"The Happiest Are Those Who Do For Others" - My English Teaching Experience in San Carlos

"Happiness doesn’t result from what we get, but from what we give." - Ben Carson

Like many others, I arrived at Spanish Adventure with one main goal - to become as fluent as I can in Spanish in a short time period. My expectations were exceeded with the number of amazing experiences, friends, and lessons that I received here. Without a doubt one of the best decisions in my travels to arrive here - but we’ll get to that later :) What I did not expect was the joy and fulfillment I would receive from teaching English as a volunteer.

As an English volunteer, I gave lessons to San Carlos locals every Monday (along with Lily, another volunteer). At first, we didn’t know what to expect or how it would work. I remember the first time entering the class, and as much experience as I had with teaching and public speaking in the Israeli Army, I still felt a little nervous.

First English class with the locals in San Carlos

After the first five minutes, I was enchanted. The locals were so cooperative, wanted to learn English so much, and were super attentive to every single word that came out of our mouth. Lily and I worked with amazing presentations that the English coordinator here built (Shoutout to Halden! You rock) and ran with them for the whole lesson.

The week after that, even more locals arrived. I was so impressed by how much this was important to them, and that even after a long day at work or school (the people that arrived were all ages), they were still eager to learn and speak English.

English class, its time to learn :)

The last lesson that Lily and I had, we got a little emotional - the locals that were with us for all of the classes made huge progress. We felt so significant and impactful in such a short amount of time. At the end of the last lesson, we opened a WhatsApp group with the locals and promised them we would continue talking English, and that they could ask us questions whenever they wanted to.

Happiness and gratefulness

I am so grateful for this experience. I feel that I came to "take" something from this place (a new language and new experiences), and I ended up giving back.

The look on a Colombian 10 year old’s face when he answers a question successfully in English - there’s really nothing else like it. If you know English and you have a love for teaching - I couldn’t recommend this more.

"Happiness doesn’t result from what we get, but from what we give." Thanks to Spanish Adventure, I understood this quote completely.

Thank you a hundred times!