How many times have you been at a dinner or a party and someone says "Oh! You're a doctor? Can you take a look at this puss-filled, rancid growth on my fat roll?".
Or if you're a lawyer, it goes "Oh! you're a lawyer? Well, I've got a question for you... you see, I'm going through a divorce and my wife kidnapped my kids and tried to poison me with anti-freeze. Who gets the lake house?"
Well, I can tell you from personal experience that this happens to English teachers, too.
At the same cocktail party with Mr. Anti-Freeze and Ms. Rancid Growth, we meet MEESTER I LIKE PRACTEES.
Not only does he spend 30 minutes trying to put together a pathetic sentence about his trip to New York in 1985...
But he also wants me to teach his kids English.
Let's not kid ourselves.
He really just wants you to be a babysitter and talk to his kids in English.
Because they just absorb it, right?
That's how it works, right?
Right?
Normally, in Spain, if you meet an Anglophone, it's a freelance teacher.
Student turnover is fast because people always manage to find a reason to stop having class.
So freelance teachers are always looking for more students.
Most English speakers stay in Spain for two years.
In the first year, you're having a blast.
In the second year, you start to miss home.
In the third year, people who wanted a little adventure go back home and those that stay are the ones with binding ties - such as spouses and thriving businesses.
I stayed - I've got a wife and a full-time job.
So that's what I tell MEESTER I LIKE PRACTEES.
"Look, man, I've got a job and I'm really not looking for any more work right now, but thanks."
"DO YOU.... YOU HAS FRIENDS THAT IS CAN?"
Remember the people that went back after two years?
That's my English-speaking friends.
Now, my friends here are mostly Spanish.
A similar thing happens to translators.
A friend calls you and says "hey, would you mind translating something for me?".
This means you're not going to get paid.
Let's minimize the damage.
"OK, I guess. How long is it?"
"Not long at all... like three pages or so. I'll send it to you tomorrow."
When you get the document, it's a 25 page engineering report in PDF.
Your "friend" has just dicked you out of a week of work and around 1000 bones.
So, no, I don't want to teach your snot-nosed, spoiled brat, hellraising rugrat kids.
And no, I don't want to translate your Bible-sized doctoral thesis for free.
Go find some other young, ambitious, Justin Beiber-looking American fresh of the boat to take advantage of.
Lesson learned.
This isn't this redneck's first rodeo.
It's also fun when the same thing happens Stateside. "Oh, I want to learn Spanish, can you teach me?" Sure, just give me a couple of hours each day for around five years, and we'll get it done!
ResponderEliminarI really like this one: "You know Spanish?!?! Talk to my kid in Spanish! You know, they're little sponges!" Really? You want me to goo-goo-gah-gah to your kid for five minutes in another language while the rest of the crowd doesn't understand me and snickers at me? I'll pass.
ResponderEliminarI just found this blog via Kaley's Y Mucho Más, where I read your interview. I'm on there too with my Spanish bf, from a post almost a year ago. Anyway, I found myself identifying with this post 100%!
ResponderEliminarWhile I have been in Spain long enough to have gotten over the 'I am in Spain and must practice so therefore I will avoid English and Americans like the plague' mentality and can appreciate a good conversation in English, nothing irks me more than when I'm socializing with my Spanish friends and a new acquaintance with somewhere between mediocre and horrendous English insists upon practicing even when my responses continue to be in Spanish. What we could have said in 20 seconds stretches on to become 10 minutes, with just a lot of "oh?" and "uh-huh"s on my part. It reminds me of the scene from Friends where Rachel is at the hospital waiting for someone to have a baby and starts hitting on the cute OB-GYN, and awkwardly states that she, as a waitress at a coffee shop, just can't stand to even see another cup of coffee when she gets home, and asks if it's the same for him in his line of work. Well, that's how I feel with mangled English. Not that I don't want to help, but after a whole day of patiently deducing what the students are saying from a mangled jumble of slow and mispronounced words, that is NOT what I'm about to do while I've got a beer in my hand!
Hi Katie! So glad to get your comment, and relieved to see that I'm not the only one. Sometimes I drink my whole beer and feel like I'm gonna have to chew up the glass too before someone spits out their complete thought. We should team up to get the English level where it needs to be and not have to suffer this anymore! Let me know if you have any plans in the works I can participate in... hahaha... So many times I feel like I'm being used for a free English lesson..
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