My Own Great Expectations.

Day 64

Monday

Not even the moonlight dared tread the weathered concrete, timidly awaiting the tardy approach of the sun at 7am. Beating the sun to the day, I was out to catch the early train, having eagerly awaited Monday morning for the past week and a half, desperate to work. I anxiously checked and re-checked the time, to make sure I wasn’t late, but also to make sure I wasn’t too early. As eager as I might have been to get to work, I wasn’t willing to get to the train station an hour early; sleep would take priority in that case. Monday morning commutes are always a bit disconcerting to my circadian rhythm. Not because it’s Monday morning per se, but because I wake up and its dark, I take the train through the dark countryside, knowing cities on the hill sides only by the blanketed constellation it alights in cascading patterns over the undulating land, and I arrive in Álora, and walk to school in the dark, when it is easily almost 8:30am. I have a slight feeling of excitement as I journey, as if I were a spy, out before the world knew my mission, on a secret operation. No one is at the school either. I’m 30 minutes early, much too early for any one else to arrive. They’ll all come in about 30 minutes, just in time for school to start in 30 minutes. I break out Dickens, “Great Expectations” and get ready for the day to get itself in gear.

But nothing goes like I’d thought it would. Even doing the most simple of activities took an irritatingly complicated turn. The students, clearly one track minded, couldn’t understand the letters I wrote on the board, unable to decipher my code of “Merry Christmas” Asking them what was confusing a student ran to the board and pointed to my ‘r’. “What letter is that?” they asked. Wrinkling my brow in disappointment and earnest exasperation I said, “an ‘r’” Of course. The teacher scurried up and said I had to write the ‘r’ as a cursive ‘r’ otherwise they wouldn’t know what letter it was. Pausing to breathe and discompose my face of disbelief, I chuckled and said, “Ok. But do you mean to tell me that they haven’t understood what I’ve written for the past 2 and half months?? And as well, how do they get along reading anything printed, last I checked my ‘r’ looked remarkably similar to the ‘r’ in books, newspapers and anything printed off a computer. Perhaps we should make this a learning moment and leave my ‘r’s so they’ll learn what ‘American’ writing looks like?” the teacher probably didn’t understand anything I had said because in my building irritation, my rhythm sped up and I was running through my words like a baseball shattering a window pane. Then a pause settled in between the gaze between me and the teacher and the audience of curious 1st graders. And then the teacher said, “Perhaps it is best that you write the ‘r’ as cursive.” I laughed and erased the message and wrote it in capital letters.

Escaping to a different type of crowd later that night, some friends and I went to the anniversary celebration of a local club. The waitresses wandered the crowd carrying plates of finger food, cheese, ham things, tiny bocadillos, small flans and small PB sandwiches. We toasted champagne that seemed to be hemorrhaging grenadine and celebrated my flat mate’s last night in Malaga before he left to go home for the holiday break. Proudly parading his self declared “swooping v-neck” sweater, I could only laugh at his fashion forwardness and the faux-glamour of the club. What a Monday, such great expectations…