TEFLees in Spain

As I’ve mentioned before, there’s one student in my first class of the week who always makes my case of the Mondays melt into the nostalgic remembrances of the weekend past. Today for instance, while the rest of the class and I sat groggy-eyed and yawning during a discussion of our childhood memories, Rafa with his coffee was wired with wit and ready to go.

We’d just finished talking about childhood games when I asked, “Well, are there any games that you still play now?”

“Nintendo Wii,” answered the woman to my right.

“Football,” replied the marketing director.

“Doctor!” blurted Rafa, at left. The class then erupted into hysterics and instead of rubbing the sleep from our drooping eye lids, we were now wiping away tears of laughter. But he didn’t stop there. In the same way that a stand up comedian waits for the giggles to die down from his audience, Rafa’s timing was perfect when he continued, “I have pretty young woman come in, and I tell her, ‘Take off your blouse and say 33.” (Apparently the Spanish say 33 at the doctor instead of the typical American “cough cough” routine). “But if old woman comes in I tell her, ‘Keep your shirt on or go next door to Raul’s office!’” (Raul was the marketing director sitting next to Rafa).

He wasn’t done yet however. Biding his time once again to wow us with his comedic cleverness, he was careful as a lion on the prowl before pouncing once again into another spontaneous outburst. We were continuing merrily on now in our reflection of childhood memories when I popped the typical question, “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

“Nurse,” said one.

“Football player,” answered the other.

“Doctor!” exclaimed Rafa, forcing us all once again to double over with laughter. Maybe it was the espresso that gave him the edge this morning; maybe he was just well rested after a relaxing weekend with the family; maybe he just really loves his job more than the rest of us and was excited to start off yet another week of the grind; or maybe, as I try telling myself, he bolts out of bed before the alarm on Monday mornings in ecstatic anticipation of his wildly engaging and constructive English lesson. Regardless of the reason however, there’s something he has apart from caffeinated side effects that I think we all need to learn. Following the example of that vehemently vexing Monday morning chipper chap, we should all maybe try just a little harder to smile at the long workweek ahead of us.

There’s one big thing I forgot to mention in the last entry regarding foreign language acquisition: you must be ready to look like a fool, and laugh at your mistakes, at all times. The fortunate thing about the Spanish is that they’re almost always ready to give you a helping hand with their language. If you tell them basically that you’ve come to their country to learn their language and teach English, then they’ll usually be patient and help you out.

This is something I really appreciate being from Florida, where the plethora of foreigners are given little patience. No one really cares whether you’re there to learn the language, ride roller coasters, or take pictures with Mickey – the attitude is simply: if you don’t speak English, don’t try talking to me. I have to say that I’m quite guilty of this intolerant attitude at certain periods of my life (most specifically while perusing the aisles of Orlando’s outlet malls), and after being here for six months I have a real appreciation for Spanish patience. I remember hoping that when I went home for Christmas break, I’d have a chance to return the favor somehow, but was never given the chance to help out a foreigner – well, there’s always the next fifty years or so…

Anyway, as I was saying, it’s great when you’re appreciated for making an effort to learn the language here, but unfortunately you don’t always have the chance to make this fact known, and like I said above, the best way to prepare yourself for any awkward exchanges in clumsy Spanish is to just laugh at yourself. Case in point: dinner the other night. There’s one friend of mine whose Spanish is really great, and so every time we get together to go for a bite or a drink, he always does the talking. Well seeing as I have a resolution to uphold, I figured it was about time I stepped up to the plate to tell the waiter (who was doing a great job of playing the typically Spanish “ignore the customer game”) that we were ready to order. So, I cleared my throat, got the phrase ready in my mind, and blurted out, in perfect Spanish: “Perdon señor. Quieras comer algo,” with all the confidence of a true madrileño.

