Welcome to Spain! Now get to work!!!

Hola, que tal? Well, it has taken me much longer than I had expected, but I'm finally back. It has been one hectic, chaotic month and a half since I arrived in Spain. I successfully completed my English teaching course at Active Language in the city of Cadiz. Even though I did well, it was the most difficult and stressful month I've ever had as a student. My five years of college, taking multiple classes and having to write papers and take exams, was nothing compared to this. Starting on the first day we had to sit through hours of input sessions, by day three we were teaching and by the end of the first week, we had to get started on the first of four extremely time-consuming assignments. This went on (becoming increasingly difficult) nonstop for four weeks. All in all, we were there for 10 hours every day. Our seemingly luxurious two-hour lunch quickly evaporated as we realized that we needed that time to work on assignments and write up lesson plans. Generally, we had just enough time to shovel down some grub before placing our noses firmly against the grindstone once again. Plus, we had about two or three hours of work each night after the school closed. In case you're wondering to whom I'm referring to with all this "we" and "us" stuff, I am talking about the other teacher trainees that were in the same leaky and battered boat as I. Altogether there were seven of us; two Americans (including yours truly), four Brits and an Irish lass. Also, I was the only hombre in the bunch...I guess women, with their heightened tolerance for pain, are more interested in teaching English in foreign lands. With all this multi-national, multi-lingualism floating about, my mind was inundated with words and forms of speaking I'd never encountered before. In one day I spoke English, Spanish, Welsh (as part of the course giving us experience learning an unknown language), Gaelic (taught by the Irish trainee in a peer teaching exercise) and "Agyl-laygl" (a fictitious language taught by another trainee). In the same day, I heard English spoken with American, Irish, Spanish and about four types of British accents. By the end of the day, I longed for the swear-laden and clipped, yet completely comprehensible, jargon of my Chaparralian brothers. It was a rough month indeed. It wasn't all bad though. My brothers (or sisters as it were) in combat and I became very close in the short amount of time we were together. Indeed, I don't think I've ever gotten to know a group of people so quickly, and for the most part, they were all very nice. Also, the tutors we worked with in the course were by and large friendly and helpful. They're some pretty decent folks. And...I learned to teach! Well, I sincerely hope so. I was pretty shaky at first, considering we were thrust into our first class after only two days. I did well for the most part; some days were better than others and I had a couple rough classes where I think I confused the students more than anything, but by the end I had become much more comfortable in front of the class and I was far more aware of my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher. (And...I had a fan club! In the second group of students we taught there were about four or five young ladies who became enamored with me. One of them even put a little note on my chair asking me for my phone number! It is important to add here that these are adult learners, the youngest of which were about 16 years old... Of course I didn't give it to her! I had a multitude of reasons not too, though the staff at the school seemed to think I had taken the moral high road. Still, it was interesting to see that when I assigned homework, the only students who bothered to complete it were female!) Right now, I'm glad I took the course and I know I learned a lot, but honestly, I don't think I'd do it again. It was just too intense. It made me quite a grumpy, stressed-out prick at times. Another trainee and I were the only ones out of our group who didn't burst into tears at some point and I didn't get to enjoy my first few weeks in Spain nearly as much as I would have liked. Anyway, now I just gotta get my ass employed! So, there's a fairly animated rant on what I've been doing the last month or so. In the next post I'll give you a rundown of my impressions of Cadiz and Spain in general with lots of pics. Stay tuned.