Laurie at Methodist Church and Spanish Class Thing

April 11, 2023: Well today I frankly didn’t have a great start to the day. I randomly decided I’m not sure I want to be a translator because I want a social job. Like literally the only thing I want is to be able to make new friends at work. And like I have made new friends since the accident, but I’ve made them at Fogo. Well I had my meds at 5:46 today with some raisin bran cereal and oat milk. Then I went over to Methodist United Church a little bit early and just talked to this guy named George at first who showed me around. Then I actually did a fair amount of translating. Basically you just have to check the people in when they’re new clients. I admit that I didn’t really write down much of who I talked to or what I did. I talked to Louise a little bit at first, the one who I emailed. The cool thing was that I talked to this volunteer named Laurie who was a nurse and I and told her about the TBI. She said she usually worked at Alina and Abbott, where I told her that I was as well. I told her that because of the TBI my memory is bad and that this project helps it a lot. Then I ate a piece or two of pepperoni and vegetable pizza, which was my lunch. They just had some there, not sure where they got it. Laurie didn’t know what the name of the pizza was either. I also told Laurie that I’d like some kind of social job when I can find a different job. She’s retired now, like most of the people who I’ve met volunteering. I admit that after the volunteering I was feeling a little down just because of that, and feeling like I might not be ever able to work somewhere social again. I even wrote down, “I definitely will never be happy.” I even called Papa with that thought. Then I went home and worked on my Yearbook a bit and had the video visit with Dr. Bergquist. I had a good meeting with him. He told me to “challenge those negative thoughts.” He also said he’ll see me in about a month. I then I called mom about some stuff about tomorrow. Then what I did was I drove to my Spanish class. The Spanish class was actually really good. First I introduced myself and didn’t do a great job talking about how I learned Spanish and why I’m interested in it. Then we worked in groups, which was the best part of the class. First I worked with this girl who didn’t speak Spanish that well, and she even said something about it when the class was over. The instructor, whose name might have been Ayala, actually said in the middle of the class that she hates photos of herself, not even in response to me asking. So it’s funny, talking to her was clearly the best part of my day and don’t have a photo for it. Actually what happened was she told me that the next class was a conversation class, which I felt like would be a little closer to my level than the Spanish 3, which I frankly found a bit easy. So then I ended up staying for the Spanish conversation class as well. She told me that I could even though I hadn’t registered for it, though if I wanted to actually join I’d have to sign up. In that class I definitely introduced myself better than in the first one, actually saying that I'd dated the Ecuadorian to learn Spanish and I volunteer at a food shelf. Also in that class we played a game that I thought was really interesting. Basically it was picking up cubes out of a box and telling a story based on whatever you imagined them to mean. It’s a game that exists in English, we just did it in Spanish. It’s a cool game though, I was kinda thinking about getting it for Papa. Well the funny thing is that I left my notes at home, and am writing this part of it from memory. My mom said that doing it from memory is more a sign of more recovery, so there’s that. After the second Spanish class, I talked to the instructor a ton. She’s been a Spanish teacher at a different school for years and I’m not sure where she teaches now. It’s been like a high number of years though. And after the class, our good talk was sparked because she made some comment about me taking notes during the class, and at the end I told her that I actually wanted to tell her why I was taking notes. So I told her about the accident and the TBI, and I actually asked her how to express TBI in Spanish. She agreed that "daño cerebral" worked. She also suggested something else than I know I didn’t even write down, so notes won’t help. Oh and the other really cool thing was that she said that she had had a TBI too. Hers was also a car accident, though she was in a car, not walking like I was. And I told her about leaving Fogo and Lunds, and being on disability and worrying about money. Oh and I also told her about my experience with speaking Spanish with the nurse or therapist in the hospital when I was barely conscious, and that some doctors thought I only spoke Spanish. So, a good thing to tell your Spanish teacher.