Teaching English: The Final Word

I only have a week left teaching after tomorrow, and to be honest, it won't be soon enough! As I've said before, I've not found teaching English particularly thrilling. It's not very creative, co-operative or fulfilling in my experience. That said, by far the best thing about it are the students. I taught a couple of them their last classes today and it was pretty sad really! I've been teaching the students at my main company for two hours a week since October, and that's a lot of time to spend with people. Maybe it's the companies that I've been teaching in, but I've found almost all of them pleasant and fun to work with, and in most cases we've developed a good rapport - I even got invited to one of their weddings (I really wish I could go but unfortunately it's in July so I can't).

 Just because I haven't enjoyed it that much though, doesn't mean I haven't benefitted. Since Easter I've had more hours each week and I ended up with a more or less steady 30 a week, including a couple of private classes. At €20 an hour, that's not bad money, and yesterday I transferred another lump over to my English bank account to pay off the rest of my overdraft. What I would say is don't believe a company saying they'll get you 40 hours a week. I only got to 30 by the end of the year and you spend a lot of time shuttling around between companies too, making a 40 hour week quite difficult. In hindsight thoyugh, I should have pushed to get more hours earlier on, or sought out more private classes, instead of getting the job with the worse paid 'language school', although that was good for making friends.

Also thinking about it the other day, I realised that I have picked up a few skills from this job as well. I didn't have the faintest clue about English grammar before I did this, and I've been constantly learning as the year's gone on. Valuable for anyone that has ambitions to do any kind of writing. A friend came over recently to make a presentation in a boardroom environment and commented that he was quite nervous. I realised that now I wouldn't have the slightest worry about doing something like that, no matter who I was presenting it to. You have to get over nervousness about that kind of thing teaching people older, more experienced and more important than you in their own offices. The fact that you have your mastery of English over them makes it a good training ground for gaining confidence in these situations and now I just have an automatic setting for it I think. The method used by my company is very up front and in their faces as well, with you leading the class so you just have to get used to it.

So I don't know, I can't say I fully recommend teaching English, but it certainly has some benefits, not least of which is the pay!

As I was writing the last post about the camp in Sol staying through the rain, it turns out they were voting to take it down and go home. This was mostly a tactical decision though I'm sure, and a good one too I think. People's patience seemed to be wearing a bit thin, and the businesses around Sol complaining that they were hurting their revenues wasn't helping. The movement is still very much going though, spreading out to neighbourhoods more. Walking around in the evenings, you'll see mismatched groups of all ages and appearances sitting in circles in squares debating with someone taking minutes. One indignato, however, recieved some rather good news on going home - he discovered that he'd won the lottery to the tune of €1.35m!

Spaniards Say The Darndest Things

Far be it from me to ridicule other people's attempts at learning and speaking another language... But that's basically what I'm gonna do for the next couple of paragraphs, so if you don't like it, look away now.

I have said in the past that I'm getting a bit bored of teaching English, and part of that is definately hearing the same mistakes repeated over and over again by different or the same people. You have to be very patient sometimes. Missing the 's' when using the third person, mispronouncing 'work' and 'walk', 'v's and 'b's, and, worst of all, would ("gould"). These are the bread and butter of the English teacher in Spain, and by god do you get tired of them. The worst thing is when you start doing it yourself. I've said 'do a mistake' a couple of times over the last couple of weeks - its catching!

Sometimes, you do get some good laughs out of it though at least. The number of times someone has sat opposite me and told me with a look of intense concentration on their face that they are "shitting in this chair"... There was also someone who didn't believe in goats (ghosts), someone pondering how long it would take to get to New York by sheep, as well as many unintentionally hilarious uses of the phrasal verbs 'to make out', 'to get off', 'to come out' and 'to turn on'. Their attempts at swearing aren't much better. I once asked a young student how the weather was and he enthusiastically responded "It's fucking!". Better get a brolly then.

