Pamplona Community Service

My adventure to Spain began June 28^th at 5 o’clock in the morning. I had spent the entire night before hastily packing in preparation for my month long excursion to Spain in EIL’s program Multicultural Spain Through Community Service. 12 hours later I was in Terminal 1 of the JFK International Airport meeting my group members, and then 17 hours later I had finally arrived in Madrid at 5 o’clock in the evening.

-Mickel wielding a stick!

Unfortunately, I’m now going to skip the initial part of the trip, but on this blog entry I want to focus on my most memorable part of the trip – my community service with Red Cross in Pamplona. Our group arrived in Pamplona about 2 and ½ weeks into the trip. We entered Pamplona having been told that we would be working / teaching / playing with children at Red Cross. It was essentially a day-care that allowed working or single parents to drop off their kids during work hours (8am-4pm). So, that Monday morning, the 20^th of July, I anxiously entered my assigned classroom. I actually was a little nervous. Danielle (a friend from my group) and I would have to man a classroom of about 15 Spanish-speaking 6-year-olds.

The first hour with the kids was to say the least ... uncomfortable. They were more interested in coloring than our arrival. Eventually, Danielle and I started playing some games we had prepared: “Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes,” hangman, Simon-Says. After these games, though, there was still some tension (or at least I felt) between the kids and us, so I just started to act like a 6-year-old, or to put it more frankly, I started to just act stupidly goofy. I tilted my head and gave the kids bug-eyed looks, made random noises, and made absurd Simon-says demands. By that afternoon, I was playing Cops and Robbers, Red Light – Green Light, Hide-And-Seek, and “Simon Dice” (the kid’s favorite). And although I probably looked silly, I was having a great time.

I now look back at that week as the most memorable part of the trip because I had entered Pamplona with doubts that I would be able to really connect with the kids. But when Friday came, I had to promise nearly everyone in my class that I would come back next summer before they “allowed” my to leave (they were grabbing my legs as a hostage).