Much to my dismay however, the startled waiter gave me quite a confused look. Hadn’t I said it right? “We want to eat something.” Wasn’t that correct? What just happened? Where am I? Etc. Regardless of all this confusion, the waiter did manage to get the point, although as my bilingual buddy explained to me through a fit of laughter, “Dude – you just told the waiter: “Excuse me, sir. You want to eat something!” Ohhhh yeah. “Quieras” means “you want,” not “we want.” Oops. Well I guess if the waiter was hungry after all, maybe he didn’t catch my mistake, and thought instead that I was, in fact, a psychic mind reader.

As mentioned in previous blogs, my New Year’s resolution has been, and continues to be, to learn Spanish - at all costs. Now, as I’ve unfortunately discovered, one cannot learn a language through osmosis. Unfortunately. It’s not like you just come to Madrid, live in the city for a while, then magically presto! You’re rolling your “r’s” like a pro, chatting up chicas over nightclub noise, and having intellectual conversations with your neighbors – small talk even, is not easily achieved.

So, in order to master this secondary method of communication, there are several avenues to take. First, there’s the ever popular intercambios (basically in English, “exchange”). These are held nearly every night of the week in numerous bars and cafes across the city, and basically consist of proactive language students of both Spanish and English who come together in a relaxed atmosphere to practice speaking in their non-native tongues. As an added bonus, every single one of them is free, so excuses are hard to come by for missing out.

Of course, these intercambios are for the more advanced of Madrid’s bilingual population, but for those lower level speakers, there’s still hope. For example, most everyone I know lives with native Spanish speakers, so there’s your daily intercambio right there. If this isn’t the case, there are tons of great (free) online resources for one to use to sharpen the Spanish skills. And if you just so happen to be an alumnus of TTMadrid, then you’re in even better shape. After graduating the course, there’s a complimentary four week class from one of the best Spanish teachers Madrid has to offer. And as expensive as most Spanish classes can be, TT offers them for what has to be the cheapest price in the city, at a meager four Euro’s an hour when your free sessions run out.

As for those of you who’ve got time to hop on the language train before making the trans Atlantic pond leap, check out the Rosetta Stone program – I’ve been using it for about seven months now, and I can say that it’s improved my Spanish by leaps and bounds (I started the program knowing absolutely zero Spanish, outside of hola, and si of course). It can be a bit pricy, but it enables you to practice every language skill possible, so check it out.

And if you find yourself getting ready to cross over to the Spanish side of life without an infant’s knowledge of the language, don’t fret it or sweat it – there are thousands of people in this international city who share a common language with you, so friends aren’t hard to come by!

After a three week hiatus in sunny Florida, chock full of sunshine, mild weather, and American football, it was culture shock all over again when I returned to a snowy Madrid. Yes, as it turns out, the rain in Spain can also drift down to the plain in frozen form. More than that, it can actually stick! What I meant by culture shock, in fact, bared much more semblance to a childlike glee; and as the rest of the miserable madrileños mumbled curse words while scraping ice off their windshields or dodging snowballs flung by their unruly offspring, I was merrily crunching down the sidewalk, resting the temptation with every nerve in my body, to not plop down and start making snow angels.

But of course, as anyone not native to a subtropical state can attest to, snow doesn’t stay frozen and white forever…So what a wonderfully snowy weekend led to, was an inevitably slushy, muddy Monday morning. Still jubilant however, and excited to see my students again, I was not to be deterred by this fact, and found myself trudging and slipping down the sidewalk to begin part II of the teaching season.

And it’s been a great month to get back into the swing of things. I’ll admit, I did feel like I forgot 90% of my Spanish (which wasn’t much to begin with) in my three week break, but there’s always New Year’s resolutions for such things (mine being, along with nearly every other non-fluent speaker I know, to suck it up and learn Spanish). I didn’t feel bad for long about this mental lapse, though. As soon as classes started back, I realized that the old saying is true (about languages): if you don’t use it, you lose it. And I’ve had to deal with some serious relapses to get my lower level students warmed back up and ready to go. Like I wrote about last month, I was really proud to see the improvements in my student’s English over the first few months, so it was disappointing to come back and see them struggle. Nevertheless, it was all reviews and materials I’d already taught for the first week back, so I at least knew what problems to anticipate.