Still, at least I'm not teaching as many hours anymore, for the same, if not more, money. In the end, I only got one private class from my ads, but that was more because of my schedule being full than lack of interest, and I actually passed on a few classes to friends. The agency company has given me more hours, so I've now got 28 a week, which at €20 an hour, is plenty. Mind you, I've still got a bit of a way to go before I actually break even on coming here, but I will definately have by the time I go back for summer in June. (I have a budget for the first time in my life).

I had a fun weekend, including going for a good Senegalese meal (I think, it was my first) in Lavapies and going back to Pantera near Plaza de Espana, which is one of the better clubs I've been to here, playing crunchy electro from about 2007 (pretty cutting edge for Spain) and of course going on til about 7am. I've not been too impressed by Madrid's clubs so far actually, but that said I still haven't been to the biggest, Kapital, which is supposed to be pretty impressive, or Sala Heineken about which I hear good things too, although I'm sure they're both quite pricey. (I said I had a budget, I didn't say I was going to stick to it).

I also became an admin for this facebook group called 'I know this great little place in Madrid...' this weekend too, which is well worth having a peep at if you live over here.

Homelessness, Pot Holes and Speed Limits

No, not me. I was just thinking this week about the apparently high levels of homelessness in Madrid, compared to the UK. It's really quite shocking. You not only see people with sleeping bags under bridges, on metro vents, in bank cash points and on benches in the mornings, but even more permanent little tent set-ups in some places. Just up the hill from my flat, below a park, there's a little community of homeless guys and a woman who hangs out washing there. It's also very visible, there's a guy who camps out right outside one of the main cinemas on Gran Via, where they hold a lot of premiers and so on, like Spain's Leicester Square or Broadway. I'm surprised given the socialist government here that more hasn't been done. They put floating duck-houses on the Manzanares with people camping under bridges only metres away.

Speaking of homes, I think we have decided to stay in this apartment. Friends moving have made me realise that it really is very cheap, and now that I have a bike and understand the bus system a little better it seems much more connected as it is still very central. In my mind I define central Madrid as anything inside the circular bus route, which goes right outside our front door. I also have big plans for our roof terrace in spring and summer! That said, it would be nice to live somewhere with a little more going on but you can't have everything.

I don't want to bang on about bikes too much, but I've just started cycling on the roads here and have been surprised at how many pot holes there are: its as bad as Manchester! (Anyone who's cycled there over the past couple of years will appreciate that!). I suppose it does get very cold here in the winter, but there's not nearly as much water about and they have a huge municipal workforce that you always see out fixing, cleaning, sweeping and generally doing things. Apart from filling in pot holes apparently.

I worked my last day at the language school yesterday, and although its going to mean working much less, I was a little sad to leave. I think I mentioned before that being a self-employed teacher can be quite a lonely experience and I realised the other day that what I really miss is working with people. Teaching them is one thing but you're not part of a co-operative effort like in other jobs. I suppose the language school came closer to this, even though it was spent doing one-to-one classes, you had a set number of students to get through, as a group of teachers (and then could go out for a drink after). I got a large number of replies for my advert for private classes on tusclasesparticulares (about 15), but the difficulty seems to be in converting the interest into actual classes. Now that I'm actually free, I'm going to put another advert up with my availability so I can confirm them straight away.

I'm off to Valencia (that's "Ba-len-thia" to you) this weekend in a rented car for the 'fallas' fiesta where they burn things and set off fireworks and so on. I don't know that much about it to be honest so I think I'll wait to write about it til after I'm back. One thing is for sure though, it'll take a little longer to get there than it would have a month ago. In response to rising oil prices, partly caused by the uprising in Libya, the government lowered the motorway speed limit from 120km/h to 110 and cut the cost of train fares too. Sounds like a good plan to me, although obviously not everyone agrees (see pic). The government here is really quite deeply unpopular and Zapatero looks certain to lose the next election, which is a shame, cause they still seem able to come up with decent and pretty dynamic policies like that one.

Anyway, to round off this rambling post, here's some pictures of the Plaza de Oriente outside the Palacio Real, which I had a proper wander round for the first time the other day. They do know how to do a good statue in Madrid! Check out the fella with the head by his feet. It's a definate tourist location to go have a look at if you're visiting, and the plaza is nice and 'Spanish'. I bet those cafe's are bloody expensive though so if you're on a budget, nip down one of the streets towards Opera and there's a well placed 100 Montaditos right there (of course) for a €2 beer and mini-sandwich.

