The Clicking of a Pen

She is my student. She sits to my right and one seat down on the small table. When she speaks, she clicks her pen furiously, in time with her snappy syllables and her oddly-spoken vowels. I grind my teeth, hearing not the sentence she's trying to say but "Iclickthinkclickclickthatclick thisclickisclickaclickveryclickinterestingclickclickclickclass." I reach over and touch her hand briefly to still the echoing clatter created by this tiny, tiny torture device.

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To Bilbao

Situated far, far north of us on a five-hour bus ride that made me queasy as it wound slowly through the mountains, Bilbao is a haven of Basque, another regional Spanish language and culture, and our summer camp friend Ginny. We got there around 8:00 and promptly went to her birthday bash in the backwoods of the province, where there was much fun had by all.

Ginny's boyfriend, Juan Luis, drank a little too much fermented grape juice and headed back to the room he normally stays in with Ginny, which I had taken over for the night. He knocked on the door lightly, but came in as I woke up. "Ginny, Ginny..." he drunkenly calls to me. I sigh. "Juan Luis! It's not Ginny!" It takes him a moment to register. "Who are you, then?" I put my head back down on the pillow. "I'm Dean, Juan Luis." He apologizes and shuts the door. An hour later, I feel a hand lightly touch my leg as Juan Luis crawls into bed with me. I bat him off with an extra hand as I pull the covers up to my neck. "Juan Luis, you're making a big mistake!" I call to him. He stops stroking Ginny's leg as he realizes it is actually my hairy limb.
The next morning, he remembers nothing.

A Long, Long Month

The gap in time is ugly, I know. So is my schedule. After losing my voice the first week, my body began a slow plot to slow me down one limb at a time. Last week my back joined the effort, piercing me with every step I took. I sat at an angle so as to release some pressure on it. My students looked at me with their heads tilted. It's been a bit rough, as I have felt less and less like I'm living in Spain and more and more like I'm living in mini-America; shuttled from class to class, and from English speaker to English learner back to my comfy English-speaking flat (not the flat itself, mind you) has left me in a linguistic whirlpool of, you guessed it, English. I miss drinking sangria at the corner bar with Cathy and pretending we had something to do the next day. The CELTA course was less stress than this, actually.

But bah, I'm not made for complaints [cue the upstairs man hacking and spitting. Will he ever get better? I'm thinking of leaving some vitamins and oranges on his doorstep]. This is still Spain, I still have my somewhat abbreviated weekends. I'm still happy, if overworked and stressed during the week. And I love my Catalan course. I have begun taking Catalan, a regional language spoken in the east of the country, in preparation for my eventual doctorate. It is, sadly, just about the only way I have been preparing for this nebulous future doctorate. I set my pencil down in front of me happily, pull out my book and my notepad and listen in glorious rapture as my professor Xavier (pronounced Shah-vee-air) babbles on and on in a new language. Cathy, who isn't taking the course, gets mock lessons when I get home from school, eternal teacher that I am.

Getting Sicker, Getting Richer

I begin to lose my voice. My schedule is fine, jam-packed as it is, but my body can't physically cope with the pressures and stresses of getting up at 7:00am and beginning your 12-hour day. I am forced to do lesson plans minutes before my classes start. I run, missing buses and perpetually stressed about being late for class. I look forward to the weekend, my voice slipping further and further away from me during class until I can only croak in English at my students. I tell them to talk amongst themselves. But all is not lost: the weekend means relaxation, a chance to recuperate both physically and with my time and lesson plans. Cathy and I buy a printer to be more studious. We set up an English Language Resource Center in the living room. We are superprofessors.

A Job To Start

Jetlagged and numb with exhaustion, I throw my luggage into the room and myself onto the big Spanish bed. I turn my Spanish phone on. Nearly immediately I receive a message from Catja at American Language, telling me that she needs me to urgently call the Academy. I imagine horrible scenes of them needing one single sheet of paper that I can only get in America from one person, and that I'll have to go back tomorrow. I phone them. Surprisingly, they offer me a job starting immediately. Without thinking, although there really wasn't much to think over, I accept. Miguel, the owner of the Academy, tells me to come by as soon as possible. My priorities are clear, however -- I tell him I have to take a nap first.

Thus I am thrust into the exhausting world of English teaching. It's comforting to know that I don't have to look for any more private classes, and after seeing my work schedule, knowing that I won't have to move around any of my previous appointments. A little more daunting, however, is the hours behind my schedule; I teach 29 hours a week plus my 3 hour Catalán course. This is all a little exciting and a little nerve-wracking. I am on the exciting TEFL highway, zipping around all those boring, slow-moving Sedans. I am on the fast-track to professional burnout.