But since that first week it’s been smooth sailing, and I’ve enjoyed a month of total education efforts – my students have been on time to class, attentive, ready and willing to crack open their texts, and even do homework! As for me, well, I’ve discovered the positive side of my time in the metro: study, study, study! It’s been six months now, and about high time to start learning Spanish. And unlike most resolutions, this is something I plan to follow through to the end – and don’t worry, I’ll keep you all posted as my language adventures continue.

It’s only been a few short months since I started this new trade, and I have to say I’m somewhat surprised at the results. I know that I can sometimes be hard on myself about my teaching abilities, but it can honestly be said that I’ve been taken aback at my students’ improvements.

For example, I’ll always remember how nervous one of my female professional students was on the first day of class, that her jaw was shaking with anxiety when she tried speaking English. Now she’s one of my best students, and is able to communicate confidently and express herself and opinions efficiently. And I can say that it’s been a joy to participate in her progress.

The skeptic in me could chalk it up to her own intelligence or motivation, but as humble as I want to be, I know that I had to play at least a small part. I’ve been through the training, I’ve done the legwork and followed all the proper teaching procedures, but it’s still kind of a shocking realization – I actually taught somebody something! The TEFL certificate says that I’m a teacher, but it hasn’t really been until now that I’ve felt like one

This is very important to hold onto for a teacher. I’ll admit, it’s not always the most glamorous of professions – no one here is seeking their fame and fortune through grammar and verb tenses – at least no one that I know of; the days can sometimes be long and the stresses can no doubt frustrate, as with any job – but as most careers only offer rewards in the form of a bimonthly bank transfer, teaching offers more. It’s the little rewards and victories that set teachers apart. At the end of the day it’s like I’ve gone out and contributed something to the world, or at the very least, to our native language – passive voice, phrasal verbs, and all. And if anything, I can look back and say that there are a few select individuals whose careers were forwarded by what I’d at first believed to be my meager teaching efforts. So do I deserve a nice big pat on the back for this? Well, it is my job, so I guess not. But if anything, I can at the very least assume that this means I’m not such a screw up after all. And that, for me, is quite enough in itself.

The lesson went on as usual, and as the hour and a half was winding down, I found myself feeling in higher spirits, yet still dreading the fifteen minute metro walk I had around the corner. With five minutes left to go until my arctic trudge though, we got on the subject of wine, and after a couple minutes of discussion, my student Raphael shot up from his seat.

In answer to my startled look, he quickly explained, “Oh, yes. I almost forgot. I have something for you.” And, turning to the door, he said, “I’ll be right back. I have to go to my office for a second.”

Brushing it off as another one of his frequent business call interruptions, I continued our discussion with the other student until he returned. I was surprised when he walked back in however, to see that he was holding a plastic bag whose contents contained what appeared to be some weighty cylindrical object and another abstract bulge on the side.

Before I could ask him as to reveal the mystery of its contents, he pulled out a beautiful green bottle of a 1999 Spanish red wine and a Real Madrid scarf. “Here,” he said, offering me the two objects. “We know you’re always cold in the morning, and that you like Real Madrid, so this is for you. And this is my favorite wine. You will love it. Merry Christmas.”

Lost for speech, I gratefully received the gifts, stammering out a meager, “Thanks,” and held the bottle out for inspection. In a place so far away from home, finding people who care enough to go out of their way for you can come few and far between. All I could think about at that moment was that these people, whose lives I’m but barely a part, thought enough about me in their free time to go to two different places, just to express their gratitude for my amateur teaching services. I’ll be honest, it did take me some effort to choke back the mist from my eyes.

To come from a mother who’s spent her last twenty some odd years checking the weather routinely to make sure I was properly clothed to brave the elements, the scarf was what put all this over the top. I’ll no doubt enjoy that bottle of wine right down to its last mahogany drop, but the scarf held a deeper meaning. My students actually worry about me being cold! I’m not just some foreign office invader who takes up three hours of their workweek with my feeble teaching efforts – they actually care. They even think about me when I’m not there!

