Tutoring and Intercambios

On Monday I started my tutoring job. It was a lot of fun. The parents actually speak English, but it is kind of broken and they both have thick accents. They said they want their children to learn pure English. Works for me!  Every Monday I will be going to their house to tutor their two little girls who are 4 and 6 years old. They are energetic and have short attention spans, but I think we will have a lot of fun. I am excited to hang out with some Spanish kids. I kind of wish I was tutoring more often, but they also have an English class in school. Plus, my time seems to be filling up quickly.
Wednesday night I went to a bookstore with some friends to pick up a textbook I need for my grammar class. While we were there, we encountered a young Spanish man who spoke English quite well. He told me that I was the second native speaker he has ever talked to, so I asked him if he ever did "Intercambios" (a conversation table program through the university). He did one time, but was much more interested in setting up a time to meet with me and do our own "Intercambios" thing. Well, I wasn't planning on doing "Intercambios" really, so I kind of avoided the question and asked him where we could find Spanish Bibles. He told us he had no idea. The young people here don't go to church, as he informed us. I remember something about "you won't be able to find anyone under 60 at a church in Spain." Well, there are a few young people at Comunidad Cristiana, but I imagine he is generally correct. He asked us if we were into church and when we told him he were I thought it would be a deal breaker for him, but he still insisted on doing "Intercambios". I ended up giving him my name and phone number so we could plan a time to meet. Of course, I won't go without my roommate and I will meet him at a public place, but it should be very interesting. He seemed very genuine.
Yesterday I met with a Navigators missionary for lunch at her house. *I was SO excited we had Mexican!!!* What a great family. I learned SOO much just talking with her about Spain.  As you can imagine, we ended up talking a lot about religion in Spain, which is seen through a VERY different lens. You see, religion here equals Catholicism and Catholicism is equated with Franco (the old dictator of Spain who died in '75). Religion is not to be trusted. Church and state are not separate here, and religion has always been institutionalized. It has been a means of social order; not exactly about God Himself. This gives me a whole different perspective of the separation of church and state issue in the states. It is so different here and I am really enjoying learning all about it. It's amazing what you can learn in just a few weeks!

Friends, I hope you are all doing well. I love hearing updates on your lives too! Please, please, please feel free to send me a message or Skype me or anything :)