 

Word of the day: Perejil - Parsley (it just is, ok?)

Going Private

After telling you all about them in the previous post, I'm going to quit one of my jobs today. After thinking about it a bit I realised what I probably should have a while ago: that €7 an hour is not worth losing my evenings for. I've already met people through that job and I'm not going to lose touch with them if I quit and after being reassured about the availability of private classes I'm going to pursue that option instead. It sounds more interesting as well, I don't like working for companies, particularly ones, frankly, as unprofessional as that language school is (not paying people on time, having enough teachers, having workable speaking rooms). It's provided me with a bit of steady income when I needed it but I much prefer being self-employed, so I'm going to put an ad up today on a couple of sites offering my services for private classes and see what response I get. tusclassesparticulares.com and loquo seem good places to start from what I've heard.

I finally tracked down the power lead for my camera, so I've updated a couple of previous posts with pictures. I had a nice wander on Saturday (on which I didn't take the camera) that took in peacocks in the Royal Gardens (round the corner from my house) and the park just north of Plaza de Espana with a great view over Casa de Campo and an ancient Egyptian temple that was donated by Egypt after Spain helped them restore some temples (or something like that...). It looks pretty strange, sat there in the middle of Spain, but its worth a look. You can go inside too but it was closed.

The Palace, Cathedral and Basilica de San Francisco (my house is just down the hill from the latter)

I also had a crack at vegan tortilla to add to my Spanish vegan repetoire at the weekend. It's made with chickpea flour and has a very different texture to the egg version but is still tasty and actually considerably easier to cook, although we still don't have a pan with a handle so I was still flipping it with a tea towel and immense difficulty.

We've been having other difficulties in our apartment with the electricity. We can't have more than one appliance with an element on at once or the fuse goes, and sometimes just the washing machine on its own is enough. This caused a fair amount of chaos at the weekend when my flatmate had 3 girls staying, all of whom had brought a hairdryer! I've been told that this is the same in all apartments in Madrid, to stop energy surges or something but I think ours must be espeically bad. Either way, there is some serious re-wiring now going on in the building which has led to this piece of installation art appearing outside our front door. I quite like it!

Word of the day: Particulares - Private Classes

A Day In The Life

I had a relatively quiet weekend that included a failed trip to Alcazar de San Juan to see a friend of my girlfriend who turned out not to actually be there... I can tell you however, that they will exchange train tickets without charging you again, which would definately hit a wall of officiousness in the UK. Alcazar? I wouldn't bother.

I thought it might be useful, for anyone planning on moving to Spain to teach English, to hear what a typical weekday is like for me at the moment now that I've settled into some kind of routine. I suppose in some ways it hasn't lived up to the ideas I had and in other ways it's exceeded them.

Torre Picasso in the early morn

So, I usually wake up around 9am, apart from Tuesday when I have to be up at 6 to go teach at 8. This has been pretty horrible until recently as it's still been dark and freezing cold on leaving the house and I have to trek across town on the packed (and still starey) metro, to the heavily concreted area near the Bernabeu to teach for 2 hours in the imposing Torre Picasso. Most days though, I spend the morning messing around, catching up on emails, planning lessons or doing the various things that life demands and when it's warm enough, having breakfast on the roof. Then from Mon-Thu, at 11.30 I have to set off for Aravaca where I teach 4 hours of classes at a friendly little company in the 'suburbs' (theres a little stretch of countryside between them and the main city). I go via the underground Moncloa bus interchange with another massive city gate sitting on top of it, often stopping off to photocopy some pages at the shop there where the two women are perenially amused at my foreigness.

The gate at Moncloa

These are classes that I get through the 'agency' company I work for, for which I have to prepare a lesson plan and lead the class in quite an intense way. On the bus there and back there are snatched views of the Sierra and the 4 huge towers that I keep meaning to go have a look at in the north of the city. After I finish I have an hour and a half to get some food and get to my other job at a language school near Plaza de Espana. I don't have to prepare anything for this and its pretty much a case of sitting and chatting to people in English for half an hour at a time. It doesn't pay nearly as well though! (€7 an hour compared to €17 an hour!). Still, it's handy extra income and being an independent teacher can be a bit of a lonely experience sometimes, so working in a language school has a nice feeling of actually working with other people.

