I fell in love. With Pablo, age 4.

Oh I adore him. This was the first week of our "practicum" for the Teaching Development Program. We will each spend 4 hours per week in a classroom at the Irlandesas school, helping teach English. The first five weeks will be spent "observing." We hang out with the kids, take notes on how the teacher ("seño," short for "señorita") does things, help wherever we are needed, and just have fun. I go in two days per week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) for two hours each day (12-2pm). Tuesdays I am in María's class, who is just wonderful and sweet and energetic and fun. Thursdays I am in class with Mari-Carmen, who is sweet and organized and lovely and has endless patience with her crazy kids (I think she got the class full off the super-rambunctious ones). Each class has about 30 or so 4-year-old kids. They are all so lovely and sweet and fun and beautiful and energetic and smart and just amazing. And I don't want to play favorites. But......there's Pablo.

Let's start at the beginning. I went to the school on Tuesday to begin my first "shift." My class starts at noon, and from 11:30-12 the kids are outside at recess. So if I get there early, I just am supposed to go play with them. The "playground" at this school consists of a fenced-in area filled with yellow-y sand along with some primary-color-painted tires half-sticking-up out of the ground. Pretty much the kids just run around and yell and have fun. I walked in the first day and they weren't really sure what to think. At one point, this adorable little boy came up to me and started talking. He spoke very quietly and wouldn't really look at me. With all the noise in the play yard and his super-soft voice, I couldn't understand what he was asking so I kept asking him to repeat it. At one point I figured out he was asking how old I was. After a few minutes of me asking him to repeat himself, he walked away for a minute. At that point, his teacher came up to me and told me he was deaf. Well. That made much more sense. He's not completely deaf. He can hear you if you speak loudly, right into his ear. Which is how the other students talk to him when they want to.

Anyway, he just wouldn't give up! He came back over and just kind of stayed by my side until it was time to go back to class. He kept asking questions, I kept not knowing what he was saying. But he was just so cute I kept trying to understand. The kids loved playing in the sand. They would bring me handfuls, then put it on my leg...at one point, one of the boys showed me a stick he found. I started drawing in the sand with it and they wanted me to draw more things. Well, I'm not an artist. So a smiley face, a heart and a rainbow was about as creative as I got. Anyway, by the time we were done, my hands were filthy and my jeans were tinted yellow from the sand (thanks for doing my laundry, Angeles!)

So then, it was time to go to class. Pablo grabbed my hand as we walked up the stairs to the classroom. The kids all sat down in their chairs as María played some classical music to calm them down. When everyone was quiet and still, she turned the music off and they moved to the corner of the room and sat down in a circle. I joined them in the circle (amongst the sand covering the ground that they had dragged in) as we played some games, sang some songs, and learned some English vocab. All the while, Pablo was sitting right next to me. Every time we moved, he made sure he was right next to me. After all the lessons, it was time to play again. Each child gets to choose the area of the room they want to play in. María calls them one by one, and they tell her where they want to play. When Pablo's turn came around, he just said he wanted to play with me. Oh it just melted my heart. So we played with some play-doh.

Today I went to the second class. The kids were playing outside again (though I didn't get there as early as I was hoping to avoid the filthy, sandy pants again), so I joined them. This time, I knew a little better who some of the kids were. The kids I didn't recognize, I knew would be in my class today. Again, there was another little boy who kind of latched onto me. José Joaquin. Super-cute. He was quite talkative. Again, hard to understand with all the noise going on. And my lack of fluency in his language. But he was showing off his knowledge of English to me, naming all the colors he saw. I met a few of the other kids in my class, then it was time once again to go in. But not before Pablo found me. He came running up so excited and grabbed my hand and started talking. We walked upstairs and got to the door of his classroom. He would not let go of my hand. I told him that I was in the other class today. That I would be back in his class next week. But he wasn't letting go. He just kept holding on until his teacher pulled him away. I almost cried. Not really. (But really.)

Now, like I said, all the kids are incredible. There is a little girl named Claudia who is just beautiful and who would just come up and squeeze me as hard as she could and kiss my cheek. There is Daniel, who is perhaps the tiniest 4-year-old I have ever seen. He's so little! There is Sergio, who is a little trouble-maker. There is a little girl who will not speak to teachers. She speaks to other students, but won't talk to teachers. And there are 50-some other kids who are just fantastic and who I can't wait to get to know better and teach English to.

But still, there's Pablo. If I come back to the states in December claiming to have gotten pregnant and given birth to a 4-year-old deaf boy during my four months in Spain, it's because I couldn't bear to leave him and I brought him back with me. Just be warned.