GOOOOOAL!

It's an historic day. Today, January 21, 2009, I scored a goal in a game of soccer.

The goalie may or may not have been five years old. Minor detail.

Helping out at the school was so much fun today! It's a little after school program that we help out with and it was so interesting to watch the kids interact and the teacher/student interactions in Spain. I got to be with the infantíl group which consisted of eleven kids, ages three to eight. They were hilarious! We started off in gimnasio (gym) and played fútbol (soccer) for about an hour. It was a boys vs. girls game and the girls, unfortunately, got creamed. Our goalie was Juana, who is seven years old and would have fit right in on the AYSO Green Girls. *For those who need backstory, the Green Girls was my kindergarten soccer team, coached by my mom. Our motto was "no crying, keep trying". We lost every game of the season because we were always too busy looking at the grass, making daisy chains, doing cartwheels, or talking to do anything.* Every time a ball went into our goal, I would yell "No pasa nada, Juana!" (Don't worry about it!) and she would give a thumbs up and punt the ball into the ceiling. So cute! I did manage to score a goal, which ended up being one of three points for the girls' team (the boys had twelve). It was really cool, culturally, to see how into soccer the boys were. It was such a big deal to them, and they were TALENTED! After they won, they picked up some random knick-knack from the gym and carried it around, chanting "hemos ganado la copa del mundo" (we have won the World Cup).

After gimnasio, we went to informática, which is basically computer class. The kids were learning about shapes and spent the hour drawing diamonds on Paint. While they were drawing, they were asking me where I was from and were astounded to know that I speak English. When they found out, I think there was a solid ten minutes where I kept hearing "hello!" "thank you!" "goodbye!" "red" "blue" "apple" "milk" and any English word they knew. It was pretty adorable.

Carlos and Maria also decided to show off their English at dinner today. We were all eating when Carlos tapped me on the arm and said "Puedo decir algo en Inglés" (I can say something in English). I asked him to and he said (in his little Spanish accent) "Put the plate on the table". Apparently third grade is studying food in English right now. For the rest of dinner, he kept rattling off the names of anything he knew (spoon, knife, fork, plate, hamburger, soup, bread, etc.). It was really fun to help him and to listen to him trying to pronounce everything. It definitely makes you realize how cool it is to learn a language and to be able to use it to communicate.

Tomorrow's the last day of class before the weekend!