After several very sincere expressions of gratitude, I was soon back out into the swirling wind. This time though, I was warmed to the bone. It was definitely an Ebenezer Scrooge type moment. Except of course that in a ninety minute period, I wasn’t visited by or forced to visit, any Yule-Tide apparitions to remind me of my past and warn me about the perils of the future. I was reminded that no matter where you go in the world, good people are around every corner, and as cheesy as it may sound, the Christmas spirit exists regardless of your proximity to home. So yes, the smells and the language may not be the same as usual, but Feliz Navidad does have a direct translation. And although I find myself longing for those cozy eggnog and marshmallow comforts of my living room fireplace, at least the love that gives meaning to our holiday celebrations is now, and always will be, universal.

As always, I must point out the humor in pronunciation problems. Case in point, the following two conversations.

It’s Monday morning. My phone rings. I answer it. It’s one of my students.

“Jose Luis! How are you today?”

“Very good, Matt. I had an amazing weekend.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, intrigued. “Well, tell me about it.”

“I went hunting in the south of Spain, and I killed ten bears.”

“Ten bears?”

Now, up until this point I was only listening with mild interest, but as soon as this information escaped his lips, I straightened up in my seat. Ten bears? Really? My friends and I always joke that Spain is a country where rules may technically exist but don’t necessarily apply, but ten bears? My home town contains within its borders one of Florida’s largest National forests, so naturally I’ve grown up around a lot of hunting. And although I’m not an avid participator in the sport, I at least know that hunting bears is not typically legal, and only then under extremely limited circumstances. But ten bears? Ten? Hey, this is Spain, so whatever.

I then went on to relate this bit of fun fact to a couple of teaching friends a little later on that day who reacted in similar disbelief, before heading over to Jose Luis’s home for the lesson. Eager to know more about his bear slaughtering weekend escapades, I broached the subject as soon as we sat down.

“So, Jose…ten bears this weekend? Really?”

“Yes, of course. Just like I told you.”

“Well, where did you go that had so many bears?” I tried, dumbfounded.

“There’s a ranch in the south of Spain with many many bears,” he explained.

“Yes, but ten is an awful lot of bears to kill in one weekend. In Florida, I don’t know if it’s legal to kill even one. What did you do with all of them?” I asked, imagining a freezer truck full of bear steaks.

Jose Luis scratched his thinning hair as he searched for the words in English. “First, we shot them. Then we had our dogs find them in the grass. Then we put them in a bag, and then later we had to take out the,” he stopped here, lost for vocabulary, and made a plucking motion with his hands.

“Fur?”

“No, not ‘fur.’ Plumas.”

“Plumas?” I repeated confusedly. As far as I knew, pluma was the Spanish word for feathers. What type of bear has feathers? I wondered before continuing. “I’m not a hundred percent sure, Jose, but I believe that the English word for that is feathers – but bears don’t have feathers…do they?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he answered, flapping his arms at me like I was a child who couldn’t understand. “Feathers. Feathers on their wings.”

And then it hit me – “Ohhhhhhhhhhh – birds!” I laughed, “Not bears!”

“Of course, birds,” he answered, straight faced. “What did you think I said?”

Claustrophobia, grumbling, another sardine packed upright in the metro. The frowning eyes and drooping faces of work-weary travelers checking wrist watches, an entire migration of madrileños en route to another nine hour stint of the daily grind - their stinging-pink fingertips burning in the cold. I stood amongst this silenced crowd of quiet coughers, where only the roar of the metro from tunnel to tunnel and the screeching brakes dared cut through the calm, wishing for that “class is cancelled” call to come.

On a morning like this, it’s tough to stay in the holiday spirit. The Spanish do things differently, so the familiar smells of the holidays I used to know and love are gone, and as scent is the closest sense tied to memory, I could certainly have used a nice whiff of cinnamon and pine to warm the innards.

