This is a picture of Martina, the little six-year-old girl whose au pair I was when I lived abroad in Spain during the year I took off between high school and college. This was one of the most important times in my life (as of yet), so any picture from that time speaks to me and fills me with a plethora of memories of the several months I spent as part of this little girl’s family. The story behind this particular photograph is that I was taking pictures of the house I was staying in so as to be able to remember it later (although now I wonder if pictures help me to remember or if they alter my memory – thanks to this class), and Martina absolutely loved photographs and being in them. She kept leaping into the frame as I was attempting to photograph her house. This behavior was indicative of her personality: her overall high-spirited energy, and her eagerness for my acceptance. You can just see her happiness and exuberance in her toothy smile. This photograph makes me smile every time I see it, and brings me back to a very remarkable time in my life, full of all sorts of strange and new experiences that challenged me in many ways. I’ll never forget the myriad of emotions this little girl made me feel. I also think it is interesting how there are other photographs captured in the background, black and white ones of famous actresses. Oddly enough, none of them are Hispanic, demonstrating the interest felt by this family for other cultures. Because they are a part of this photograph, somehow suddenly those other photographs apply to me in a way they never have before, simply because they were in a house where I lived, and in this photograph, and I find that kind of interesting.
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