How to Survive a TEFL Internship: Part 2 of my ten-year journey.

January - June 2015: Images compiled in Canva

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I signed up for a TEFL internship in Barcelona, but it wasn’t half a day’s training followed by being thrown into one-to-one teaching, unsupervised.

The course was structured, for the students at least. First, they’d head into the listening lab, which consisted of a dozen or so wooden booths (think polling station), each with a chair, a CD player, and a set of headphones. They were given a book and a CD, and had around 45 minutes to complete the day’s listening exercises.

Next, they’d go down to the basement for 45 minutes of speaking practice with me or one of the other teachers, using the lesson outlined in their books. Afterwards, they’d head back upstairs to the homework room to complete their writing task, which we were to correct, mark, and comment on for the next lesson.

For this entire package, I believe they were charged around €200 a month. I won’t say it was an outright scam, but it was pretty close: unqualified teachers, half a day’s training, a textbook, and a “there you go!” approach.

It was definitely a tax dodge, though. In the five months I was there, they changed the name of the company at least twice, maybe even three times. I’m not entirely sure if that’s true or just a memory warped from over-telling the story, but it’s how I remember it. (If any of my colleagues from back then want to fact-check me in the comments, feel free.)

The astute among you may have caught that “five months” line when in Part One of this episodic blog, I said I signed up for a six-month TEFL internship. Can’t get anything past youse lot, can I?

In short: at one random point in the internship, we were suddenly informed that anyone who’d been there three months or longer would have to be let go. It was delivered with the panicked energy of a cheating spouse yelling at their lover to hide in the closet. “Don’t worry, you’ll still get your TEFL certification, even if you haven’t completed the online course,” was the small consolation prize they offered.

See what I mean by scam energy?

This actually turned out to be a blessing, as I’d barely even started the online course. It was an unpaid TEFL internship as a whole, but they had supplied both shared accommodation (with three other teachers) and a €200 per month stipend. At least, they had up until our enrolment. We would be the last influx of teachers to receive that stipend.

For this, they demanded 40-hour weeks of the novice teaching staff. The academy employed, for want of a better word, ten English teachers, one German teacher, and a French teacher. The working week usually consisted of a Monday to Saturday rolling rota, starting at 10 a.m. and finishing at 10 p.m, with a three-hour siesta in between.

Hardly the ideal setup for extra-curricular study - let alone keeping up with the writing I’d promised myself I’d do for the YouTube start-up, just to keep my hand in. At this point, I had zero suspicion I might have ADHD. The term just sounded like trendy, new-fangled language for a hyperactive child. And I was the diametrical opposite of hyperactive.

It was during this time I met my ex-wife-to-be. She was the French teacher at the school, and it was about three months into my contract before we first spoke. She’d been there before I started, but as her classroom was in a nook around a corner that you couldn’t possibly have a reasonable excuse to go to unless you were purposely going to see her, I didn’t even bother. I hadn’t even entertained the idea of her as a potential love interest. Until then, our interactions had been limited to a smile and a nod passing on the stairs to our respective classes.

At the time, I was doing okay on the dating websites in Barcelona. I’d been on a few dates with varying degrees of success; one Catalan girl who didn’t speak a word of English stayed out with me for over three hours, with only my broken Spanish and Google Translate to keep us company. Another girl from Ecuador, again with zero knowledge of English, who reminded me of Chilli (my favourite of the TLC bunch) beat that record on our first date by a good five hours. It got quite amorous by the end of the date before I saw her off on the train back to her home in Sant Cugat. We later arranged plans for me to visit her the following weekend: a second date that would never come.

During the next week, my colleague, housemate, and now best friend in Barcelona had been asked to go to one of the school’s other academies in Sevilla. A great opportunity to see another city, and it was only for a month. So naturally, a bunch of us wanted to give him a good send-off. I informed my Sant Cugat sweetheart about the situation and asked if we could postpone. She started accusing me of seeing other women. I mean, after a first date, I don’t think it’d be unreasonable if I had been - but I wasn’t. Anyway, I decided to stick with seeing my mate off. Maybe that wasn’t the right choice, given what happened next.

At the tail-end of that reasonably, and unusually, responsible evening, we were walking through a tunnel in Barcelona. It reminded me of the one in A Clockwork Orange, when they beat up the homeless guy. Anyway, as I’m walking through, I hear the pitter-patter of my grock-like bodybuilder of a roommate racing up behind me, and I brace myself for the inevitable piggy-back my Spidey-sense is warning me about. Sure enough, the next moment I feel the weight of this big man leaping on me as if he was a toddler. But rather than stand my ground or throw him off, I decide to do the stupidest thing ever and sprint with him on my back, to teach him a lesson. I got no less than two strides into my sprint when it was like the force of a falling boulder suddenly landing on my shoulders. One moment I was upright, and the next, the sheer weight drove me southwards.