But life does have its way of coming around, as I learned this morning. To stay in line with mother nature, I decided to match her dreary weather with a grumpy, groggy, and grumbly madrileño morning mood. It was one of those mornings where all you want is some fuzzy slippers, a hot cup of anything, and perhaps, a hug.

Looking on the bright side of the gloom however, I was at least starting off my day with my favorite class at a sports newspaper. Unfortunately, we rarely get on the subject of sports, but our typical session is usually spent laughing and talking about this and that instead of aggressively hitting the books.

Today, however, I didn’t really feel like talking. I didn’t really feel like laughing. What I really wanted was to crawl back into the soft comfort and warmth of my dark bedroom, and sleep the day away. But you can wish in one hand, spit in the other, and see which one gets you farther, as the old saying goes, so I braved the elements and dragged myself to class.

My next class wasn’t until 2:30, so I went back to sleep for a while, only to be awoken a couple hours later by my phone. I rolled over and looked at the screen before picking up, and much to my delight, I saw that it was my teaching agency calling – judging by the time I could easily guess that this was going to be another late cancellation. Sure enough, I was informed that my 2:30 class had a business seminar to attend at the same time as my class and they had to cancel. “That’s too bad,” I related to the agency’s head of studies with a hint of friendly sarcasm, “I was really looking forward to class today.”

What to do, what to do? I asked myself. Free time on a Wednesday afternoon is hard to come by – what am I supposed to do with myself? It was nearing 2:00, so I figured I ought to do as the Spanish do and eat a big, late lunch. As soon as I finished eating, I got yet another unexpected phone call. It was Jose, my evening student. No way I’m getting another class cancelled, I thought. But sure enough, that’s what happened.

Three classes down, one to go. My last class never ended up being cancelled though, but who was I to complain? I’d just technically had a full day of work as far as my time sheet was concerned, and I felt like laughing all the way to the bank. I soon fulfilled my remaining one and a half hours of teaching in the late afternoon, and I was home free. And I have to say it was one of the better classes I’d instructed so far. I realized how much more energy I brought into the classroom with a fresh mind free from fatigue. In a class where I’m usually running low on energy and patience after teaching all day, my students must have thought I’d gotten into one too many café solos, but I’m sure they enjoyed the extra bit of enthusiasm (and with their low level of English, that’s exactly what they need).

So, it’s been quite the day and I have to say that I’m pretty exhausted from all the “hard work,” so I’ll have to end it here. Tomorrow’s Thursday, so I need to get some rest for the weekend!

In all my classes, my curious students are always asking me about my impression on their native city, and what my fellow Americans typically think about Spanish people from across the sea. Every time, my answer is the same.

“We know about paella and bullfights, but the only stereotype we have is about Spanish people always being late.” This comment is always met with a laugh and knowingly exchanged glances between my students. For the newcomer to Madrid, it may take some getting used to, but Spanish tardiness is a basic truth that one has to accept while living abroad. As frustrating as it may sound, there is a positive side as well to Spanish time for the teacher of English.

There are three letters in the English language that, when put together in the proper order, carry a significant amount meaning for the English teacher in Madrid. C – T - L, which stands for “cancelled too late,” represents a fully paid mid week mini vacation. In other words, if a client decides at the last minute that they aren’t able to attend class on that same day, then the teacher still gets paid for the full class session.
Yes, sometimes these classes aren’t cancelled until you actually show up and wait for a few minutes, but if you’re particularly lucky, then you’ll get the cancellation message before walking out your door. And if you’ve happened to rub the rabbit’s foot right, then every now and then you’ll have an entire day off – paid in full.

Take today for instance: I woke up at 7:30, ate some breakfast, took a shower, got my teaching materials together, and grabbed my (pink) phone on my way out the door. When I flipped open the screen to check the time though, I noticed that I had a text waiting. My stomach fluttered in excitement as I knew a text this early could only mean one thing – cancelled class! Sure enough the text was from one of my students, apologizing for having to cancel class due to a company wide meeting. Apology accepted. Time to get back under my warm blankets.