Auxiliar Meetings, the New School, and Books

This past Thursday and Friday the first series of meetings took place for all the English-speaking people who are teaching in the Community of Madrid. There are about 1,500 of us who will be placed in different schools in and around Madrid. The total cost for the Community of Madrid to operate our program is over 15 million euros, and has grown quite quickly; for the last three years, they have added 500 new auxiliar positions each year. It doesn't hurt that the president of the C. of M. has made it her personal goal that the region be bilingual or trilingual.

On a more serious note, I found out that my school serves lunch to all of it staff for free. When I say "more serious," I mean more seriously awesome. That's very good for me! I can imagine myself stuffing my pockets with packs of sugar and canned tuna to hoard back at my apartment. Then I think again, realizing how pathetic that would look, and decide that it would be quite humiliating to be discovered to have a stash of canned tuna hidden in my apartment; perhaps under my bed, or throughout the house, tucked in all the nooks and crannies.

I walked by my school the other day, and even before the school was in sight, I noticed what looked like a small, stationary dust devil such as can be seen in remote regions of the desert in southwestern American states. As I drew closer, I realized that this was no meteorological anomaly, this was the result of (seemingly) thousands of tiny Spaniards capering around in the haze of dust that covered half of a city block. As I navigated my way around the prison fence that held in the small ones, I was filled with the dreadful premonition that the Community of Madrid had suckered us American into being recess monitors. I decided to not dwell on that premonition lest I lose my courage.

Since I am about to start a new chapter with the commencement of my work as an auxiliar at Colegio Dulcinea, I decided that I will also start a new chapter on my blog and write some impressions of books that I have been reading, since they are an integral part to my experience, no matter where I may be geographically. I just finished The Three Musketeers. For anyone who has read that book, you may identify with me when I say that it can get a bit tiresome by the end. Alexandre Dumas weaves his plot together by a series of uncanny coincidences, most of which involve an intercepted letter or an unexpected meeting. It seemed to have bias against women; they were either side characters with no significant role, unsuspecting victims, or evil villains.


So now I'm reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is amazing. It didn't interest me the last time I looked at it, (13 years ago) but now it's a great read. Harriet Beecher Stowe's descriptions somehow reveal more about each character in one paragraph than Clive Cussler could tell us in an entire book. Really good stuff. That's why it's a classic.