First Day of English Camp

I thought for sure I would get a good night’s sleep last night. Doesn’t there come a point in time where your body has no other choice but to sleep?? I thought surely I was there yesterday but apparently not. So today, I’m dragging. But it was the first day of camp so there was a lot to do! We woke up and had breakfast at the hotel again. Call me boring but I’ve been pretty consistent in my breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice, Spanish coffee, bread with olive oil, and a potato cake with salmorejo, which is similar to a finely ground salsa. Very tasty.  We spent most  of the day at Parque Este preparing for camp. Before this year, the most they have had sign up for class was 50. This year, we had 95 students sign-up!! We have been praying that good would multiply our opportunities here and he certainly has! In fact, people were walking up to the church all day signing up at the last minute! It was amazing. We laid out the plans for how the day and the week would go and got the church all set up. It was interesting trying to arrange chairs and white boards around to somehow fit 6 (!) groups in the a church that has one main common space, a small nursery space, and an upstairs loft. I was able to pull from my years of checking in middle school students for events to help arrange an efficient flow to get everyone checked in and in their group. It was especially challenging knowing that the culture here is to leisurely arrive “around starting time,” as opposed to a few minutes early that is normal in the U.S. For lunch, we ate sandwiches and chips in the church and enjoyed some good conversation and fellowship. It has really been amazing how well we’ve been able to communicate with each other. Pepe and Mari speak very little English and most of our team speaks very little Spanish. Luckily, we do have one native Spanish-speaker on our team, Clara, as well as Pepe and Mari’s children Dani and Maria, who both speak English fluently.

In the afternoon, we were able to have another siesta at the hotel, which was so incredibly essential. I was out cold for about an hour and really could have kept sleeping probably all the way through the night. After our naps, we started team devotions before going back to the church. It was so nice to meet together as a team and spend some time especially focused on the Word and being intentional about our task here.

The first night of camp went pretty well, although it was very LOUD!! The whole church is so open and was so packed with people that you could hardly hear yourself thinking. I’m under the impression that this is normal for the Spanish culture because although it seemed to stress out the Americans, the Spaniards didn’t seem too bothered by it. I wonder if it goes back to our lack of regular community in the U.S. Have we become such an isolated culture because of technology and distance that we are more accustomed to silence than the rest of the world?

My class so far consists of 2 little girls named Esther and Carmen, and 3 little boys named Quique, Bruno, and Martin. Quique and Bruno are twins and they’re stinking adorable, as are the rest of them. We did basic introductions and numbers today. Its funny because no matter how many times I tell them I don’t speak Spanish, they continue to ask me questions and engage in seemingly very serious conversation in Spanish. Sometimes I just nod and let them talk because listening to little kids speak another language is adorable. However, there are times when I can sense that they’re clearly asking a question that they are expecting a response from. That’s when I say, “Go ask Maria.” J Maria is Pepe and Mari’s daughter and she’s my helper in class. I don’t know what I’d do without her!

Despite the fact that we were all exhausted, we had to eat dinner. I’m beginning to think if left to my own devices, I would end up skipping dinner a lot. We usually don’t get to the restaurant until after 10 and by then, I’m much more interested in sleeping. Tonight we went to an American style restaurant called Sloppy Joe’s. The company was great, the food was nothing special. It was fun though and I’m happy to sacrifice a little sleep in favor of building relationships with the sweet people of Parque Este.