How I'm Preparing to Teach in Spain: Part Two

Welcome back! I’m continuing to blog about my pre-departure preparations. Here are some more things I’m doing to get ready:

I’m Adjusting My Expectations

Last time we talked about how important it is to analyze our expectations and to prepare our reactions for when (inevitably) they’re not met. 

Now it’s time to tweak those expectations where necessary. If you have a meeting that always runs late, an expectation adjustment does a lot to reduce your annoyance. If you start expecting this delay, it’s not a big deal when it happens, it’s just normal. You can plan around it, like taking a few minutes before the meeting starts to get to know your coworkers better. 

Actions like can help you grow tremendously. It’s what led to perhaps my biggest linguistic breakthrough when I studied abroad. I really wanted to sound fluent, which in my mind meant having no foreign accent and few grammatical mistakes. But that pressure to be perfect held me back from conversing with native speakers. 

However, it’s when you’re talking to other people that you get better at speaking. That’s when you build up your ability to string sentences together and to work around words you don’t know (because there will always be words you don’t know). That’s when you get feedback from people, such as “it sounds a little weird when you say it like that, we usually say this”. 

At first, correction felt like a threat to my ability to speak Spanish. It was scary, because getting lots of corrections might tell me that I wasn’t as good at the language as I wanted to think I was. 

I had to shift my attitude. Feedback became an opportunity to get better at Spanish, not a threat. I came to accept that people are going to be able to tell that I’m not a native Spanish speaker. I realized that’s okay—I don’t have to speak flawlessly to speak fluently. 

I’m Thinking About Where to Live

The CIEE pre-departure orientation has helped me with this. I’m following their advice and booked a hostel for a week after orientation. This way I don’t have to feel frantic, trying to research apartments and think about leases during my first week in Spain. 

Now I have a little more time to think about what’s important to me in a place to live. One of the videos in the pre-departure course posed questions like, Would you rather have a smaller room in the city center (and pay more), or have a larger room in the suburbs (and pay less)? 

This is the time for honesty. For example, I’d love to live near the center—there are times when a 20-minute metro ride is enough to dissuade me from popping over to visit a museum. Being able to just stroll over would be amazing. 

On the other hand, I know I prefer the relative openness of the suburbs. After five months in Buenos Aires, I was getting a little claustrophobic amongst all the buildings. A longer metro ride to the tourist attractions might be worth it for less crowded spaces. 

My point is to know yourself well enough to weigh the tradeoffs. I think making a conscious decision that X factor is more important to you than Y factor goes a long way to helping you be content wherever you end up. 

Come back later for part three, my last entry before I leave for Spain! Hasta pronto, amigos.