Obviously, I have given up on consistently posting about my travels. While I enjoy writing these blogs, having consistent/specific dates to write just feels like homework. But anyways, it’s been awhile since I last wrote, so here I am.
I’ve officially been in Spain for 2 months! The first month was chaotic and stressful, but the second month–amazing! Between work, exploring, and making friends, I have had my hands full.
Work
I mentioned in my previous blog that I’m not too fond of the 6-12 year olds. While that statement remains true, I have found that I really enjoy working with the kids that seem to struggle, especially in the younger groups. Every time I walk into their classrooms, they get so happy to see me and give me a hug. And the teacher I work with definitely enjoys that I keep them on task. These kids have been helping me with my Spanish. I’m not supposed to speak Spanish with them, but I sneak it in.
I also really enjoy the older groups–years 5 and 6, because they understand my English well and still get excited to play games.
And I finally figured out the train schedule–I’ve only missed it once.
Exploring
Besides work, I haven’t left the city of Valencia much. But I plan to change that as there are dozens of castles (many in ruins), mountains, and historical towns in the region. 
Last week I visited Xativa; it was an hour ride by train from the city center. It was a beautiful city rich with history and a castle, which was the main reason I went. From the train station it was only a one hour walk to the castle, but I made it into a 2.5 hour journey to explore other historical things there.
Making Friends
Making friends has been pretty easy. It wasn’t at first, but once I found Meetup (an app where events are posted) it’s been smooth-sailing. The two main Meetup groups I attend are board games and beach volleyball. From these two groups alone, I feel satisfied with my social life. I ended up going to an improv show with some friends from board games, and I go out to dinner with my volleyball friends almost every Saturday. Between everyone we all share English as the common language, but sometimes we play board games in Spanish or I will practice Spanish with the speakers at volleyball who struggle with English. These are the countries my friends are from: Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bu
lgaria, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, USA, and Venezuela. I’ve met people from more countries, but these are people I see almost every week.
Residency
If you remember from my other blog, I was struggling to get some paperwork for my residency card. I still can’t obtain that paperwork, but the assistant director at my school had my get a certificate from city hall and helped me fill out a bunch of paper work to (hopefully) surpass the paper I needed. And although I haven’t received the card yet, I did get an email for an appointment in a few weeks. Hopefully that goes well–I was ready to live illegally for the last half of my stay.
Spanish
My Spanish is coming along, but not nearly as fast as it should. This is primarily because the common language between all my friends is English. I’ve talked with some people at board games about doing Spanish classes or tutors, but I won’t commit to anything until after New Year’s because I just booked a plane ticket to go home for Christmas– woohoo!
