Of Teaching And Beer

After five days of intensive training with a English teaching company based in Madrid, I sallied forth to the Spanish HQ of one of Europe's largest beer-sellers. My pupils are some of the company's top executives, which felt a tad daunting to begin with. Also, with precisely zero experience in teaching Business English and only a few hours of one-to-one teaching under my belt, I had to throw out the "discuss in pairs" and "compare answers" basis to my CELTA qualification and make some serious modifications. Oh, and there are no textbooks to act as a guide and conveniently provide me with off-the-peg lesson themes and exercises. I have to invent every lesson from scratch.

Given that it takes me around an hour to reach the office where I teach and most of the lessons are individually timetabled at an hour and a half, it's not proving very time-efficient so far. Luckily, the cost of the one-change metro-and-then-a-bus journey works out at 77 cents a time, so at least the travel is cheap. I'm getting lot of reading done on Madrid's public transport and sometimes I even attempt to improve my (slightly better than non-existent, but not much) Spanish. As an added bonus, I haven't yet had anything nicked by Madrid's legendary pick-pockets either - touch wood.

On top of the journey time, the lack of handy teaching materials means it's taking me around two hours to plan each lesson. Tot that up with the travel and it's costing me four hours of time for every hour and a half taught. Not what you'd call breath-takingly effective.

But these aren't complaints. Mainly because at the moment, I'm enjoying both the lessons themselves and the planning process. Fashioning a fully-functioning, interesting and bespoke English language lesson out of nothing actually feels rather creative. Also, I'm well aware that the more material I produce now, the more I can adapt and re-use in the future. As we're in the business world of teaching English, let's call it a time investment. Ah, that feels better already.

Then there are my pupils, who are all very likeable, very attentive, all do their homework and in one case, even give me a lift to the office on Friday mornings. Compared with the ten crazy nine-year-olds Theo does battle with, they're a breeze. And I'm learning all about beer, which just goes to show my students aren't the only ones getting a useful education.

Beer and loathing in Seville

We were starting to hate Seville way before we actually got there.

The drive was epic - we left the Lisbon campsite at 8am and hit the outskirts of Seville - hideous modern appartment blocks - at 6pm which, even given the fact we lost an hour when we crossed the border, made it the longest drive of the trip thus far and an epic by anyone's standards.

An hour and a half later and we were still trying to find a campsite, which plainly has been buried under an airport extension or one of those modern buildings. Half hints and a single sign on a roundabout were the only clues to back up the road atlas and guidebook's assertion that it existed. We were already getting testy with Seville by this point, but it was about 20 minutes later after being stuck on ringroad hell and discovering, thanks to the complete absence of signs, that we'd been driving away from Seville for the past 15kms that the loathing set in. This was, you note, before we'd even got there.

The absence of a campsite, the pending sunset and the wind and rain drove us into the centre of the city past honking taxis and psychopathic scooters. We hit the old town and parking Sheena semi-legally in a plaza (safety in numbers we figured), dashed for the nearest hostel. Closed.

The second had one room left, a twin, with roaches in the bathroom and a smell of fish in the corridor. We took it. We were that tired. We decided to make the most of being in the lively Santa Cruz district on a Saturday night; get some food, take a nap, shower and hit the town again, perhaps trying to move Sheena to a more obviously legit parking space. However, as previously blogged, we can stick to plans for about as long as I can hold a tune. A chance meeting with the lovely Nora (a German living in Seville) and the ebullient David (Irish friend visiting) led to free flamenco, free flowing beer and a fine evening out. Amazing luck as without Nora's local knowledge we would never have found it - thanks for the fun times you two!

We like Seville a lot more now we've actually seen a bit of it. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow we'll be thoroughly smitten.

Cómo se pronucia esta palabra?

Hola nuestros amigos y extraños! Nosotros esperamos que vosotros estáis bien. Mi guapa esposa Kate y me aprendemos español, pero muy despacio. Encuentemos la pronunciation de ciertos letras sumamente difícl, especialmente 'c', 'j', 'll', 'b', 'v' y 'g'. Plantea nos un problema pourque la palabra que significa "beer" se escribe "cerveza".

So, as you can see Kate and I are learning Spanish, and, as you may have divined from the above, it's not easy. The fact that we'd started learning Italian first is making it harder as many of the words are very similar, except in the crucially important differences.

Still we've managed to learn all the important phrases, namely:

No hablo español - I don't speak spanish

No comprendo - I don't understand

Puede hablar más despacio, por favour? - Can you speak more slowly please?

Tiene algún plato vegetariano? - do you have any vegetarian dishes?

Cómo se dice "we're tired and hungry, please help us"? - How do you say "estamos cansados y tengamos mucha hambre, ayuda nos por favour"?

and of course...

Nos trae dos cervezas, por favour? - Can we have two beers please?

If we can ever learn to pronounce "cervezas" without drowning the waiter in spittle - it must be the only word in the world where having a lisp would be an aid to pronunciation....