This finishes at 10pm so its usually home for dinner and to relax or out for a couple of drinks (or more on a Friday). I have to say, I don't like working evenings and I'm hoping I can cut back on that soon, but I don't fancy getting up at 6 every morning much either! I don't know why they all want to start at 8, but I've turned down several offers of classes up by the airport at 8 because I just didn't think it was worth my while (an hour there, 2 hour class, an hour back) and I thought I'd just tire myself out. Anyway, all this is earning me around €1800 a month (although I have to pay €178 social security p/m) for roughly 35 hours a week, which is more than I need but is paying off some debts slowly but surely.

In other news, I found an English speaking dentist in Prosperidad, who told me I need to have some dental surgery done. I won't go into the details but it's going to involve stitches in my mouth (shudder) which might make teaching quite interesting for a week or so. It's quite a complicated proceedure and its costing €400 (its not covered by social security). It feels kind of masochistic to be paying all this money for someone to do horrible things to my mouth but I suppose its necessary. That's happening a week on Friday anyway so we'll see how it goes.

A strange thing happened to me on Sunday, I was cooking a vegan paella at my girlfriend's new flat (which is incredible: opposite Principe Pio, newly decorated, with a view over the river and the forest and not too expensive), when I forgot the English word for something and could only remember the Spanish - "do you have any...er, cominos?" Cumin! I'm feeling a lot more confident with my basic Spanish now and will happily break it out in shops. I do wish I'd had this level when I'd arrived though. Still weighing up moving, I've got some numbers that I'm going to call tomorrow (in Spanish) but on the other hand it is very cheap here (€230 a month) and the terrace is looking like more of a reason to stay now it's getting warmer.

Jobseeking 2

As someone pointed out to me, I haven't said much about getting a job and working in Spain yet. This is partly cause I'd been a bit concerned about talking about employers etc but I'll just speak generally.

What it boils down to is this: if you are a native English speaker, you will be able to survive in Madrid. Even if you´re American, and don't have a work visa, you should be able to get by with particulares, or private classes. There are plenty of websites such as www.tuclasesparticulares.es that you can advertise on and by far most of the responses I've had are people looking for conversational English classes, so no training necessary. Theres also plenty of people looking for native speakers to look after or tutor their kids for cash in hand. However, if you don't have paperwork, expect no more than €10 an hour (which still isn't bad!).

If your a native English speaker with an N.I.E. number, in terms of employability and pay expectations, this beats a degree hands down! The demand for learning English is huge here and there are a load of companies and language schools competing for the various strands of business this produces, all seemingly always looking for teachers. You can expect between €10-€20 an hour for these jobs but some will want you to be autonomo, or self employed, which entails paying your own social security (€178 a month).

If your legal, a native English speaker and are fluent in Spanish... what job would you like? Every company wants more native speakers and you should just be careful not to undersell yourself!

I don't know why the demand for learning English is quite so high but in recent years I think there's been a lot of outsourcing to Spain and mergers with UK companies, and it certainly improves your job prospects as a Spaniard if you have good English.

My personal experience has been starting off at a kind of business English agency that sent me off to be embedded in various other companies to teach their staff, which involved some very good, if intense, training. However, they´ve only been able to give me 12 regular hours a week, which really isn´t enough, so I´ve just started wroking evenings at a language school as well. This is much more relaxed than the business side of teaching, and doesn´t involve any lesson planning which is a big bonus. I´m also working on contract for them which means they pay my social security, which works out very well for me! (Although I imagine I´m going to have a nightmare when it comes to filling in a tax return!).

I´ve really warmed to teaching English, I didn´t think I was going to be that suited to it, but now I really enjoy it and have become a bit of a grammar geek. The students are usually quite fun, especially if you have them week in week out at their work - its like a break for them. Spanish people have a good sense of the ridiculous as well so your often laughing your way through a lesson with them. I find it seriously satisfying when I see them improving as well.

