No Imaginative Title

...can´t think of a vaguely interesting title today so you´ve got that one!

All is still going well in now-not-so-sunny-Spain... the past few days have been FREEZING and as we´re still too stingy to pay for heating, but have the keep the windows open abit because of the damp, I feel just like being back in our lovely student house! I´m sleeping with a hoody and thick socks on at the moment, but I think I´m going to talk to Mélanie my flatmate about putting it on in the evenings!

I went shopping in Santander last weekend with my friend Hannah which was fun, I bought a BEAUTIFUL new pair of shoes, I´m not exaggerating, everyone is and will be extremely jealous of me. Then we watched the rugby which was funny. I am fairly sure that there was only one pub in the whole city showing it, so crammed inside was everysinge English speaker in the city! We got there late and so had to watch the first half from outside the window! Then we got inside for the second half and it was good fun, a good atmosphere! Good match, shame we lost though.

This week´s lessons are all going well so far, thery´re having a few exams this week so I get a few hours off! Hee hee. The students are all good fun, I really enjoy being here, sometimes it´s frustrating that I can´t take over and actually be the teacher, sometimes I don´t think they are strict enough! lol, I wonder if I would be one of those really aweful teachers that the kids hate because they are so strict? I don´t think so, I´m too daft. They always laugh at me here because I act things out when they don´t understand. Last week I had to take certain poses so that they had to guess what I was feeling, or what message was being sent. For example I stood rolling my eyes with my arms folded and tapping my foot... they thought it was funny.

There´s not alot else going on here, but I do want to write something about the TV program I saw part of last night. I don´t know what it was called, but it was about the trafficking of girls into the sex trade. Many were being intervied about their horrendous experiences. Mélanie said that they don´t have any information on this in France because it´s too much of a ´tabboo´subject. I´m not going to start slagging off the French, but that, and the program made me feel sick. Once again I feel totally helpless. I was sitting on my bed, in my nice little flat, in this nice little town, I have a nice little job, and a nice little family. The effect of this is two fold on me. I feel overwhelmingly grateful for all the things that I do have. I know I take my life for granted far too often, and last night I was reminded again, forcibly of the things that I do have.

Of course, the flip side to this is a pure disgust and anger at the world that I am a part of. There is nothing I can do right now for those girls though every fibre of my being wants to go and take them all out of the horrific nightmares they are forced to live and give them a new life, and hope, and love. Because I know that there is more, that there is hope. I am angry at the people who have become so monstruous as to buy and sell humanity, I feel compassion for them because they too must be severely damaged to be able to do the things they do. I feel anger. I felt sick watching a young pretty Romanian girl crying as she recounted how she was treated.

Bought.

She was owned by someone else. Nobody should EVER be "owned" by another human being. It´s atrocious. Her life will never be the same again. She has deep, deep wounds and I can´t help but wonder if they will ever be healed.

I prayed last night. I prayed for God to use me to make this right. To bring justice. I know that the pain that I feel is a tiny fraction of the anguish God suffers when he sees all his children being treated so abominably. I know that he needs people to DO something. He needs people to do more than nod and smile sympathetically and say "yes, I know, isn´t it terrible what´s happening in some other part of the world". He needs us to take a good look at ourselves, to stop being so addicted to our own spheres, our own lives and our own selfishness and he needs us to do something.

That something, for me, I don´t know what it is yet. I don´t know what I can do from Spain. I feel trapped here, but I know that I can and will do something. I pray that one day every single human being on this planet will know that they are loved. Will know that they are not alone. Will know that they are valued, and needed and respected. I pray this knowing that there is God who can hear me, and I pray this knowing that I am also guilty of not loving other people, not respecting other people, not treating other people with the dignity they deserve.

As I was falling asleep last night I wrote a poem about a girl who believed she was being taken abroad to a better life, only to find out that she had been sold as a prostitute. I shouldn´t write things in my head as I fall asleep because now I don´t remember it. But I wrote it all the same. Maybe it will come back to me at some point.

I hope that this hasn´t bored you, and if it has then I hope it was because of my bad writing and not the subject. I can´t think of anything that makes me more angry than this and I hope that you can feel that with me, and help me to do something.

Thanks for listening (reading).

Until next time from Spain.
x