Mexico, cycling Britain, then Barcelona

day 8

As usual I woke up to an almost pitch black room. The tiny crack of light from behind the curtain should tell me whether is it day or night, but, in fact is coming from an interior window. We don’t have interior windows in British houses, but here in Barcelona they seem to love them. This one looks out into the square space enclosing the lift shaft, and since the light is on all night and no natural light reaches my room at al, I am left to guess whether it is morning yet. I hate that disorientation. I heard the lift moving and decided it was worth leaning across to check my watch. Imagine my surprise when i realised it was 10:30am.

Luckily the only appointment i have today, on my quest to find a job and a flat, is at an International School at 3pm. This is the same school that offered me a permanent job back in April but then kindly retracted it. I feel they owe me.

Unfortunately, the sweltering walk to the school landed me with nothing except a very sore little toe. The principal at the school couldn’t have friendlier, but she didn’t actually have any work for me. I left my contact details in case any tutoring is ever needed, and then had the brilliant idea to put out a classified advert in English. How many people in Barcelona might be looking on the internet for and English speaking maths tutor? 30? 7? 1??

I somehow managed to get double booked this evening, which is pretty impressive since I only know three people in the whole city. My new flat mate Miguel did not sound too happy when I turned down his invite in favour of meeting an English contact. A friend’s friend’s brother has invited me round for drinks. He is clearly a very busy man and I nearly missed my window when, thanks to the confusing metro map, the train today took three times as long as expected. I had time for a slightly hectic chat with him and his girlfriend. They were getting ready to go out for dinner and tag teamed me to ask questions and get all the polite chat finished. The girlfriend works for the company which are now my only hope for a job. I had the interview yesterday and am still waiting to hear from them. According to her I will get paid (I’ve heard horror stories about people who don’t), I won’t have to work too hard, and I can watch Fawlty Towers and call it an English lesson.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 12th, 2006 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.