TEFLees in Spain

Our students trust us.

Our students depend on us to tell them the mistakes on their CV and how to proposition their blind date and how to ask for a medium rare steak.

So when new TEFLees come every month to be their brand new teacher, it is difficult for them to adjust. This proves to be discouraging for incoming teachers at times. It is especially true of upper-intermediate students that they have a strong tendency to doubt.

When a TEFLee explains a complex grammatical structure, upper-intermediate to advanced students are not likely to believe him. They are likely to turn around and ask one of us (the instructors grading the class) “Is this true?” as if they are watching a mockumentary or are on candid camera. They are also likely to turn around in the middle of the class and look at us and roll their eyes, as if we are collectively making fun of the new TEFLee and are exasperated together by them.

This offends new teachers sometimes, who are not used to having their credibility questioned on a language in which they consider themselves fluent.

During these moments, it’s important to remember that trust is earned, especially in a forum which requires it so completely. Because students have no other reference, they need to test out their new sources of information to make sure that they can walk on the ice confidently without it cracking under their feet one day.

And in the meantime, just keep being right.

Today is a gorgeous sunny day in Madrid. As I chat with TEFLees from the UK, I feel smug about our good weather, as if it is a personal accomplishment of mine during my office admin time. Like blogging and creating facebook networks and soaking in gossip and offering unsolicited advice and secretly giving away chocolate was has been gifted to the office, bragging about our fabulous climate has become an unwritten task of my job.

They (the unnamed smart people who we so often plagiarize) say that sunlight makes you less depressed. I don’t know if it’s necessarily the vitamin D I’m soaking up from the sunshine or the terrace drinking culture of Springtime in Madrid, but I do know that all of the TEFLees’ spirits — and mine — have been high the last few weeks.

The Spanish are attracted to the streets. The first ray of sun streaked through the clouds, and suddenly there were tables of beer and sangria on every corner. And, as is appropriate, people flocked to them.

My other favorite thing about Spring is Semana Santa. I love that Madrid closes down for a week… and it’s certainly great for the teachers. It’s been fun listening to all of our TEFLees talk about the places they are going and the things they are doing. Cheap bus trips to the coast, 15 euro hostels, easyjet to Paris, walking tours of the Camino de Santiago in the north, Geneva, Prague, off to a mountain village of Madrid.

Spring is a time for new beginnings. For travel, for resolutions, for lighter jackets and white sandals. And apparently, a time for calling the course administrator at the TEFL school of your choice to complain about British weather, so she remembers to relish her own:).

This recently happened to one of our TEFLites, Kate, in her business English class:

Scene: 9:25 am, the end of class. Marcos and Isabel, both in their mid-twenties, are the only two students today. Marcos is wearing a t-shirt that says, “I’m not losing my hair, I’m getting more head.”

Kate: Ok, we have a couple minutes left, so let’s talk about Marcos’ shirt. Marcos, could you tell me what it means?
Marcos: (looking at her like, ‘aren’t you the English speaker here?’) Um, i guess it means that my hair is suiciding [sic], and because of that my head is getting bigger. Like i have more head now, right?
Kate: Right, that’s the literal sense, but it also means something else. Do you guys know what a double entendre is?
Isabel: Yeah, when a word has two meanings.
Kate: Right. So the phrase “getting more head” is a double entendre in English. What do you think it means?
Isabel: I don’t know, maybe that he’s losing his hair but he’s getting smarter? Like, more head means smarter.
Kate: Um, no. Ok. “Getting head” in English is slang for having oral sex.
Marcos: Wait, what?
Isabel: (laughing)
Kate: So when it says “I’m not losing my hair, I’m getting more head”, it means that even though you’re going bald you’re having more sex.
Marcos: (shrugs) Well, it’s the truth.

The office is very strange today.

It is strange partially because it is Natasha’s first day of official pregnancy leave. She is now at home incubating baby Jack.

It is also weird because we built teeny tiny rooms into the reception area of TtMadrid.In my mind, they were going to look similar to phone booths, and I wanted them to be red, which i think would be appropriate for an English school. However, if the lack of enthusiasm from other employees was any indication, it was doomed to be significantly less exciting than I had anticipated.

