Teachable Moment: Metro Edition

This past week, half of the Honors Language and Culture group was heading to the Reina Sofía museum to learn more about modern art. We had just seen some classical art the day before and were excited to compare and contrast the styles of art displayed in two different museums.

With our heads full of Picasso and Dalí, we boarded the metro not expecting the learning to start until we arrived at the museum. The universe had other plans! We encountered two of the cutest, most relaxed little puppies waiting to get on our train! Their owner invited us over to "saludar" and meet the dogs. We quickly learned that the kind woman who introduced us to the "cachorros de labrador" wasn't their owner, but rather a foster mother who had adopted the dogs for the first year of their lives until they turned one and went to an intensive six month training program to become seeing eye dogs. We learned that it is important for the trainee dogs to go everywhere with the foster parent in order to get used to people and commotion. Us meeting and petting the dogs was actually important in their training! 

One of the best things about learning Spanish in Spain is that learning doesn't take place just in the classroom, or even just in our organized activies and community conversations. In the little moments, when you are least expecting it, you can learn the most incredible things!