squeeze the minutes out of the day.

I came to Spain to relax. To take it slow. To drink beer at lunch, and for that to be a socially acceptable choice, especially during the work week. Yet I find myself sprinting around Madrid like a some kind of electrified, self-propelled pinball. I use my Abono (metropass) like Paris Hilton uses her credit card. My days start at 9 and finish sometime around 9 or 10. What am I doing? Until 1 or 2, I work at a school, in Infantil. I teach preschool (Today, first thing, someone in my class vomitted. Not from being hungover). Then, I have some free time, followed by private classes, which leads to the sprint to the center of Madrid for language classes (French or Arabic, depending). I get home, and recently I started knitting. My roommates made me sit in the rocking chair, and wear my grandmother's sweater...because I'm an 80 year old woman. Back to the point. You can take the girl out of America, but you can't take America out of the girl. There has to be a reason for that cliché...a reason being the truth. Yes, I am in Spain, and I do take the time to slow down, but I still have some strange desire to run around in a tizzy for much of my day. Really, the downside is the unavailability of to-go coffee cups. Am I contributing less to global warming and trash heaps? Yes. Am I miming drinking coffee on the metro? Yes. Yes, I am.

reasons i shouldn't be a preschool teacher

Today, I realized my job description reads like this: color, draw, sing, cut, paste, play duck duck goose. Hazards include debilitizing stomach viruses and the HI flu. I'm not sure if I'm in the right profession. One, I don't even really like kids that much. I like kids more than other things, including but not limited to: anchovies, stomach viruses, canned mushrooms, and passive aggressive behavior. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, because really, kids are not that bad. In large groups, they can be annoying, loud, and very silly, but they generally aren't mean-spirited or out to get you. Generally. Two: I don't think of myself as particularly animated, which is really important if you are a preschool teacher. I've seen YouTube videos, and I just cannot get that excited about the Five Little Pumpkins. It's madness. And the level of animation spikes when you have to speak to them in a language they don't understand. The Five Little Pumpkins are the best and most AMAZING thing in the entire world!!(The real deal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9r65lQUqMg ) Three: Working with children makes you act like a child. It's not proven, but childish behavior at inappropriate times can be linked to be surrounded by mountains of children day in and day out. Having to remind yourself that you are the adult in any given situation is disconcerting, to say the least. Well, now that I've finished writing about how ill-suited I am for my current position, I better get back to it. The children are waiting!