But I like that we’ve built teeny tiny rooms. TEFLees make a lot of noise when in one conglomerate space, and maybe dividing them into smaller portions will make them quieter. In other words, maybe they’ll be less inclined to yell across the room at each other if they can’t see each other. After spending 4 weeks in one place with the same people, TEFLees’ brains often start to turn to mush and they — like children under 18 months — cannot be expected to grasp object permanence.

Or maybe the mini-spaces will provide more ares for TEFLees to tell us secrets. Senida and I are both a bit overwhelmed by the personal information we’ve gotten lately — which is surprising since I don’t think either one of us are particularly empathetic people. I certainly wouldn’t choose us to confide to.

Another option which is consistent with our office’s habits is that we will use the stalls to hide food or stationary. We have an impressive amount of both hiding in our office. In case of hurricane or Basque seizure, we could eat and do coursework in our school for years.

I suppose the administrative reasoning behind this is more practical (and debatably less interesting). We have experienced and expect to experience substantial growth at work, and we need more rooms for classes, TEFLees, students, and employees.

When all else fails, we can build Jack a playpen in there maybe.

I love to travel.

I love airports.

I love layovers and stewardesses and suitcases and new stamps in my passport.  I love duty-free vodka and packaged sandwiches and earphones that only work on planes because they have two prongy things.

I enjoy making friends with the beautiful Danish men who may sit next to me and giving directions to confused people and pulling pretend-looking money from ATMs.  I like watching people hug and cry and yell in foreign languages and making up stories about them in my head.

Most of all, I appreciate the stage of transition.  I thrive in-between.  I relish being missing-in-action — not being in a particular place or with certain people or with any responsibilities.  Maybe traveling is special to me because I can’t — and I’m not expected to — accomplish much more than arriving at point B.   This is almost mandatory space to reflect and anticipate.  Cushion.  Buffer.

Time to think about my life and my plans and my friends and my TEFLees.  Time to think back on all that has changed — and all that has stayed the same — since my last introspective airport terminal appointment.  Time to appreciate how lucky I am to be on the way to my destination or on the way from my origin.  Time to hide in a hole with gobs of other people just like me.

That’s life in Spain to me.  The big standstill transition where I am allowed to relax, spend too much money, meet strangers, and think.  Life in Madrid is my layover that gives me time off the record to enjoy the journey.

Anyone who has done a TEFL course as intensive as ours knows the feeling of four walls getting closer and closer together as the course goes on. Virtually living with the same people for four consecutive weeks while challenging your cognitive abilities with symbols that you don’t recognize (but friendly tutors tell you are the core of pronouncing your own language) can stretch the limits of even the most patient soul.
I (and all of my friends) don’t find myself particularly patient, and I go through this process with new batches of people every month. I like to think of it as personal growth training. However, it must be said that through the course of the month, special relationships are built. Like fungi, the oddest people will grow on you until you don’t even recognize them as foreign or toxic existences.

At the end of the course, I think all TEFLees are surprised by the odd restlessness that comes along with liberation from the course. While graduation night is a triumphant (albeit incestuous on occasion) celebration of deliverance, the consistent behavior in the week that follows speaks louder than the actions of one night.

They always miss us. Or maybe it isn’t us. Maybe it’s this building, or maybe it is each other, or maybe it’s the free tea and coffee or the odd magnets of Asian people on our fridge. Or maybe, against all odds, Natasha and Temura have succeeded in making this place a nest to return to when the flight gets a bit long. Along with the resources and work advice provided in that crucial first week, I can’t help but assume that constant flow of graduates in the office come at least in part for the community.

This month has been unique not in that the TEFLees have missed us, but in that I have missed them. After a while, I start to take for granted that every month I meet adventurous diverse people who are willing to move to a foreign country, learn a new language, and wander away from everything they know. I forget to feel lucky that I get to be the first contact to people on the first step of an adventure.

For whatever reason, that jaded cynicism didn’t happen this month. Last week was the final week with a ridiculously energetic (and at times obnoxiously positive) course that I loved spending my month with. Today, being surrounded by new teachers who have more classes offered to them than they know how to sort through, I can’t believe I get paid to adopt TEFLees.

Living in Spain has a spring break quality for young Americans teaching English in Madrid.  The cheap and generous portions of alcohol, the communal living quarters, the constant opportunity to party, the excellent weather and beautiful people.  And, most importantly, what happens in Spain stays in Spain.

