Paelleros Sin Fronteras and thoughts

The last two weekends I have had the opportunity to attend two paella fiestas. Paella (pronounced something like pie-ay-ah) consists of a mountain of rice with green peppers, red peppers, artichoke and just about any kind of meat you want to throw in. The meat of choice for both the paellas was chicken thigh. Celebrations that include paella are worth commenting on because they are always exceptionally fun and the paella is always the center of the party. The typical routine is drink and snack as soon as the preparation of the paella begins. The paella always smells amazing and has an impressive evolution from ingredients to mass of yellow, green and red ricey deliciousness. Paella is cooked slowly over a massive frying pan and because the pan is not very deep it creates a massive surface of food and gives off a strong aroma which amps up everyone's excitement to eat. By the time the paella is done everyone's hunger is usually staved from snacking, but the paella is the grand prize and people keep on eating. When I return to the US I am going to try my best to replicate "una paella" - a celebration with paella. I would compare it to the American barbeque with a cultural difference.

The second weekend of "una paella" was to celebrate the birthday of a friend of a friend which was a lot of fun. We played paddle ball and ping pong when we weren't eating.

The weekend before, I attended "una paella" that was a celebration of the anniversary of the volunteer association that works with children who have cancer. It was much more unique. I recently started volunteering at this cancer center in a nearby hospital and was invited to participate in the party. At the hospital my job is to play with the children. It is the best volunteering I have done yet because it’s fun and rewarding.

At the party a non-profit organization called Paelleros Sin Fronteras showed up to cook a massive paella. Paelleros Sin Fronteras stands for "paella makers without borders!" It is an amazing organization of people that cooks massive paellas for any good cause. The pan that they cooked in was literally two yards in diameter and big enough to feed 250 people. It was so big that they were using oars to stir the paella. haha. Everyone was amazed by the paella and having a great time.

During the party there was a dance competition and I knew that one way or another I was going to be "animated" into joining the dance contest because that always seems to happen to me. So I was paired up and joined the competition. My partner and I made it to the second round, but were axed during the second evaluation of the dancers. Two of the children who are cancer patients at the hospital were in the final round dancing with their fathers. When the fathers and their daughters danced the final dance together all of the coordinators of the program and some of the other patients' parents were crying with happiness at the sight. It was an incredible experience. It felt really good to participate in something special for the children and help them too feel liberated and completely happy.

Before coming to Spain I had almost no experience working with young children and suddenly I became surrounded by children all the time. At first it was kind of difficult to teach because I just came out of college and really struggled to convey a subject in a manner in which the students could understand and relate to. Now I feel much more comfortable talking with children and really enjoy working with them (not always, they suck the life out of me). I really enjoy volunteering with children in the cancer center because I feel like I help them to do the things that make them happy.  The experience has made me realize how special childhood is and how much of a tragedy it is for a child to lose the opportunity to fully live their youth.

I have three more months left here in Spain and plan to explore the southern coast of Spain more thoroughly, but I don't think that much is going to change in my lifestyle as I now have a full schedule and a group of friends. But I am very satisfied now knowing that I have already gained a lot from participating in this program and living here for the past six months. I've come to really enjoy working with children; I understand children much better, understand education much better and remember much more of my own childhood and what I was like. When I become frustrated with students in class because they are not paying attention, goofing around or struggling with assignments I think about what it was like when I was a student their age and what I wish my teachers would have done for me. This helps me to be patient and do my best to make sure that they are learning rather than just finishing a worksheet by copying something they see.

And that’s the summary of my personal growth over the past half year: learning to play with children and how to throw a great party with paella.

Berlin

The province of Malaga celebrated Semana Blanca last week and naturally we had a week off of school and a week of vacation time. I didn’t have any plans set for myself and I was invited to go to Berlin with three teachers from my school and my housemate Courtney. I should note that all of the teachers are women between ages 33 and 40 and I was a little hesitant about the idea of going on a vacation with only women, but I felt very comfortable with the group as we spend coffee break together every day, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity.

We rented an apartment in Berlin for 7 days and bought metro passes for a week so that we could travel around the city easily. I loved the metro system while we were there. We were able to travel throughout the entire city easily and quickly and see a lot of the city in any one day.  Berlin is a really fun city with a kind of alternative/artistic feel. When the Berlin wall was taken down a large amount of abandoned and poorly maintained buildings started to be converted into bars, discotecas, art galleries, and music studios. Many young artists started to move to Berlin to take advantage of the low price of living and focus on music and art. The majority of artists and musicians of Germany now reside in Berlin. All this was very apparent by the diverse style of the citizens, the number of alternative/dive bars, art galleries, public art and street musicians. To be honest it reminded me quite a lot of Portland, but on a grander scale: weird people, good beer, lots of music and lots of art. Instead of Mexican food Berlin has Turkish food. I would say the two cities are pretty comparable minus the tumultuous history of Berlin and its historical landmarks.

It was a great experience to see what remains of the Berlin wall and become better informed of the history behind it. It is shocking to think of all that the people of Germany had gone through during world war two and that about 15 years later they had to face another wall. I saw some pretty profound photos of people holding children up above the wall as the wall was being constructed in 1961 so that friends and relatives on the other side of the wall could see their children. Another photo I saw that was unbelievable to me was an aerial photo of the gate of Berlin and the wall in front of it, which is really two walls with about 30 meters in between that had barbed wire fences in case someone had jumped over one of the walls. I was most surprised by the year in which the photo was taken, 1988, which is not long ago at all. It was crazy to think that the city of Berlin, which belonged to Germany, remained divided between the western world and Russia.

I also visited a site of a former concentration camp which was pretty shocking. It was a concentration camp for work, not extermination, but it really was as close to hell as I can imagine.  The prisoners had to perform tasks such as test products for war and create armaments for the Nazis. The darkest parts of the concentration camp experience were the execution wall, crematoriums, and infirmary. In the Infirmary that we saw Nazi doctors sterilized people and performed medical experiments such as injecting viruses in people to observe the reactions and placing pieces of metal in people’s bodies to study infection. It was a very dark experience, but good to learn about history and recognize the horror that humans can create if not careful.

The trip overall was an incredible learning experience and reflecting on my trip the history I learned is what I value most, but while I was in Berlin my favorite things to do were drink good beers in awesome bars, eat loads of delicious sausages and gain a feel of the lifestyle of Berliners.  It was a really great experience.