Just a few days after everyone was settling into the first week or two of college, I was also in transition, heading back to Spain.
In my last week in England, I went camping with Naomi (the friend I was staying with), her best friend, Olivia, and her best friend´s boyfriend, Nathan. Naomi and Olivia knew of a random field about an hour out of London. Though they knew the location, they had no idea who owned it. We guessed it was a farmer´s fallow field, but who knows? We went hiking, played cards and scrabble, built a camp fire, and roasted marshmallows.
I told Jimmy that I had been accepted into a prestigious program in Spain but would be back in three months, and, to my utter shock, he told me that I would probably be able to have my job back when I returned.
Leaving was sad, especially saying goodbye to Naomi, Olivia, and Nathan. (And to my gruff but loveable employer.)
A two hour plane trip landed me in Madrid. I walked through the same terminal of the same airport where the Eurotrip began, and I really felt the deja vu and nostalgia.
I´m tutoring English again, but with a program behind me, as well as valuable experience from tutoring in Santander. The kids here are much younger than in Santander, three and five years old, so the "textbooks" I bought are heavy on songs and coloring in, which makes the teaching easier.
What´s more, I don´t have any responsibility to babysit the kids, and the fact that I can concentrate on teaching makes it easier for me to play that role and that role alone during lessons, and for the kids to see me as the teacher. They even call me "Professor"! The days up until 5pm and after 8pm are mine.
I hope to get a job in the mornings and afternoons, probably in Madrid, which by bus is 20 minutes away from Majadohanda, where I live. I can work in a shop or restaurant, or I can teach English. I´d prefer to go the shop/restaurant route, so that I will be speaking in Spanish, but I may end up teaching a lot of English. An ad I put up on Craigslist for English lessons received a response from a dude who wants a tutor, and I´m meeting him tomorrow. And an English teaching center I visited to buy books offered me the possibility of a job. And a guy I met in Santander who works for a competing English teaching center has also said he may be able to get me a job. It would be really cool to be a waiter, charming tables in Spanish, but teaching has its plusses too. I´ll see how things go, take the teaching jobs that come while I ask around restaurants and shops.
By the way, I´m back to the old Spanish number: 011 34 693 254 667.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
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2 comments:
I'm a fan of the "I'm all abute Toronto" option on the quiz.
I'm not of fan of your posts mysteriously disappearing?
I just KNEW you would personally be a fan of that. it´s a very you joke.
The post mysterously dissapeared because it was, on second look, a little xenophobic. (i was sort of making fun of bad english.) but it turns out to have been part of a scam, so i am going to take the piss out of those emails in my next post.
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