When I was eight years old, I learned a valuable lesson, that I still use today: I learned that to solve a problem I have to stay calm. I learned this when my family and I went to Spain for my father’s friend’s 50th birthday. My father’s friend’s family, the Oleins, live in Spain during the summer and Miami for the rest of the year. Mr. Olein has a daughter, Mariana, who was eleven years old and able to speak English and Spanish fluently. Mr. Olein’s birthday party started with a nice lunch, and then the guests later went to the family’s winery for wine tasting. Mariana and I only went to the lunch portion of the party because of our age; so Mariana’s grandfather brought us back to the small town, dropping us off a couple of blocks away from her house. On the walk to her house, she introduced me to some of her friends, but we were not able to understand each other because of a language barrier. After spending time with her friends, we decided to take a nice walk to her house. We got to her house and knocked on the door, but no one answered. Mariana knew that her two younger brothers were inside with the nanny, but still, no one answered. We sat by the wall for thirty minutes, while periodically knocking as hard as we could. I could tell that Mariana was worried and confused as to why no one was answering the door, so I suggested that we go around the back and check if the door was open. We walked toward the backyard, but the gate was locked, so we tried to hop the fence. After falling numerous times, we started to look through the windows to see if we could get her brother’s attention but they were focused on a loud movie. After waiting around her house, Mariana decided that we should walk to her grandfather's house and ask him for help. We decided to take the scenic route through the park since her grandfather's house was a 45-minute walk. As we were walking through the park, a young group of kids started chasing us with water guns, completely drenching us with water. After escaping the kids from the park, we began to run toward Mariana’s grandfather's house. I could tell at the moment that Mariana was tired, thirsty, and mad at the group of kids and her brothers, we decided it was a good time to sit down until she was ready. When we finally got there her grandfather refused to open the door, so we waited in his backyard. He finally came out on the balcony of this room and started yelling quickly and loudly in Spanish at Mariana. Her grandfather went inside, and Mariana began to have a breakdown. I knew I had to stay calm and help her, but I had no idea what to say or do since I could not completely comprehend what had just occurred. I had no idea what he told her to make her cry or why he was not letting us in, but I knew we needed to get somewhere indoors. I had no idea what to say to comfort her, so I gave her a couple of water bottles that I found in the cooler under the deck. I remembered that before Mariana and I left the party, my parents gave me a phone in case of an emergency. I didn’t know how to use the phone, but I knew I had to tell them what was going on and ask for help. After about an hour of sitting in her grandfather’s backyard, I was able to figure out how to call my parents; however, I could not hear anything my parents were saying because of the poor service. Since I could not understand my parents, I began brainstorming places to get better service. That’s when it dawned on me that the hotel had a phone at the front desk where I could call my mom. I pulled Mariana off the ground and told her we needed to go back to my hotel. After sitting in Mariana’s grandfather’s backyard for two hours, Mariana finally stopped crying we got up and left for the hotel. Luckily Mariana knew where everything was in the small town, so we were able to get to the hotel. Once we entered the lobby of the hotel, I realized that I did not have a key. I told Mariana, and she was able to communicate with the person at the front desk and tell them everything that we had been through. I was able to call my parents who told the front desk to give us a key. We got a key to the room and ran up the stairs as fast as we could and opened the door to the room. As we were waiting for our parents to come back, we watched Men in Black in Spanish in the hotel room. Once Mariana stopped crying she explained to me that the nanny did not open the door because she thought we were the neighbors and that her grandfather was having lunch with a friend. I thought to myself about what I had just experienced and how I was proud of myself for staying calm and coming up with a solution under the tremendous amount of pressure. I was able to calm my friend down, come up with different ways to get inside and learn how to use a phone in a foreign country as an eight-year-old. Form this crazy situation I learned that if you let yourself get anxious or frenzied, similar to how Mariana reacted, you will not be able to create a logical solution. I use what I have learned from this experience to help remain calm before a test, during scary driving situations, receiving a poor grade, or before an important game.