Episode 12: No I am not a student!

It’s happened to me twice this week, two different teachers (or staff members) have spoken to me as if I’m actually a student in the school, I mean okay I’m about two years older than some of the students but really? I mean going by hair colour alone I stick out like a sore thumb, so that must mean there’s a foreigner in the school, didn’t we hire an English person to be a *ahem* teacher a few weeks ago? Yes. Yes you did. I am that teacher.

In total it’s happened three times, the first being a few weeks ago, I had a few of the students in the mediació room for a lesson (although the main purpose of this room is for a teacher to take a student if there’s problems with their behaviour or something like that, so that’s also confused people at first whenever I’ve told them I’ve had lessons in there) and we needed another chair, so I went to the foreign language office next door, and as I was unlocking it I heard “Què fas?” From beside me, look and it’s, well, I don’t remember ever seeing this person before, but he’s obviously a teacher – or secretary as it turned out, now I would have happily answered along the lines of “Necesitamos otra silla para la clase entonces la voy a coger de aquí.” Only my students were right there, meaning I no hablo Español, so after telling him in English that I didn’t understand, even though I did, one of them came out with something in Catalan which I assume was what I would have said anyway because he looked a bit like ‘wait, you’re a teacher? As you were’ and walked off. I wouldn’t mind but I even had a key and was unlocking the door with said key at the time, I doubt they give keys to the students.

But yeah onto this week, I went into the aula de professors (I don’t actually remember why) and heard someone behind me saying “Diga…Chico, diga.” Oh there must be a student in he – wait, are you talking to me? So I turned round like “¿Perdona?” And I think that was when she twigged because she said “¡Ah, disculpa!” Then the second time it happened was a case of arriving as late for a lesson as physically possible without it actually being classed as late, and one of the staff members was like “Amb qui tens classe?” “Segundo de Batxillerat,” “Sì, però quin professor?” “Pues…yo soy el professor.” And the look on his face was just ‘wait, what?!’ And I continued to my classroom.

On a plus side, I discovered how cheap Amposta can be when I went out to watch El Clásico in quite possibly the cleverest named bar I have ever seen: 20age, which I kept calling Age 20, or 20, but 20 in Catalan is vint, so read that again with vint in place of 20: vintage. You clever clever people. In fact on about bars, as young as I must look to some of the staff in the school I haven't once been ID'd yet. So anyway I went there and think I was the only one there without a Barça shirt (I REALLY need to buy one), got sat down and ordered a beer, along it came with a small bowl of olives and onions, not too shabby, so a couple of hours, 4 beers, and 6 goals later (I caught the end of Betis-Valencia while I was there) I went to pay and had a 20€ note at the ready, so the bargirl comes up to me, “dos cuarenta” Wait what? I’m here with 20 euros and you’re asking me for small change? 60 cents a beer? Me gusta! So I kept the note in my wallet and gave her most of my shrapnel, and went outside to ring my mum as she’d asked a few minutes beforehand, 18 minutes and 5,85€ later we hung up, that was an 18-minute phone call to my mum that would have bought me almost ten beers. That is actually quite incredible.

Episode 11: Barça 5-0 Levante, Gavin 2-4 Barcelona, and why it’s always inglés and never ingles

So last week I’m in class and it’s the end of unit exam, with the most hilarious listening part ever, when it came along Carme put the CD in the player, and then the voices came on, luckily I was stood at the back of the room so none of the students could see my reaction, but they just sounded like utter goons, just phrases like “it’s reeeeally exciting being surrounded by huuge mountains every day” (on about snowboarding) and even Carme who isn’t English looked at me like ‘yeah, this is totally how you guys speak(!)’, but before the exam she took in all their notebooks to mark them, they did their own front covers and everything, some said “English”, others said “Anglès”, and others said “Angles” which means, well, angles. No, seriously. But anyway, we then got talking about what it was in Castellano, where inglés means English, and ingles means bikini lines, apparently…so talking about bikinis instead of English…works for me!

And along came another ‘I don’t speak Catalan, honest!’ moment when the advance copy of the school’s magazine came in with an exclusive interview with the new English person, now we had the interview in English but it was all translated into Catalan, and I’m looking through it like “I think that’s mistranslated, that’s not what I said” etc. this was at the front of the room with Carme so away from the students, until some of them decided they needed help with something and figured the best course of action was to go to Carme, in full view of me reading this interview, I’m not sure this whole ‘I no speako Spanish’ thing will last much longer.

This is two rows from the very top.

But anyway to the 4-day weekend, along came Saturday and my sixth trip to Barcelona, no official business or anything, just going to get drunk and watch some football, then get drunk some more, then get a bus to Olesa, then drink a few more, simples. So got there, met George, went straight to the Irish bar where we’d watched the England match, and I had pretty much the perfect seat: screen on the left – Wigan v Arsenal, middle screen – Wales v Australia, screen on the right – Scum v Norwich, right then, get the beers in and let’s watch some sport! About 10 beers and 4 matches later we leave and make our way to, first of all Burger King, where they did beer, highly impressed, and then the Camp Nou and got in the queue for tickets, and there were guys there in the queue trying to sell tickets! Yeah because that’s real for 10 Euros mate, although I’m honing my pronunciation of “Ich spreche kein Spanish” because I figure less of them know German than English, but yeah we got to the window and made the mistake of not asking for our tickets together, meaning we ended up almost at opposite ends of the ground, but there were plenty of free seats up in the very top of the stadium so we ended up sat together anyway, then I went to the toilet figuring it was too early in the match for me to miss a goal…or not…bloody Fàbregas. So a while later into the match we decided it was beer o’clock again, and it wasn’t badly priced at all, the top stadium in the country, one of the best in Europe, and a beer was 3,20€, alright I’ll have one of – wait, alcohol free?! The fuck is this?! Cervesa sense alcohol? And it even had it in English underneath as if to just rub it in, there do not serve alcoholic beverages at the Camp Nou. I don’t even… So we went for the next best thing, a massive tub of popcorn. Yes, popcorn. This was also 3,20€ but somehow that much less satisfying, and saltier than the Dead Sea, leaving us gagging for a drink that we didn’t want because it had no friggin’ alcohol! Give them their due it’s one way of making people spend money, but I was resilient and refused to spend anything else save for the bus ticket to Olesa, then drinks, many drinks, think we must’ve stayed out ‘til about 4 or something, and this is just in the smaller bars, not a nightclub in sight, and just like last weekend I somehow functioned on about 5 hours sleep and la madre de todas las resacas, it was a case of ‘this place looks good for a huge fuckoff bacon sandwich and a huge coffee with plenty of sugar’, which it was, and got me through the day about as far as arriving back in Barcelona, bloody George gets his trains into Barcelona for 3,05€ where I’m paying upwards of 11, but anyway I bought my ticket back out to Amposta, got on the train and slept, only this time I’d know where my stop is when the speakers practically yell “PROPERA PARADA L’ALDEA-AMPOSTA” in my ear, it really was that loud, so slept as best I could, then got to L’Aldea and just couldn’t wait to get home, but from what I knew about the timetables I’d have to wait about half an hour for the bus first, I would have known more but some twat thought it’d be funny to rip down the timetable at the bus stop. So I’m there waiting and not knowing how much longer I actually will be waiting, turned out to be an hour, could’ve been worse, but I got on, got sat down, and really wanted to sleep, but we know what happened last time I did that now don’t we? So I braved it until getting home, where I finally just crawled into bed and slept like a baby.