Activities, activities

Tuesday after class I went to a meeting about volunteer opportunities, and then in the evening I met up with a group to go out and volunteer. I walked with one other person from my group and the volunteer coordinator to meet up with people over at the UGR science building. Most of these people were American, too, studying abroad with different programs.  There was also a family (dad, mom, 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter), doing their own study abroad thing together.  It was pretty interesting to meet them and hear their story.  They spent the last two months in Spain, are traveling around Europe (mostly France and Germany) for the next two weeks, and then will spend two months in Morocco.  But anyway, we were there to volunteer, not to meet other Americans.  Basically, what we did was walk around and talk to homeless people.  Some of them knew the leader person, because she does the same route every week.  This is mainly to lift their spirits and give them some social time, because all day people are passing them on the street, but hardly anyone ever stops to talk to them.  It was really awkward, though, because we were such a big group of volunteers, all with varying levels of Spanish.  It turned out that some of the homeless people didn't know Spanish, either.  They have come from all over Europe and chose to stay in Granada because it is warm and beautiful. We also had sandwich fixings and juice with us, so we made sandwiches for some of them.  It was kind of difficult and awkward making the sandwiches right there, but I guess if we had made them beforehand and brought them prepared, we wouldn't have known how many we would need.

Today I went to the first of a weekly theater workshop.  It was a lot of fun.  For the first few weeks, we are just playing games and stuff, so people can try it out and see if they want to stick with it.  Eventually, once we have gotten comfortable with it and know our theater and Spanish levels, we will work on putting together some kind of show to perform in December.  The games that we played were fun, but what was even cooler was the fact that here we were, a bunch of people from all over the world, barely having one language in common, and we were all connecting over one thing.  The games and activities that we did crossed the borders of every country that we represented, which was mostly Germany, Italy, Jordan, and the U.S. and also some people from Russia, Switzerland, and Spain.