I am standing in a classroom of Junior High School students in San Agustín de Guadalix, a working-class suburb of Madrid, giving a lecture in English about the origins of Islam and receiving questions in Spanish. I am working for Spain 's Ministry of Education as an English and History teacher with the intention of becoming fully bilingual and learning how the world is understood by a diverse community in at least one place outside the US. Getting to this class has been an interesting journey. I have been staying at the OK Hostel in Madrid, the temporary housing I chose while looking for an apartment for the next ten months. So far, OK Hostel was true to its name, except for the bedbugs, los chinches in Spanish. The night I arrived my bunkmate warned me about them. She had woken up the day before covered in bites and hadn’t stopped scratching since. She told me not to worry. Apparently, the bedbugs were now contained to room 205; we were staying in 207. I slept in my thickest sweatpants and sweatshirt even though the room temperature reached 85 degrees. Every morning I woke up covered in sweat and in fear that the bedbugs had crawled through my clothing and that I too would be scratching all over. Since being in Spain, I have had …show more content…
I could connect with the boys and girls I tutored through a mutual desire to learn and to teach; I would help with English and math and they would teach me Spanish after we had finished with their work. The students were not made to feel lesser if they did not have a full grasp of the homework but felt at ease when they saw how I similarly struggled with Spanish. I asked questions because I had a genuine interest in their lives. They could see that I was not just another person coming to complete community service hours but, rather, I tutored because I cared about their personal