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.