Dear Barcelona, please pass the smoking ban in bars as lately I have become a walking cigarette. Gross!
In other words, I'm slightly disgruntled as of today because I am not going to be able to teach my first class until fricking Monday! Everyone else was able to go yesterday and today but because there aren't enough spots, I have to wait til Monday. I feel so ready and antsy, I just want to get this started to figure out where I can improve to be the best teacher possible.
The great thing about this TEFL program is how intense it is- we have grammar and vocab lessons and how to teach them in the mornings for about 4 hours, as well as weekly job guidance and time to work on our CVs. One thing I found interesting about those if how if you don't have a photo of yourself, they won't even bother looking at it. So different in the States. We're getting loads of good information about the TEFL job market- apparently Madrid, Istanbul and any part of Germany and Thailand are booming at the moment, but they expect Barcelona to get better by June, as soon as the summer camps start hiring. The Spanish school year ends in June/July and begins in October so hiring again starts a lot in September. I have a lot of confidence though after talking to one of my teachers as she said it's easy to get private lessons which will definitely sustain me. Cruza los dedos!
Yesterday I spent the afternoon wandering around with Stacy, Kate and Sari- fellow TEFLers who didn't have to teach, and we just spent hours meandering through the city and came up La Boqueria- which is the most INTENSE and colourful and wonderful food market I have ever been to. If you need lambs heads with eyes, they've got it. Cow brains and sheep intestines? done. And any kind of chocolate you could ever want. I saw some chocolate hedgehogs for sale ( at least, I hope they were fake...) Pure bliss, I need to go back at least 4-5 times a week. We also went to this Basque region restaurant for a Basque bottle of wine, it was wonderful. There aren't a lot of tourists here now so it's bearable in the touristy areas, I can only imagine though how it is in May-August, oi. The area near La Rambla has a lot of bars advertising for English/Spanish speaking waitresses so I shelved that information for later, you never know!
I like a lot of the people in my program, apart from these 3 wicked annoying Canadians who seem to only be here to partay it up and go to the beach, but I think most of us actually want to teach English and most, like 8 of us or so, are planning to stay for a few months in Barcelona, if not indefinitely in Europe. How refreshing to be surrounded by other people who have such insane wanderlust, and who aren't totally sure what to do with their lives besides live in Europe and explore language. Found my Barcelona niche!
I'm also loving living with Estel and Irene, as Irene and I just made lunch today and discussed the differences with the Catalan school system and the American school system, as well as me trying and failing to describe the plot of the movie Kinsey to her. I think we're actually going to do an exchange where I begin to teach her English, as she knows very little, and in return she will cook me Spanish dishes. Ole!
I'm off tonight to meet up with this girl Erin who coincidentally was in an Italian class I took back at DePaul a million years ago. She did the same program back in Jan so she's going to impart many words of wisdom on me, I hope. Or at least a 1 Euro bottle of wine.
Hasta luego!
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