Employment!

I guess the bumming around, living off my ever-dwindling savings and generally lazing had to come to an end sometime. And the start of the academic year in Madrid seems like an obvious time for it to happen.

It's been good to be here, experiencing the city and life in a foreign country properly for the first time, but reality sets in eventually, especially when I look at my bank balance. Plus, I'm really not good at doing nothing. No, really, I'm not. Stop laughing.

So work it is. Two interviews in the last week and it appears they were both succesful. For one of them, I start teaching at 8am next Monday morning (ouch!) - in a government dept (not sure which one). The company has a 3 year contract to teach English on site to various government offices all over Madrid, so I'm going to be teaching civil servants. Ironic, really. At least we'll have something in common. My first 2 students are "directors" - not quite clear what that means here other than presumably they're reasonably high up and slightly older. The woman who interviewed me said she thought that would be a good reason to send me because I'm "slightly more mature". Ouch. Backhanded compliments all round.

I'm excited and terrified at the same time. I guess this is the crunch. I find out if I'm actually a good teacher. At least I start from the position of thinking I probably am! Having been on training teams etc for a lot of years, and generally feeling pretty pleased with myself when I have trained/taught someone something, I feel I've got a good base. But can I teach English? We'll see. All I can do is my best, which I will.

The kicker is going to be getting up in the mornings, for the first time in 6 months. It's not like I've been in bed til 12 every day (OK, some days) but I also haven't actually had to set an alarm really for ages. From now on, Monday to Thursday, I'm going to have to be up around 6.45. I just checked online and sunrise here is around 8. Still, at least in the dark I might not look as trashed as I'll actually be! So there will be some early nights coming up, which will be very unusual. My body clock seems to have very happily swung onto Spanish time, and bed at 3 or 4 in the morning is pretty normal. Still, again, years of shiftwork mean I'm fairly flexible and reckon I'll deal with it OK.

The other company hope to have some classes to offer me in October sometime.

2 of my 3 private students want me back too, which is good and they've moved their lessons so that I teach both of them 2 evenings a week at their flat for 2 hours. I'm waiting to hear from the 3rd one as to whether or not he wants to continue. His work is pretty demanding so I think it's the timing that will be the issue.

So there we have it. I'll have an income again. Not a king's ransom but a good start.

Now - the third conditional. What's that again?

Language brain meltdown

My 3 days of Spanish classes are over. What did I learn? I learnt that it´s a long while since I tried to learn something!

Ana, the teacher, was great, very sweet, patient and extremely clear. There were only 2 of us in the class which meant it was very intensive (and intense!)

A lot of what we covered I kind of already knew, but only in a theoretical way that meant I could recognise it if I saw it written down, but wasn´t able to construct it from scratch.

Now I need to practice, practice, practice! I´ve been picking up every free Spanish paper I can find, and yesterday I bought El Pais. It took me a good couple of hours to read, and I was looking a lot of stuff up in the dictionary. But slowly, slowly it´s sinking in. I´m off to an intercambio tonight - same one I went to last Wednesday, but this week I´m determined to speak at least some Spanish!

I did manage to speak a little bit on Monday evening. I met up with Behram, another Vaughan dropout (!), in a great little bar near Sol. Within 10 minutes, a fellow student from his Spanish school had arrived, along with his mother. They were German so we spoke a mishmash of English, Spanish and German for a bit. Then Behram decided to talk to (I should really say chat up) the 2 girls sitting by us who were speaking Spanish but clearly weren´t natives. They turned out to be a German and a Polish girl, both somewhat the worse for several sangrias! Very friendly though, and for a couple of hours the 6 of us chatted in a bizarre combination of Spanish, English, German, Italian (the German guy´s mum spoke Italian, as does Behram) and some French! I think by the end of it we´d created a whole new language.

At midnight, Behram and I decided we needed pizza - obviously! Off we went to a tiny sidestreet with a little bar that did pizzas to share. Very tasty it was too. However, the evening - or should I say the morning - went a little downhill. First of all, an Indian guy had a pop at Behram basically for "not being Indian enough" or words to that effect. It clearly really got to him and as we were about to leave, he spotted a tiny mouse under the next table. Being the soppy, animal-friendly thing I am, and after a few too many beers, I went to pick it up. Far too easy. It was way too docile and I soon discovered that was because it had clearly been bitten just above one of its back legs. It was very weak and simply sat in my hand. I probably should have done the decent thing and put it out of its misery, but I simply couldn´t do it. I kept it with me, tucked it in my fleece pocket and got a cab home (at 4am after Behram and I had rather loudly sung a duet in the street!). Once in the house, I made it a little nest from a tupperware box, some kitchen roll and cotton wool. I put a tiny bottletop of water in the box, along with some bits of bread. I have to say that by this time it had rallied a little, was moving around and briefly looked interested in the food. Feeling quite optimistic, I went to brush my teeth, then went to check on it. Unfortunately, it was now an ex-mouse. Deceased. Ceased to be. Still, I like to think that I made its last few hours a little more bearable! I am such a sucker for anything small and furry (stop making up your own jokes).

Anyway, Easter weekend is nearly upon us. I have no plans! I move to my new place next Tuesday so I need to start sorting stuff out. But for now, I am free of any obligations and responsibilities. Better get on with practicing Spanish and STILL looking for a job!