Reality overrides the vacation feeling sometimes.  We learn that no one in the city proper seems to feel obligated to pick up after their dog.  We learn that it does, in fact, rain in Spain – and not only on the plains (though still little enough to love our sunny city).  We learn that we cannot complain about the rain to your classes because they will lecture us on being grateful that we are not in a drought.

But overall, we can’t shake the aura of good times, sunshine, and summertime – all year round.  Maybe that’s why TEFL graduation parties can be so ridiculous.  After all, the TEFL is intensive by definition.  Letting off steam is to be expected.

And like spring break, TEFL graduations precipitate stories… and laughter… and gossip… and… maybe a little bit of embarrassment.  And maybe the important thing to remember is that laughing at ourselves is what makes us a success in a foreign country.  Our failures and embarrassments are what make us human, what make us vulnerable and approachable and loveable.

Laughing at yourself as you make mistakes in the Spanish language is what prevents you from giving up entirely.  Laughing at yourself making a mistake in class is what gives you the strength to keep teaching.  Laughing at yourself when you step in canine droppings is what stops you from going home to change and being late to work.  And laughing at yourself in life out of your natural habitat is what helps you love Madrid for all it is.

And as the rain washes the dog feces from the sidewalk in front of the entrance to our building, we begin again.  A fresh start.  Which is why we came here.

Learning to live in Spain is an adventure.

Adventure is such a positive word. It makes you think of Tarzan and James Bond and Christopher Columbus and Toby McGuire. But we forget… we forget that for an adventure to be an adventure, we also need Captain Hook and Kryptonite and Valdemort and the Big Bad Wolf. Overcoming obstacles, getting over the struggle, and remaining noble in the face of adversity are all requisite for hero status.

Spaniards often criticize the Anglo-Saxon tendency to live for work. And this is probably a valid argument, although we counter it with our own critique of Latin work ethic. If you aren’t careful, it is easy to pull yourself out of the culture you live in and see it all for all that it isn’t.

For example, the banks in Spain are open from 8.15 to 2pm. I am not sure what these people do in the afternoon. I do not know why no one else is angry about this. I have a sneaking suspicion that all bank managers spontaneously convert to pumpkins at 2pm and don’t want anyone to be the wiser.

Whatever the reason, I needed to go to the bank at 8.15 in the morning on the way to work (which isn’t actually on the way) to claim and collect my bank cards which the bank is apparently unable to post to my physical address.

I waited by myself in front of the bank, just my ipod and me. Twenty minutes later, I was starting to get concerned, as it was still just Eminem and me. Twenty MORE minutes later a very well-dressed, relaxed Spanish man greeted me good morning and explained that Yolanda, who usually opens this branch (of the nationally recognized bank, situated in the middle of a city with 4 million inhabitants) was on vacation, so no one was able to be there until 8.40.

I took this in stride. I explained to him that I just needed my bank cards. Unfortunately, the safe takes 20 minutes to open. As I was already late to work, this was not an acceptable option. I was just about to leave peacefully when he advised me that it was just silly for me to open an account so far from my place of work. I took this very personally. This was my very own Gollum, withholding my precious ring.

I turned my very sleepy not-yet-caffeinated self around and told him in my very best pretend grown up Spanish that in some countries, you can do business in any branch of the bank where you open an account. That in some countries, customer service is important and things open when they say they will. That in some countries, businesses stayed open for reasonable amounts of time and they were convenient for everyone to go to. I told him that it was better not to have a bank account than to have my money and bank cards trapped in an un-openable box in an un-openable bank with a national bank that cannot function when someone goes on holiday.

I stormed my Anglo-saxon self out of that bank and onto a bus. When I got to work, I opened an email from my sister. She was stuck at work. Someone was on vacation, and she had to cover. She hadn’t seen her husband in ages, because someone was sick at his work as well. But, of course, they couldn’t just shut down!

The longer I sat in front of that email, the more I started doubting the American emphasis on work… how we arrange our lives around it, define ourselves as parties by it, subject our families and friends to its schedule. And then, I was glad that the bank manager’s sister would never have to read an email like the one that I was reading. And even though I desperately wished I had a bank card…the glass really is half full. I do love living in Spain, because here in Spain, we work to live.

The Spanish always find a reason to celebrate.  Yes, Americans do dress up as everything other the sun to (against all reason) ask for candy from strangers on October 31st, but the Spanish insist on November 1st being a national holiday.  It’s just too convenient. 