I didn’t go to the hospital that evening. I waited until the next day after realising my entire arm was paralysed, and I was in the worst agony I could remember. It was 2015. Brexit still wasn’t a thing, and I still had my EHIC card. I realise that’s like saying PIN number or ATM machine, but “EHIC card” sounds like something you might qualify for if you’re drunk - which I had been. It was touch and go whether they’d treat me up until I pulled out that magic piece of plastic, and given I eventually spent a couple of hours in an MRI machine, it probably saved me a bob or two.

The result of the scan wasn’t known to me until I went back to the UK at the end of my contract, but it appears I had what’s known as a torn rotator cuff. Apparently, it’s common after the age of 30 if you suffer a physical trauma. Maybe that was some sort of instant karma for blowing off Fanny for a mate… oh sorry yeah, Ecuadorian Chilli’s name was Fanny. Depending on whether the reader is English or North American, that image will land differently. Which amuses me somewhat.

I then started talking to a girl on another dating website, who I vibed with immediately, and would still consider a friend today.

Maybe it was because my mate went to Sevilla, or perhaps that was just coincidence, but it was around this time that I first spoke to the French teacher. The new German teacher was our flatmate, and she was also a Francophile, so desperately wanted to meet the French teacher, but she was shy. The flatmate she’d replaced (not the Sevilla-bound one, another one I’ve not mentioned, and who would disappear off the face of the planet) had expressed to me that the French teacher was lovely and really approachable, so I relayed this to my new German friend, who mistook it to mean I’d spoken to her myself.

I hadn’t, but that would come next. It was in the homework room, and it just so happened we were in there at the same time. I don’t know if this had occurred before, but I don’t think so. And she wasn’t the sort of girl who’d go unnoticed, if you know what I mean?

To this day, I can’t remember what I said, but I remember vividly the absolute warmth with which she responded. We ended up speaking for about ten minutes. I had to go to class. But she’d made an impression.

It could have ended there, but I’d become friends with the German teacher, who on my recommendation had spoken to the French teacher, who then became almost instant best friends. We began hanging out together as a little triumvirate: going out for drinks, going to the beach - mostly going to the beach. One of these times, though, our German friend couldn’t make it, and so we ended up hanging out as a pair for the first time.

We went to visit Parc de la Ciutadella and spent the whole day together. It was at this point I started to develop feelings, but I’d be punching to even think of asking her out on a date, so I didn’t. And what transpired just happened organically. It was all a bit of a whirlwind. And because she’d begun her internship three months before I did, she would finish three months before me (well, two months - but we didn’t know that at the time).

The following month was incredible, and we spent almost all the spare time we had together. We later arranged to spend a couple of weeks at the end of my contract at an Airbnb in a Valencian seaside town with my friend and a teacher colleague from the school he’d been sent to in Sevilla, who he had himself fallen in love with whilst there: a Swedish girl with the Mancest accent I’ve ever heard outside of Manchester.

Another memorable couple of weeks in Tavernes de la Valldigna on the Costa Blanca coast. I went down by myself initially, she would join me a few days later, and my Bradford buddy and his Swedish Northern lass would come a day or two after that.

In the days I was alone I took the opportunity to head down the coast and visit my Uncle, Aunty and cousins down the coast. They’d lived there since the late 80s, and this was the first time I’d visited since my very early teens. My cousin was a star - took me everywhere, introduced me to his friends and new family, and drove me all the way back to my Airbnb.

He’d later on that week return to pick up the French teacher and I, and again played the perfect host. He gave us some time alone in Calpe, and I was able to show her the area in which I’d grown up, and even the house I grew up in.

We got back to Tavernes de la Valldigna, and that’s where this part of the story winds down. I received a text from Fanny, apologising for her outburst. I believe I just replied back saying it was all fine, but I’d met someone. I don’t know how she responded back or even if she ever did, because in typical me-style, when on the beach, and the French teacher motioned me to get a photo taken in the sea, I enthusiastically ran into the water. 10 seconds later, I realised my phone was in my pocket. No amount of rice saves your phone from salt water, I know, cos I tried.

The third phone lost in six months. The first before I’d even left blighty, dropping it in the toilet bowl whilst drunk. The second pick-pocketed walking down Las Ramblas. And now death by drowning in the Mediterranean sea. It had been an eventful few months, but this was only the beginning.

At the end of the holiday, I saw her off in a BlaBlaCar back to France. A few days later, I’d be taking my own BlaBlaCar back to Barcelona for the final leg of my Barcelona journey.

A gruelling 32 hour coach-ride after that, I’d be back in Liverpool.

Part 3 on its way...