As part of its philanthropic activities, the NBA (yes, that NBA) sponsors a program called NBA Cares that does community outreach, specifically aimed at youth. Apparently the program has an international dimension, and one thing it does is arrange basketball clinics taught by actual NBA players in public schools around the world. It seems one way they chose which schools the students would come from was through the bilingual program and their respective Teaching Assistants. I am still unclear as to exactly what happened, but the Fulbrighter at my school last year was involved in this program and some students from our school participated in one of these clinics. So this year, about 10 kids from my school were invited to the U.S. Embassy for a reception for the players that came to Madrid for this year's clinic. There were also students from one other school, the one which hosted the clinic this year and I believe received a new basketball court as a gift from the NBA (a school in an underprivileged area). Sorry if that explanation is confusing--as I said, I'm still not clear on the details myself.
I felt embarrassed because I don't follow basketball ("baloncesto"), college or NBA, and my knowledge of players is limited to Michael Jordan. When I got to the Embassy, I had no clue who the players were--I made an educated guess that they were the really tall guys on the receiving end of the receiving line. One of the men was later introduced as Spencer Haywood, a retired NBA legend who made a name for himself in the 70s with the Seattle Supersonics. When I looked him up afterwards, I found out how big he really was back in the day, with the E! True Hollywood Story-esque coda that he was actually kicked off of The Lakers for drug use and was married to Iman before she married David Bowie. . . Anyway, the other two players were actually Spaniards who currently play for the Toronto Raptors: Jose Calderon and Jorge Garbajosa (speaking in picture below). Again, I was clueless but the kids are crazy about these guys, and the girls (only a few were there) were swooning. It was very cute.
The reception was thus an odd mix of formally dressed diplomats and embassy officials, camera-toting press, and t-shirt-wearing 12 year olds. There were brief speeches in Spanish and English, by various Spanish and American officials, thanking the NBA and the players for coming, for promoting sportsmanship as a key to building healthy kids and communities, and for building positive relations between Spain and North America.
The picture at the left are the students from my school who were chosen to attend the reception (all boys, sigh). They are all in the bilingual program, and I have them all in class. It was the first time I'd seen them outside of the school environment, which was strange but fun. There was that moment of "they realize I exist outside of class and I get a glimpse into their non-academic lives". In this last picture on the right, I am standing in between the "Jefe de Estudios" of my school (basically the principle of the middle-school aged kids) and my friend Andrés, the Fulbright TA at the other school that participated in the clinic this year. 
Another opportunity like this happened a few weeks ago when I received an email from an embassy official asking if my school would be interested in having an astronaut come speak to the students. Last year, when Michael Lopez Alegria was based on the International Space Station, 5 bilingual program students at my school were chosen to go to the embassy and participate in a live satellite conference with him and his fellow astronauts. When it was known that he would be visiting Spain (he's American but his parents are Spanish and he was born in Madrid). the Embassy contacted me because of the school's participation last year. They thought it would be a nice full circle thing to have him meet the kids he spoke with from space. Of course we were interested, and after alot of back and forth with the Embassy, we arranged an assembly for the 2nd and 3rd year (equivalent to 8th and 9th grade) bilingual students (about 100 students, plus any teachers who were free that period:-)).
Michael was (I thought) very patient as kids flocked around him as we entered the auditorium asking if they could take pictures with him, which he usually obliged. Aside from that, he seemed like a very down to earth person (no pun intended:-)). He was obviously being shuffled from one place to another all day by the Embassy, this school visit being just one item on the day's itinerary, but he did not act annoyed or make us feel like this was something he was obliged to do. Education (and PR) is part of the job--go up in space, come down and talk about it, for the benefit of both the US and NASA. I think the rest of his trip to Spain he was able to do his own thing, only one day sacrificed to the diplomacy gods.
The presentation went really well. He talked about what it's like to be an astronaut and the goals of his most recent mission (study the effect of a zero-gravity environment on the body, fix broken parts of the space station), and he brought a dvd with footage from inside the ISS: we got to see how they eat, how they sleep, how they use the bathroom, how they exercise, etc. Lots of floating objects and flipping around. Teachers and students alike loved it. When he opened it up for questions, the group was shy, but there were a few brave souls (and curious teachers) who had some good ones. I had to sit on the stage with the Director of Studies, Michael, and the embassy official with whom I coordinated the visit (pictured below). I felt rather silly as I didn't say anything the entire time, but it was a nice gesture on the part of the Director. After the main assembly, the 5 kids who spoke to Michael in space got to come onstage and meet him personally (also pictured below).
There was certainly a blatant propaganda aspect to the whole thing, but that's the job of the Information Office of the Embassy. These kind of events represent an opportunity to create positive associations with the States among young people in Spain. They filmed some of the kids standing around Michael and had them all shout out the name of the Embassy's youth website, a clip which was posted online. They handed out mouse pads and key chains with this website on it as well; the staged, photo op aspect of the whole thing made me a bit uncomfortable but hey, the Fulbright program is part of that game too, so who am I to complain? And in the end the kids got to hear a real live astronaut whose experiences are fascinating and part of an international scientific effort. Cool.
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