TEFLees in Spain

On the first day of TT’s TEFL class, we were given a valuable piece of advice: don’t work on Fridays. The aspect of a four day work week is something unheard of back in the States, so just the idea of it was enough to make me shift doubtfully in my desk. “You can work Fridays, of course, if you want,” Natasha informed us, “but no one else will be working of Fridays, and Thursday is the night where most people go out. So when all of your friends are enjoying their tapas, you’ll be getting ready for bed.” I for one would certainly hate to be left out…

So as soon as I started interviewing with agencies who knew I was still wet behind the ears, and who were also offering me nothing but classes that landed on Fridays, I had to make a decision. The angel on my left shoulder told me that not working on Fridays was a lazy thing to do. I could make a good extra chunk of change by taking these classes that would be great to put into savings for a rainy day. On the other shoulder, the devil was telling me differently. You came here to travel – having three day weekends will easily allow you to do this. Think about the places you’ll go! Think about how much faster the week will go by! You didn’t move to Europe to work like a madman – you came to explore, and you can’t explore without sufficient free time!

It seemed like a no brainer, but I didn’t make a decision either way at first. I had to make sure that all of my bills could be paid with more money to spare for travel expenses. So I did the math. Before coming, the kind people at TT informed me that most teachers work between 18-24 hours or so, at 15 Euros per hour as the absolute minimum. With rent coming in somewhere over 400, and my knowledge of Madrid’s crazy cheap grocery prices, I made the final decision – three day weekends, here I come!

Since then I’ve come to realize all the great things about my four day work week. First of all, it’s much more symmetrical. You get done with Monday’s classes, and you think, “Alright – first quarter is over!” Tuesday night comes around and you’re already halfway home, and then Wednesday comes – that dreary mid week day that I’ve never before looked forward to – and it’s like, “Bam!” tomorrow’s the last day of the work week. You know that fluttery excited feeling you get when you leave work on the Thursday night of a five day work week? When all you can think about is that tomorrow is Friday and therefore the weekend is so close you can smell it? That’s exactly how I feel on Wednesday now- they’ve become the new Thursday. Time already flies by enough when you’re staying busy with teaching, but add in this factor and your weeks become a blur until the weekends, when I swear time seems to just kind of crawl along like a senile Spaniard on the sidewalk. It’s awesome.