Looking back, this has been kind of a busy week even though we had a day off from school. I started my volunteering on Wednesday - I am volunteering at a hospital with an organization called Solidarios. Essentially, we just go to talk to the patients, particularly those who do not have any family members visiting. It is a really good thing and I am so excited to work with this organization. I had a pretty hard time of it at my first day. I am still lacking a lot of confidence in my conversation skills, so I really did a lot of standing and listening. The people I work with are so nice and understanding that I am not very strong in my Spanish, although I think they think i understand less than I actually do. It is a bit frustrating, but they are such good people and I think I can learn a lot from them. At the moment, it's looking like this volunteering experience is going to have to help me a bit first before I can help it. Hopefully I will feel a bit more comfortable next time. I was uncomfortable this week, really uncomfortable. But I am definitely sticking it out.
Yesterday, my interest group (kind of like a club) took us to Gibraltar! It was probably the only time I will have any reason to go to Gibraltar, but it was very interesting and quite a sight to see. Gibraltar is a British-owned territory of about 28,000 all situated on, literally, one mountain-sized rock. Since it is British, English is largely spoken there - it was kind of a nice break from Spanish. We even had a presentation in English, so I am pretty sure that for once I got all my facts right! After the presentation and a stop for fish and chips, and pastries (duh), the group went to figure out a way to climb that mountain of rock and see the infamous Gibraltarian monkeys (...I don't know how infamous they actually are, but I had definitely never heard of them before yesterday). The cheapest means we found were two men driving white vans who eventually convinced us that they were real tour guides and that the rate of 20 euro/person that they offered was our best shot (both of which were actually true, so it ended up working out really well!). Both drivers were really nice and funny and drove us up the winding roads along the mountain, giving us some history and pointing out the best places to stop and take in the sights. We stopped at the pillar of Hercules, from which you can see Africa (only 14 miles away!), where there is an identical pillar. We also went to some incredible caves (I took some pictures in these ones!) and some tunnels from back when Gibraltar was under siege. Or something. All of which was very cool. We ran into our first monkeys outside the caves (see photo below for a chronicle of how enjoyable THAT experience was. Just kidding, it was pretty cool.) It was good to have our tour guides with us for this experience, because it turns out there is a lot more to those little monkeys than meets the eye. The guides advised us to leave all plastic bags in the van, or else the monkeys would see them and get aggressive, knowing that they probably contained food. The older monkeys are also known to get jealous when humans pay attention to the little ones, and the guides knew exactly how to keep the older ones from attacking (thank god!). The monkeys were pretty nuts - they were climbing all over the vans, and we even saw one that had a bloody nose from a fight! That species is not for the faint of heart. As we went up and up and the mountain, we saw some incredible views too. I got some pictures, but I really don't think I was able to truly capture how awesome it was. After that experience, we left and headed back to the bus. Luckily it didn't rain all day, even though it was supposed to! It was a really fun, albeit random, place to travel to.
Today, I went to the contemporary art museum - that was an experience for sure. To be perfectly honest, I really did not get most of the art that was there. I liked the photography though. A lot of it actually had American captions and took place on American backdrops, with signs and things in the background all written in English. The museum was very much out in the middle of nowhere in an old monastery, but it was a nice thing to do on a Saturday afternoon!
Up next...Hmm, I don't know. Guess you'll just have to check again soon! Thanks for reading :)
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