Happy All Saints Day

So it turns out my second day of my intensive training course is in fact a public holiday, although no one seems quite sure what its for but its known, rather vaguely, as All Saints Day. Apparently there are absolutely loads of public holidays in Spain – I looked at a calendar, they're often more than once a month! From what I've seen, this seems to reflect the Spanish work ethic in general. Shops close at night (no 24 Tescos around) and most things apart from cafe and restaurants close on Sunday, even though there's still loads of people who would use them. There always seem to be more staff than is really necessary as well. It's an attitude much less orientated to making money than in the UK where your expected to work long and unsocialble hours in a lot of jobs. I, for one, love it, its more a work to live than live to work and probably leads to a much better quality of life.

The first day of the training was actually easier than I had expected. I thought we were being thrown straight into classes that afternoon, but we only had a morning session teaching us the method and style they use. So today I'm doing the homework (which is pretty long) and preparing for lessons tomorrow afternoon. They don't tell you what level the student your going to be teaching is so you've got to judge and adapt as you go along. It sounds quite exciting to me really! It turns out at 24 I'm the grandad of the group of trainees, most of them are 22 or 23, mostly in the same position as me although a couple have taught before. With it being a holiday today, we had the opportunity to go out last night and get to know each other a bit which was great and they seem like a good bunch. I think the less said about last night the better to be honest but we somehow decided to go out in Chueca, the gay district, which makes Canal Street look like an Essex stag do, and ended up seeing a little more of it than expected. About 8 inches more I'd say.

The entrance to Reina Sofia isn't quite Tate Modern but its pretty cool

For some slightly more cultural entertainment, I'd gone to the Reina Sofia museum on Saturday (its free after 2pm), which is the more modern of the main art museums in Madrid, with Picasso's Guernica being the main attraction. They also have a load of his preliminary sketches for it, intresting to see it developing. There's lots of old Spanish Civil War propaganda posters and photos too. My knowledge of the civil war pretty much goes as far as reading Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell so I'm curious to find out more after seeing those. It's easy to forget that Spain was a dictatorship until as recently as 1978. The thing I was most interested in seeing there, however, was their collection of Miro paintings, some of which my parents had around the house when I was little and apparently would hold me in front of to stop me crying. Disappointingly though, there were fewer than the guide book had made it sound, and they felt like a bit of a sideshow to Guernica which people were crowding into the next room to see. There is, however, a huge Miro on the building opposite my training offices which is pretty cool.

On with 'lesson planning' for tomorrow, I think they just throw you in at the deep end and see how you do to start with so its not too nerve racking but I'd rather not sound like a complete idiot!