Pause...and reflect

I took this title from a weekly assignment I give my summer Study Skills students. Since the program where I am currently teaching is about to end and the new school year is about to begin I thought it was time I took my own advice and reflected on my experiences teaching English in Spain after the pause of summer.

I’m about to begin as a first time teacher in a private school in Baltimore, Maryland teaching Spanish I. I feel in a way like I’m just picking up where I left off, teaching a foreign language to high school students. Of course, I’ll be teaching a different language in a different country. But teaching FLs is basically the same anywhere. You have to combat the urge to speak in the first language while instilling in the students the value of foreign language learning. It’s not an easy task no matter how important the language is, nor how “bright” your students are.

When I look back on my experiences in Spain, however, I don’t focus on the teaching aspects, as I’m sure you could have guessed by reading the themes of my blogs. Rarely did I have much fodder for reflection from my 12 hours a week as an assistant English teacher. Rather, it was the lifestyle there that most inspired me. As I am stuck indoors working more hours than contracted for, I miss the sunshine of the south of Spain, yet I shudder at the thought of stepping out into the muggy mid-Atlantic summer humidity. The five minute walk from my car to the office is all the time I care to spend outside. I miss those days when I had hours to lounge on the pebbly Mediterranean beach, basking in the strong rays. No longer does my skin come close to matching the caramel tones of my mixed bf. In fact, his beautiful Brazilian mother asked me when she saw me why I was so white if I had just come back from Spain. Two months had gone by.

It’s sad, but paleness is a fact of life on the East coast, and it’s not because we don’t have UV rays. Our workaholic culture keeps us under fluorescent bulbs from 9 to 5, effectively eliminating all the hours of peak sunlight from our existence. It could be that my recent nostalgia for Spain is just a vitamin D withdrawal, but I think it has more to do with that Protestant work ethic than anything else. With my boss demanding attendance sheets and my new job demanding contracts and fingerprints while I juggle family and social demands I feel like I’m “meeting myself on the road,” as my mother so aptly put it.

It’s times like these when I need to stop and remember how things are in Spain. I remember those Sundays when we couldn’t even buy a light bulb because every store was closed. The national culture demands that citizens take time to spend with family and friends, or just relax on the couch during siesta. A tradition that was at first frustrating to me, a hard-working American accustomed to having around-the-clock accessibility to common necessities, later became a blessing. I learned to relax, to go play soccer on the beach without wondering what time it was, using only the setting sun to tell me when it was time to call it a day. I learned to take naps during the day without scolding myself for being lazy and unproductive. And while I have to tailor these lessons to American culture now that I have been reintroduced to it, I don’t think they are entirely useless. When I get the feeling that I am meeting myself on the road, I know that it’s time to take a Spanish Sunday to lay around and say “no” to social demands. If my year in Spain was a necessary step in my life’s journey, I think it was to teach me this lesson: pause…and reflect.