So basically, if your a native English speaker, you´ll have no problem getting a job in Madrid (1st Conditional by the way), and if your an EU citizen with the right to work here, the pay is pretty good too. Not a bad way to ride out the recession I´d say, although I am very aware that the Euro may take a nosedive soon, while my debts undertaken to come out here are in Sterling...

I´m actually having all kinds of headaches with various bank accounts at the moment, due to various reasons, but the main one being that I´m in debt in one country and living in another! The caviat I´d add to what I´ve just said is not to expect to get paid instantly and bear in mind the start up costs like apartment deposits etc. I´m only just getting my first full pay cheque now, having moved here in mid-October but hopefully by mid January things should have levelled out a bit!

The Roof Terrace, The Market and The Squat

I'm feeling much more like I actually live in Madrid now. I've settled into the apartment, bought some essentials (a stereo was first on my list), and started my job proper which has gone pretty well. I'm basically teaching the whole of a small financial services company out in a little very well kept suburb in north east Madrid. Its very like the training, but much less intense, with 4 hours of classes Tuesday to Thursday afternoons. I think they all think I'm a bit crazy (my teaching style is very animated) but they seem to be enjoying it. I find myself being absolutely terrified before I start an afternoons lessons, then when they start I go into teacher mode and it goes by in a flash and I walk out thinking that it was a breeze, only to be terrified all over again the next day!

We also realised that we've got access to our appartment building's roof terrace, from which you can see the Palacio Real, the Cathedral, the mountains and the Basillica de San Francisco which is just up a set of stairs behind our building where the local tramps go to sleep unhassled. The terrace is probably the best thing about the apartment, its a great place to have a beer and watch the sunset after work! We had a few people round last night for a mini flat warming, including two friends from Manchester who are hitching down to Lisbon to get jobs on a boat headed for South America.

The Palacio Real and Cathedral from our roof

Mountains in the distance

We all headed out today to see the famous and spralling El Rastro market, led by Melissa who's been in Madrid for a couple of years and knows her way around. First stop was for 'tostas', open sandwiches with various toppings - including a Madrid speciality only for the brave: baby eels - and a hangover fighting sangria from a bustling little place that serves nothing else. Then off into the market, which fills the streets and stretches almost halfway across old Madrid, selling everything from antiques to clothes to pornographic pocket watches. It's absolutely crammed full of people and you have to just flow along taking it all in. We stopped off in near Calle Mayor for chocolate con churros, another Madrid speciality which I still hadn't tried, fried pastry tubes dunked in hot chocolate so thick you feel you might be in danger of suffocation.

Inside the cigarette factory

After a quick stop off at 100 Montaditos, we went down to Lavapies to a massive old cigarette factory which has been squatted and taken over as a kind of huge social centre with a free shop, a bar, gardens growing veg and free classes in everything from Peruvian dancing to Russian (as well as one mysteriously listed as 'Gimp/Blender'). I have no idea how they've managed to make it work but it looks absolutely incredible! A great atmosphere, with people playing music together in the bar and generally hanging out. I want to start doing Spanish classes their and might offer to put on some English classes given my new skill set. I certainly want to find out how it works, I know people who have been trying to start a social centre in Manchester but have hit a bit of a brick wall, but if they came and saw this I guarantee they'd be right back on it. Anyway, I'll write more about this as and when I find out more.

I nearly forgot, I was on the radio on Friday along with my fellow training graduates. The company has radio and TV channels broadcasting to the whole of Spain and we got to be the guests on a show hosted by the guy in the videos they sent us before our interviews, a bit of a celebrity to us (sad, I know). So we chatted away for an hour, and only when it finished did he tell us it had about 400,000 listeners! Seems like a good way to get some experience doing that kind of thing though, and I think I might pitch a show if I can come up with a decent idea.

I don't like rolling all this into one big post so I'm going to try and write something here everyday or at least other day from now on, seeing as I'm only working 12 hours a week for now. Too much happens everyday to cover a whole week in a post!

