Valió la Pena: Parte II

What a beautiful day.

1. Rachel and I have been reunited. Her family is camping here and she scared the CRAP out of me today. I was vacuuming one of the rugs in the store, mostly bored, when all of a sudden BAM!! Rachel literally bursts into the store (the door almost came off its hinges) and screams. I scream, drop the vacuum (still running) and we hug like there's no tomorrow. Seriously, it lasted at least a minute. I was so excited to see her. I had been looking forward to this for about a week and it was just so awesome!! Anyway, we caught up for a little bit, hugged about four more times, did some more screaming, and then she left. Best part of this little story? Jana is coming out tomorrow to visit us and we are hanging out the whole day!! Spain/Paris/Rome reunion! Such a great end to an otherwise terrible and stressful week. :)

2. Two Hispanic families came into the store today for ice cream and I got to help them in Spanish! James took one family whose son spoke English, and I took the other. This is how the original conversation went:
Man: "Ice cream?"
Me: "Yes, would you all like some ice cream?"
Man: "Ice cream."
Me: "What kind would you like?"
Man:"....Ice cream."
Then some rapid-fire Spanish happened between the man and his daughter, who said, "Ice cream cones?" That's when I knew we'd get farther with Spanish. :) I helped them figure out what flavor they wanted (luckily, I didn't have to worry over describing Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Bear Hug, or some of our other somewhat outrageous flavors) and they decided on vanilla and strawberry. I was so excited to be able to help them and once I stopped using the vosotros (I only slipped up twice on that one), they were very happy to have a Spanish speaker helping them out. Once all the ice cream was squared away, the man asked me to teach him some of the words he needed to know about ice cream (ice cream, cone, bowl, vanilla, strawberry, 1 and 2 scoops, etc).
I was so impressed by this. I don't know how much he'll remember, but his wife wrote them down with help from the boy from the other family and he promised he'd study them. I think that a lot of Americans have the impression that Hispanic immigrants are freeloaders and are only here so that they can take advantage of the system and just live in their Spanish-speaking communities without making an effort to learn English. But I can tell you right here and now that even if some immigrants are like that, many are not. This man and his family are trying to learn English, even if it's only a few words at a time. We need to have patience with them.
Why should we have patience with them? Because I've been on the other side. I know what it's like to stumble through trying to order something in a restaurant or trying to ask for help in another language. And because those people were patient with me, I'm going to return that favor to someone else who is learning my language.

3. This one is smaller: one of the families that I've known for several years came in for ice cream tonight accompanied by a Spanish student that is living with them. I found out that she's from Madrid but then they got their ice cream and had to leave to make room for more customers. I hope that maybe I can talk to her again while they're here.

Three more reasons that made Spain worth it.

And here's a funny story: I had a dream that I didn't get any credit for my semester in Spain and that they were forcing me to go back. So actually, kind of a nightmare. Haha. Anyway, Ge (one of our Spanish profs) made an appearance in my dream, except that she was speaking English. That was totally wild, because the real-life Ge doesn't speak a WORD of English. Dream-Ge said that she was only pretending to not speak English so that our Spanish would get better. Only in a dream. :)