The beautiful thing about Spanish holidays is the phenomenon we call “puente.”  If a holiday falls on a Tuesday, the Monday is a write-off.  If a holiday falls on a Thursday (which it always seems to…), then of course, a four-day weekend is declared. 

Although I am fairly certain that this relaxed mañana attitude is huge part of why we love the Iberian Peninsula, we definitely criticize it when it affects us negatively (in line at the bank, in line at the supermarket, in line for the bus…. in any line, actually).  We laugh about the disproportionate amount of liquor in our copas and shake our heads at the two-hour lunch.  But maybe, unconsciously, we are slowly synchronizing with the dawdling pace.

So last night, in honor respecting Spanish culture, I fulfilled my civic duty by going to a Spanish bar with some of my August TEFLites.  And there we discovered Madrid’s best kept secret… the 60 cent caña.  (I am not disclosing the location of this bar, because it was hard enough last night to get a table)  For 60 cents, it would have been rude to leave after one… or two… or three. 

So we bought each other rounds.  We toasted to the cheap beer, and to the 2-month anniversary of their course graduation, and to the new TEFLees (whom I adore, but whom no one else at the table actually knew), and to the return of Meaghan, who went back to Canada for a while after the August TEFL ended. 

And then, with no warning, I think we toasted to the random holiday that probably none of us completely understood, just searching for a reason to celebrate.  Maybe we laugh at the leisurely pace of Spaniards to distance ourselves from a truth we are afraid to admit: After a short time of heavy exposure, we’re all a little Spanish on the inside.

Teaching English in Madrid is perfect for very social people.  The demand here is mostly for business English, and a majority of the companies who can afford to pay for English classes choose to do so for their higher level employees.  Because classes so often happen early in the morning or during lunch, many students would rather sleep or eat than slave away at phrasal verbs. 

However, this phenomenon means that teachers in Madrid often end up with one-to-one classes.  This private environment with a high level executive with a good grasp of English who wants to improve conversational skills for business trips often leads to what feels like Spanglish counseling.  And those writing English teaching material seem to know this.

Shannon, a beautiful TEFLite who did our course last summer, recently used a handout from the internet that contained the following exercise in order to demonstrate “how to give advice”:

Dear Aunt Jennifer,
I’ve recently started taking lessons with a
beautiful English teacher. She’s 28,
single and has a wonderful smile. I’m in
love with her, but I’m only 18, and I have
really bad spots. I also have no
confidence. Should I tell her how I feel?
From Shy in Seoul

Dear Shy in Seoul,
No - you shouldn’t date your teacher,
even if she is beautiful. It’s an awful
idea. English teachers are poor and
they drink too much. They also go back
home after 18 months. Why not wait for
your spots to go? You might meet
someone much better.

For Shannon, who is in fact a beautiful single English teacher in her twenties with a wonderful smile, I can see this being an opportune moment to receive a declaration of love from a student. 

But the fact is, our students do tell us incredibly inappropriate things that they shouldn’t.  They tell us they are planning to fire their personal assistants, that they think their husbands care too much about their jobs, that they hate their co-worker who will be in your following class, that their company doesn’t pay taxes on their internationally exported contacts because they package them as letters, that they are planning to call in sick to get a long weekend, that they stay in the office pretending to work in order to avoid riding with their spouses who are horrendous drivers,  that they have not yet come out as gay to their conservative families, that they hate certain racial/ethnic/religious groups, that they think women are useless in the workplace, and that they had a fabulous blind date at the weekend.  (Just examples of course :))

Maybe it’s because we are some of the very few people they know who are disconnected from everyone else in their lives.  Maybe it’s because it doesn’t seem to count in a foreign language.  Or who knows – maybe it’s because they just share inappropriate overly personal information with everyone in their lives and we are just a little drop in the big bucket.  Introspectively, I know that I over-inform my Spanish teacher as well… for a little bit of all three of the reasons listed above. 

As much as you learn on a TEFL course, nothing can really prepare you for very important strangers telling you very random information.  But with the relationships we build and the contacts we make, we benefit:  we get employee passes to Hugo Boss sales, we get job offers from HR managers of international corporations, we find out which bus is the fastest way to get to the park and how to swear in Spanish and where to go for the perfect mojito in Lavapies. 

The give and take of teaching English is a unique balance… it is strange and fabulous and quirky.  Just like English teachers.