Possible topics

Possible Topics

So what shall I blog about? Let’s think possibilities.

Spain. I live near Madrid. Madrid, Spain, European Union. I’ve been here since October of 2003, this time. Previously I’d lived here for a total of six years. Or so, off and on from 1988 to 1997. That means I am fluent in Spanish, comfortable with the people and customs of Spain, familiar with its wines, cheeses, nightlife, public transport and terrorism.

Along the same lines, those being places I’ve lived where Spanish is spoken: Mexico, Panama, and Nicaragua. Very much enjoyed all of them.

All fit in with the transitory state of my existence.

Expat life. There are many sites dedicated to those who live outside their country, so I don’t see too much sense in talking about it here. Though of course it will be to some degree inevitable as I am an expat. With all the concurring experience, having children abroad, travelling with babies and pets, schools, life’s day-to-day problems, a mixed nationality marriage and divorce, papers, passports, and airplanes. But I’m so familiar with Spain it has become a second home. Here I do not live an expat life in the true sense. Though I do not plan to stay.

Teaching small children in a second language. That’s a big title. But that’s what I did from mid-January to Late June of this year, and what I expect to be doing starting next week. Supposing I still have a job, and a new contract. I was reluctant to take the job last January, 17 five-year-olds, all Spanish, who had to be taught to read in English. Taught everything in English, I was not allowed to speak to them in Spanish at all. That was the first rule I broke, of course. Try explaining crime and punishment, good behaviour and reward, not to mention addition subtraction phonetics and the meaning of life, to questionsome five-year-old boys and girls. I’m not saying it can’t work, in ideal conditions. Though after being in the middle of it, I think immersion programs are inferior to a good bilingual education system, where the children spend half the day with one teacher in their native tongue and the other half with another teacher in the language to be learned.

But I enjoyed it. Might not want to teach small children for the rest of my life, but I did ask for five-year-olds again this year. I was told I’d probably get four-year-olds. (Here in Spain they start school at three, and it’s nine-to-five.) Four will probably prove to be too young. What I most enjoyed about teaching this spring was the moment of learning, that magical instant when all was clear. Still, one year of four will be doable. It will continue to be Developmental Psychology up close and personal five days a week several hours a day. I am more interested in Psychology than teaching. Until January I had never taught small children, the closest was a summer I spent as a volunteer aid in a bilingual class in California. I’d taught for Princeton Review, I like teaching—though it may be the podium as much as the didactic role.

When I met the headmistress I didn’t want to take the job. I said truly that I’d no experience or training for teaching kindergarten, or preparatory as they call it. But she said I was overqualified.

They were desperate, that I knew at the start. Then I realized that she meant what she said, because my primary task was not teaching but reconciling the parents to the disastrous performance of their children, due to a culture-shocked, missing teacher who went home to Britain at Christmas and a replacement teacher who never showed up. That and mediating between the parents and the school administration, dealing with the tensions between the campus I taught at and the centre, translating for the English speakers with limited Spanish, and interpreting myriad misunderstandings amongst all parties. Forget teaching. My curriculum showed a life that had necessitated diplomacy, I had studied foreign service, majored in International Relations, Law and Organization, I was bilingual, I was of the same generation and class of most the parents… I was the ideal candidate.

Probably the only reason I’ll still have a job next week. It’s only incidental that the children and their parents loved me.

Horses. For most of my life horses were the pivotal point of my existence. I grew up riding and showing Morgans. Here in Spain I galloped, owned, trained and raced Thoroughbreds as an amateur for four years, primarily in Madrid’s Hipodromo de la Zarzuela. I galloped at the track in Mexico City—Hipodromo de las Americas, it was closed when I was there. I galloped at the Hipodromo Presidente Remon in Panama, then when I had my first child, bought a colt there, sold not because he had broken down but because he was unridable. I shipped that horse to Nicaragua and got to know the countryside around Managua from his back.

Oh yes, we could talk horses. I’m in a sort of withdrawal now that I cannot ride, not with two small children and work. I even wrote a book to get through the first harshest stage of that withdrawal.

Writing. I am a writer, but I haven’t yet been willing to make the plunge into attempted publishing. Being a writer I should probably have started a blog years ago, but when I am writing I sure as hell won’t be blogging. I’ve been writing much of the last several years, and will be again soon, I hope. So probably not likely to talk about it here. Plenty of beautiful blogs out there by authors who know how to set up a nice site. I’ll link to them too when I know how.

Reading. Could talk about it, but I get any of that out of my system (along with the talking about writing) at www.readerville.com

Still, as long as we’re on the subject, my last book was Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. I was very disappointed in it, as can be seen in the McCarthy thread in readerville. Now I am plowing through my stack of New Yorkers, brought back from California with me a few weeks ago.

I am sure I’ll find plenty of other things to talk about if I keep up with this. Probably teaching will be the main topic at first, since I’ll be doing it soon enough.