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.