A Scam and an Apartment

Unexpectedly, we have an apartment!

We went to look at a place with Luke's (new flatmate) girlfriend's mum who works in the Senate and she managed to convince the landlord to let us move in today, so we went for it, despite it being a bit of a grandma flat. Old mahogany panelled cabinet thing all down one wall, chandellier things on the ceiling and all of it. I reckon we can make it wicked though, I've got a couple of ideas to supe it up a treat. Its just south of La Latina, near Puerta del Toledo, the old city gate to Toledo, just outside old Madrid. We'd been manically looking for a place since Friday but most of the places we looked at wanted 3 months up front - 1st months rent, 1 month as deposit and 1 month in agency fees - and we just couldn't afford it. Then we found what seemed like too good a deal to be true on the internet, 300 Euros a month, great looking flat, being rented by a guy who had to move to London urgently and wanted to get the money quick. And then he started talking about transferring money through Western Union... hmmm. Soon enough we found another 300 Euro a month flat from a guy who had to move to London urgently and needed the money quick... yeah, massive scam. But when your desperate for a flat in a country where you don't know the score, I can see how a lot of people must fall for it, so potential ex-pats beware!

In the end though, we've decided to get this place, for 700 a month between 3, for a month or two while we find somewhere better. I start work tomorrow, and the thought of getting up in that hostel again was just not really an option! Its not bad though, and only a couple of minutes walk from La Latina which I look forward to exploring more thoroughly. We only had to pay 2 months up front as well, apparently pretty much all the flats advertised on the internet are through agencies that charge fees but ones with the day-glo orange 'aquilar' signs that you see in the street everywhere are just private lets so no fees.

I've had to run around getting my NIE number today so I can work, and I've got more to do tomorrow, going to the Hacienda (the equivalent of a City Council Centre Point, not a Manchester nightclub) to properly register as self-employed. If you didn't have a company sorting it out for you, I don't know how you'd get one, apparently it takes months. After that, I'm off to this company to teach some execs. Had two weeks practicing and got my lessons planned and so on so should be alright but I'm still a bit nervous.

I had a surprising moment in one of my practice classes which I forgot to mention actually. Doing a simple question and answer exercise, one student mentioned the new Health Minister. Before I knew it, I was facilitating a discussion (in English, advanced class) about the politics of the Spanish Health Department! Now, I follow British politics pretty closely, but I don't think I could even tell you who our Health Minister is, let alone get worked up about them! Subsequent conversations have confirmed that most people in Spain are incredibly clued up about politics and keep a very close eye on (apparently all of) their politicians. Since then we got told very clearly, in class: no politics, no football and no relationships. Apparently there have been fights over each...

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!

Iberian Jobseeking

The hostel owner appears to have gone away for a couple of days, which is probably just as well as he'd have been distraught yesterday – it absolutely tipped it down! Rivers of water running down the streets. Apparently it only rains that hard once a year, and everyone looked very shell-shocked by the whole thing, particularly not being able to sit on the street at cafes. Jorge's disappearance also means that there's another guy on the hostel desk, with a very relaxed attitude to staying up drinking loudly in the kitchen til 5am...

Heavy rain in Sol

Anyway, the main thrust of this post is supposed to be about how I went about getting a job before I set off, for anyone wanting to do the same thing in Spain or probably most of Europe. The thing is, I can't exactly remember how I got it! I put a lot of time into first researching generally getting a job in Spain and then – having the obvious essential thing in most jobs would be speaking Spanish – searching 'English speaking jobs in Spain/Barcelona/Madrid' as well as bombarding every English or Irish bar I could find the email address for, regaling them with tales of my hardwork and enthusiasm for pulling pints and how I was 'ready to jump on a train tomorrow'. The latter turned out to be a bit of a dead end. I only got one reply from what must've been about 30 emails and when they realised I wasn't already in Barcelona, they said sorry but we need someone right away. In hindsight, it wouldn't have been as easy as just turning up – you need a NIE number before you can work in Spain and in big cities that takes about 2 weeks (you need an address in Spain as well so it would be difficult to get before you set off).

