Things have been, as usual, pretty awesome lately. I went to Valencia with Alberto last weekend, and we saw lots of great sights. Above all, though, it’s just a really beautiful city. Marble sidewalks abound in the city center, which included a cool indoor market, a gorgeous cathedral just a short walk from our hostel, and portions of the old city wall you can climb on. I’ll try to get some pictures up from my friend’s camera as soon as possible. Saturday in Valencia, we visited Europe’s largest aquarium, which is a massive underground complex right near the Mediterranean—unfortunately, not really beach weather when we were there. That night, we smoked a couple Cuban cigars, because hey, we can! While we calmly enjoyed a bottle of wine and our cigars in la Plaza de la Virgen, a festival started up in the square: a traditional Spanish swordfight. It was a pretty cool sight, and Valencia was wonderful, as advertised: sunny, warm, bright, and clean. The bus service we used was fantastic, too, and I wish I could take it everywhere rather than flying.
Tomorrow, I start my “service learning” teaching at the elementary school right down the street from my apartment. It should be interesting… I’m a little scared, as I’ve never taught anything before, and I hope at least that the teacher is in there leading the discussion and that I am not in there by myself like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Still, no experience in the classroom will likely be as embarrassing and awkward as my first encounter with this school last week. I went into this school armed only with the knowledge that I had an appointment with Carmen Rodríguez, the school’s director, at 10:30 on Wednesday morning. So, I walked into the school at the only obvious entrance, and told the guy behind the security desk that I had an appointment with “Carmen Rodríguez” at the “Nicolás Salmerón school”, and he looked at me sort of funny—I did stumble pronouncing Rodríguez—but he answered, “con Carmen, sí, un momento.” He led me into the nearby office and introduced me to Carmen, who was having a loud and animated phone conversation. He asked my business and introduced me as a new “English teacher” to Carmen, who invited me to sit down.
Carmen didn’t appear to be expecting me, so I reminded her that I was sent from Syracuse University, and that I had an appointment with her. She nodded and asked me something along the lines of if I was with the business collective or the educational group. I asked her to repeat, not because I didn’t understand, but rather because I had no idea what I was talking about; all I knew was that I was sent by Syracuse to teach English. That she understood, but I had no idea what she was talking about so I finally said that I guessed I was with the educational group. She said OK and looked for my name on the schedule, asking if I knew what times I was supposed to teach. I said that yes, I did have a schedule—this is all paraphrased because we were talking in Spanish, of course—and I told her it was Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. She, in turn, looked confused and responded that my name—“Ben John”—wasn’t on the list and that furthermore, they don’t teach English classes on Tuesdays.
I probably looked a bit disheartened. I told her that this was what I was told at Syracuse, and I was wondering how such a mixup happened. She asked me again if I was from an educational group or business group, and I replied that I didn’t know, that I was simply sent from Syracuse to teach English. She then told me that she’s merely an administrative person and doesn’t know anything about this, and that I should be talking to the school’s director, which elicited a sigh of relief from me. She called the director, who wasn’t there, but then told me that her secretary knew nothing about this and had no record of an appointment. I was starting to get really upset, flustered, and frustrated. I was really looking forward to doing this service learning and did NOT know what went wrong. Carmen was confused as well and told me that she’d take my number down and have the director call me as soon as she got in, and that I’d talk to my people at Syracuse to see what the problem was. As I was leaving, however, she said something interesting. Carmen told me that I shouldn’t be waiting on pins and needles because they’ve already hired their teachers for the year and that they already have a full roster.
At this point, I was really confused. I replied that I was not looking for employment—that I was simply a volunteer sent to assist the English teachers at Nicolás Salmerón on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She looked at me for a second and asked if I was supposed to be at the Colegio Nicolás Salmerón—as opposed to the “escuela” that I asked for—and I said, yes, probably, and asked if I was not indeed there? Carmen laughed and said no, I was at the Cultural Center Nicolás Salmerón—not the elementary school—and that they teach English classes for adults Mondays and Wednesdays at night. The reason for the confusion was obvious: I was introduced to her—named Carmen, as well as the director of the school—as a new English teacher (which technically I was, but not a paid employee), and I asked for the Nicolás Salmerón School, where I technically was, but I was more specifically looking for the colegio, an elementary school attached to the cultural center. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, apologized for wasting her time, and followed the security guard across the building to el Colegio Nicolás Salmerón, where the ACTUAL Carmen Rodríguez was waiting for me.
She couldn’t have been nicer; she was eager to meet me and took me into her office where we had a short chat alternating between Spanish and English—my Spanish was probably better than her English, which made me feel good—and then she took me around the school to meet all of the teachers I’d be working with in this small elementary school. She also showed me the double doors I walked by that led to the school’s courtyard, that did NOT look like the building’s main entrance, that are the entrance to school proper. Before I left, I went into one of the English classes I’d be working with and introduced myself before hearing all of the students give a short introduction to me in English. As the teacher presented me to the class—fourth graders, speaking Spanish—one girl’s hand shot up and she asked me, in pretty good English, “Do you speak e-Spanish?!”
I smiled and was happy to be able to respond, “¡Sí, por supesto!”
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