There is, I swear a built-in self-destruct button in the human animal.
Having been in my present school for a lengthy two days and being subject to overweening pride, I decided to take a different route to work today. And was promptly confronted by a traffic jam!
Even though I was starting work at the obscenely early time of 8.15 am I had left a substantial number of minutes as a buffer by starting off on my journey in what looked like the middle of the night. I was therefore only mildly extremely worried by the seemingly unending, stationary line of traffic whose blinking red tail lights seemed to mock my impatience.
In what seemed like hours but was in fact just a few minutes I passed the bottle neck and was soon trundling on my way to the hills of Barcelona. And I had time to have a cup of tea before I took my first class.
The lady whose place I am taking has been to the doctor and now is definitely going to be away for the rest of the week and until at least next Monday.
The members of staff are very accepting and open; the characters among the teachers are beginning to emerge. A firm (generally incoherent) friendship has been established between the female PE teacher and me. She was the person who was sent to drag me away from a class where I had failed to hear the bell or siren and was happily teaching on well into my next period. “Can you run!” she urged me as I was making my sedate way down the various flights of steps to my class. “Yes I can,” I replied, “but I choose not to.” On the basis of that scintillating badinage she now refers to me as ‘mi amigo Estevan.’
It was a sunny day today and so I walked out onto the extensive balcony which runs outside the staff room in the hold house which was the place where the original school was established. In spite of some extraneous trees the view is astonishing taking in the whole of the city and looking down towards the sea. I am making the most of it before my brief tenure of this job is relinquished to its normal teacher!
The Head of Department asked me about book suggestions today so I was able to produce a critically annotated list for her perusal. The computers in the staffroom in the Old Building are directly linked to the photocopier which is also in the staffroom. To a teacher the meaning contained in the previous sentence will suggest the whole ethos of the school and the way that teachers operate there!
I am still trying to work out what staff the school actually has. Because of the fragmented and vertically differentiated layout of the school campus there are staff rooms in each building. I am beginning to recognize some faces and link them to a particular location but various other people just seem to come and go.
During the last period I was reading through a book which is published each year by the school in which the winning entries in a short story competition form the content. There were two Spanish teachers who I had never seen before. They were busily consuming the chocolates that a French teacher had brought into the school to celebrate her birthday.
After about ten minutes or so a young casually dressed motorcyclist came in, took off his helmet and made himself a cup of coffee after greeting all the other members of staff. He chatted, joined the other teachers in eating the chocolates, helped himself to one of the little pastries a tray of which had appeared for no apparent reason and then left.
Who was he? And who was his mate? They are obviously part of the scene here, though I can’t explain in what way they fit in.
Having been in my present school for a lengthy two days and being subject to overweening pride, I decided to take a different route to work today. And was promptly confronted by a traffic jam!
Even though I was starting work at the obscenely early time of 8.15 am I had left a substantial number of minutes as a buffer by starting off on my journey in what looked like the middle of the night. I was therefore only mildly extremely worried by the seemingly unending, stationary line of traffic whose blinking red tail lights seemed to mock my impatience.
In what seemed like hours but was in fact just a few minutes I passed the bottle neck and was soon trundling on my way to the hills of Barcelona. And I had time to have a cup of tea before I took my first class.
The lady whose place I am taking has been to the doctor and now is definitely going to be away for the rest of the week and until at least next Monday.
The members of staff are very accepting and open; the characters among the teachers are beginning to emerge. A firm (generally incoherent) friendship has been established between the female PE teacher and me. She was the person who was sent to drag me away from a class where I had failed to hear the bell or siren and was happily teaching on well into my next period. “Can you run!” she urged me as I was making my sedate way down the various flights of steps to my class. “Yes I can,” I replied, “but I choose not to.” On the basis of that scintillating badinage she now refers to me as ‘mi amigo Estevan.’
It was a sunny day today and so I walked out onto the extensive balcony which runs outside the staff room in the hold house which was the place where the original school was established. In spite of some extraneous trees the view is astonishing taking in the whole of the city and looking down towards the sea. I am making the most of it before my brief tenure of this job is relinquished to its normal teacher!
The Head of Department asked me about book suggestions today so I was able to produce a critically annotated list for her perusal. The computers in the staffroom in the Old Building are directly linked to the photocopier which is also in the staffroom. To a teacher the meaning contained in the previous sentence will suggest the whole ethos of the school and the way that teachers operate there!
I am still trying to work out what staff the school actually has. Because of the fragmented and vertically differentiated layout of the school campus there are staff rooms in each building. I am beginning to recognize some faces and link them to a particular location but various other people just seem to come and go.
During the last period I was reading through a book which is published each year by the school in which the winning entries in a short story competition form the content. There were two Spanish teachers who I had never seen before. They were busily consuming the chocolates that a French teacher had brought into the school to celebrate her birthday.
After about ten minutes or so a young casually dressed motorcyclist came in, took off his helmet and made himself a cup of coffee after greeting all the other members of staff. He chatted, joined the other teachers in eating the chocolates, helped himself to one of the little pastries a tray of which had appeared for no apparent reason and then left.
Who was he? And who was his mate? They are obviously part of the scene here, though I can’t explain in what way they fit in.
It all gives me something about which to speculate.
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