Searching for English speaking jobs inevitably involved wading through a lot of guff on Google but there were some good leads in it. Unfortunately this is where my bad memory comes into play - I also searched Gumtree and some other jobs sites and can't remember exactly where or how I found the Vaughan Systems teaching job but it was definitely the best one I'd found and I didn't hestitate to send off my CV (slightly altered from the bar version) and give it a go. I then had to go to London for an interview, feeling a bit stupid in my suit, which was fairly straight forward. It seems they're really just looking for enthusiastic and talkative people with decent English. The drawback, however, is that I haven't definitely got the job yet – the two week training is an ongoing assessment and only an average of 50% make it through, so I am out here on quite a limb as well as having invested a fair bit of cash into getting to London for the interview, buying some 'business casual' attire and time into learning all this grammar, and if I don't get through that'll all largely be in vain.

On my searches I'd also seen a lot of au pair jobs, but they were all looking for women so I stopped looking at them after a while, but just before I left, a friend sent me a link to an agency looking for both men and women (MCS) and they got back to me straight away, offering a family to go and stay with while being an 'English older brother' to their three sons. It sounded quite fun really, and I was sad to turn it down but it only paid 80 Euro's a week living allowance and they lived a little bit out from the centre. Still, I told the agency about my situation and said I'd get back to them if this falls through so at least I have a plan B. I actually met an American girl yesterday working as an au pair and she said it was quite good but at the same time there wasn't much opportunity to meet people or have your own space.

It can be quite a lonely experience, moving to a new city where you don't know anyone and especially where you don't speak the language but I've realised over the past couple of days the only way around this is just to launch yourself into it. Anyone speaking English, holding a dictionary or a guidebook is now your friend, and you can't be shy with what little Spanish you have – you just have to go for it and look like a bit of a fool talking in English if necessary, expressions and gestures can pretty much get most things across. I got chatting to a group of locals in a bar the other night and, although the guy I spent most of the time talking to didn't speak any English, I definitely understood that he was trying to get me to sleep with his sister-in-law!

Anyway, today's the end of my wow-isn't-Madrid-so-cool four day holiday and now its onto the actual everyday of living and working here. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ready? Set? Sort of.

I only decided to move to Spain a couple of weeks ago, in Paris actually, cheesily enough watching the sunset from the steps of Sacre Cour. Why move to London when you can move anywhere? I want to learn Spanish and want to move somewhere different, definately somewhere warmer, but not too far away. So, after a slight detour to Bestival, I sat down and started doing some research into moving to Spain.

I was going to need a job, money being a bit tight, so I thought I'd start there. First problem: I don't speak Spanish. A few searches for 'English speaking jobs in Spain' later and things weren't looking good, unemployment is currently around 40% in Spain and the essential thing most websites advised was being able to speak the language.

Undeterred, I set about finding email addresses for every English and Irish bar in Madrid and Barcelona (I hadn't made up my mind where exactly I was going at this point - wherever they would give me a job was my thinking). Eventually, after countless 'Enthusiastic UK barman seeks job' emails, I came across a couple of teaching jobs that didn't require any Spanish. I've never taught before but worth a try right? To cut a long story short, after an interview in London, I start training for Vaughan Systems in Madrid next Monday (more about this later).

Last minute travel plans ensued. Not wanting to fly (for environmental and luggage reasons), I tried to book a train which sounded amazing, like a hotel on rails: beds, a dining car, a bar, watching the sunrise over breakfast and all that. My advice: book it early! Last minute is near impossible, especially if your on a budget, so instead I'm getting on a Eurolines bus at 8am tomorrow morning for a gruelling 28 hour coach journey with no beds, no dining car, no bar, no sunrise and no breakfast.

Hostel booked for a couple of weeks during the training, I'm hoping to meet some people and find a flat before long. I've been thinking a good way to learn Spanish would be to move in with some non-English speaking Spaniards but on the other hand that might be a little too deep end. Anyway, I've got a couple of days to get orientated in this city I've never been to, before I start the (apparently very intense) training.

I have clothes, a passport, a laptop, a trumpet, and 2 pairs of boxers (I forgot the rest), wish me luck!