Thursday 8 September 2011

How did I get here?

Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop - Lewis Carroll

Beginning at the beginning is all very well, but where, or more accurately when, is the beginning? It would be tedious to start at birth, and worse to start at conception. So the beginning for me is almost a year ago, when completing five years of university catapulted me into the pedagogic world in Catalunya. I might add with some confidence that I certainly arrived in style...of a shambolic nature.

I blame Liverpool John Lennon Airport and coffee. If it hadn't been for the belated caffeine stop and hour-long queue, I wouldn't have had to dash through the airport with only one boot on and holding my belt in the same hand as my boarding-pass. It wasn't exactly how I planned on boarding the plane. At least the flight itself was relatively peaceful, sans young lungs being tested at high altitudes; the dull murmur was punctuated only by the bored tones of the pilot offering us the vital information of the air temperature outside the aircraft, and the cabin crew attempting to sell overpriced tobacco. Thinking about it, perhaps this was why the pilot felt it necessary to inform us of the air temperature at 30 000 ft; perhaps he was hinting for the smokers to wrap up warm before going outside.

Once back on terra firma, I was thwarted again, this time by technology. My decrepit Spanish phone, bought years ago in Madrid, insisted that the number didn't exist. This was slightly concerning, for I hadn't even an address of the language academy in Cassa de la Selva or for my flat, which, in hindsight, was a bit of a rookie error. However, not to be discouraged (for this is a useless sort of feeling), I snaked the winding roads to Cassa via bus, weary but with the singular task of hunting down anywhere that looked vaguely like a language school. Or a bed.

The gods must have been feeling rather generous that night, for who should drive past but my landlady's mother. Usually, when a huge black car brakes sharply and a shadowy figure jumps out at you, instinct screams at you to run. Unfortunately for me, I was laden with a bulky backpack and so couldn't even contemplate running away a la Monty Python; any effort would have left me stranded belly up like a tortoise flipped cruelly on its shell. When my name was called, however, all fear and alarm melted away like chocolate on a window-sill on a hot summer's day, and I was bundled into the car and dumped like a little waif on the doorstep of the academy. Imagine my employers' relief to discover I wasn't actually dead, or worse, a figment of their combined imaginations.

A year on, I can see how I got here: with a great deal of luck.

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