the end of the night, however, our friendship was sealed; Matt and I were absolutely delighted to make friends with a young couple like us.
After conversation lessons on Friday, Jose and Patricia invited Matt and I out for coffee. We were happy to accept the invitation even though the time they preferred was quite curious – 11 pm! According to Spanish custom, Matt and I ate dinner at 10 pm and prepared to go out with our new friends.

They picked us up in Jose’s car! This is quite a novel for Matt and I as we have become used to riding the bus and doing a lot of walking to go places. But a car! What an exciting, glorious feeling to buckle up and sit back while traveling directly to the place you want to go! First Jose and Patricia took us to an overlook on the top of the city. It was so neat to see the sparkling lights of the city from above; both Matt and I gained a better understanding of our new home city by seeing the layout from above. Then our friends drove us back into the heart of the city and we continued on to a park called “Parque Castro” which is near Plaza Espana. By the time we set out to drink our coffee, it was near 1 am! The coffee was excellent, as Spanish coffee really is quite preferable to our own; it did feel, however, extremely contrary to our beliefs of good health and a good night’s rest to be drinking strong coffee after midnight! At two in the morning, Matt and I begged to be taken home. How in the world do the Spanish people maintain their energy all day AND all night?!! We still don’t know.

Anyways, I am done working now. I am happy for the experience as I did truly enjoy teaching and getting to know the kids and adults through conversation and classroom behaviors. It has turned out to be a confirmation for my hope of teaching English as a second language one day and I can now see the benefit of being a bilingual ESL teacher. Best yet, Matt and I made new friends, and as we gain more friendships, our contentment about living in Vigo increases. One last thing! I feel as if my faith and courage grew in bounds the last few weeks! I was scared, honestly scared, to get on a bus by myself at 9:30 in the evening without fully knowing its route. It’s a scary feeling to not know where you are at and where you will end up at the end. It worked out though! I even feel as if I may just jump on a bus one afternoon to see a new sight and then to enjoy the challenge of finding the way back home….all this with Matt of course!