Viva Albacete!

I spent 10 days in Albacete, Spain with my sister Ruth and my friend Amy and the time we spent together were some of my favorite memories from Europe so far. Amy and I arrived in Albacete at 4:00 in the morning last Wednesday and passed out in Ruth's bed as soon as we arrived. The next day, we slept in and accompanied Ruth to two of her English classes that evening. They asked us questions about Colorado and China, and we helped out with their exercise of that day "How much does the hat cost?", "Please put it on my credit card," and "Including tax, it comes to $56.78).

On Saturday, we went to Villarobledo (about an hour away from Albacete) with Ruth to visit her friends from last year. Despite a rocky start to the day (I thought we were supposed to meet at the bus station, but Ruth was at the train station), we had a fantastic day in the small, quaint town of Villarobledo. We met the twins that Ruth nannied for this summer, and we went over to her friend Jessi's house for lunch. Jessi is from Michigan and studied abroad during her junior year of college and never returned to the US, she just stayed in Spain. Now she is married to a Spanish guy and owns her own English academy. She kind of inspired me to potentially live abroad or even open a Chinese academy in the States. The pizza we had for lunch was delicious, I think we all ate until we thought we were going to explode.

In conclusion, Ruth is an amazing teacher and has so many friends in Spain. It seemed like everywhere we went, Ruth ran into one of her friends! Now granted, she lives in a small town, but still she has a lot of friends. Not only is she 100% fluent in Spanish, but she fits in with the community there. She is patient with everyone who wants to learn English and everyone loves her. Another English teacher at her school specially requested that she be able to stay at that school for a third year, so she might even get to stay there for another year! And I think she will stay if she has the opportunity! That is my Ruth update.