In Love...

I work as a Conversational English Assistant at the elementary school of Almorox. I teach children from 1st to 6th grade. Today, we went on a field trip to Madrid where we were quite busy! We saw "Notre Dame" on theater, the "Deep Sea" on IMax, and walked through an interactive zoo. It was very cool!

However, a very interesting development happened during the trip. While standing around waiting to get into the theater, one little and very hyperactive girl came running up to me, looked me right in the eyes and said (in broken but very good English), "Salvador loves Melissa!"

I just stared at her in shock. I definitely wasn't expecting that one! And the first thing that popped into my mind was : "Who's Salvador?"

She pointed, giggled and ran off. "Uhhhh... Thanks??"

I looked at where she pointed and saw this 9 year old skinny kid. I never really noticed him before though that's not a surprise since this was my first time working with this 6th grade class. He looked at me and quickly looked away embarrassed. After that, I started noticing how he sort of was always looking at me. And any time I happened to look his way, he would quickly dart his eyes away. (Guess he's shy!)

Also, you could tell he really wanted to talk to me. However, he couldn't because: "I don't speak Spanish. No Español." All the teachers had agreed that I should only speak English to the children. That way, if they wanted to talk to me, they would have to use their English skills. (This actually works because kids really want to talk to me!) However, the girls seem to be more willing to try English than the boys, so I always have a group of girls around me.

When a group of girls were talking to me, I saw Salvador just outside the group. He was kinda trying to act like he wasn't listening yet you could see him leaning towards the group, listening, with a deep look of concentration on his face. And sometimes you could tell that he wanted and may have even tried to join in. But he just... couldn't. Then he would stare at me with this helpless and hopeless look (thank goodness for peripheral vision!) because he really wanted to talk to me. When I looked his way to try to bring him into the conversation, he quickly looked away and ran off. This kept happening over and over during the whole trip! Isn't that cute??

C'est l'amour! ;-)