How to go from attorney to teacher in 0.3 seconds

As I may have stated before, I practised as an attorney for many years in my home country before we moved to Madrid.

Clearly we did not move because I am clever.

Also, I never set out to study for so many years, and practise for so many years, to be in a situation where I don’t actually work in my field of expertise. This is not due to any misconduct on my part, this is due to some Spanish red tape which is about as complicated as Russian, which in layman’s terms means “sorry, for whatever reason we deem necessary or because the mayor had back pain or was angry at his wife, you may not formally work”. This logic makes no sense to me, but be that as it may.

We moved since my husband is allegedly a rocket scientist and those are no longer needed in my home country. My host country however needs rocket scientists so here we are. Possibly my father was right and I should have studied engineering and not law but alas, here I am, two degrees and many years of experience later, and I don’t practise law anymore.

Now, before I (finally) stopped practising, I tried to think what the heck I would do in Madrid. To briefly explain the boring stuff, once I have crossed the red tape mountain, I need to do a conversion type of course, but for that, I need to speak Spanish. This may take a while.

In the meantime, after packing and moving and unpacking and the usual “let’s move country things”, I came to realise a number of important things:

1.    I cannot speak Spanish. So I have a problem, possibly law is not in my immediate future. Check.

2.    I could write a blog to vent. Check.

3.    I am not a housewife. Check.

4.    Cleaning and cooking makes my blood boil. Not in a good way. Check.

5.    I need to do something otherwise I can easily turn into the wicked witch of Casa Engela. Check.

As such, and since I am suddenly “native” English speaking, I was roped into teaching English to children.

Now, for those who know me, stop laughing.

For those that don’t know me very well, I am not familiar with children.

In addition hereto, the idea of teaching never ever in my wildest nightmares crossed my mind. However, my host country suddenly wants their children to learn English from people who actually speak English. I cannot comment on the merits of this decision, however, I can tell you, suddenly I find myself in a group of people who are not very well liked by other teachers – again, this entire argument is in Spanish, which I definitely don’t understand, so I keep quiet and go on my merry little way.

I have now been at this teaching thing for about two months, and can honestly say that I can add to my list that I am not a natural born teacher, however, I know that the idea of sitting at home and not doing anything scares me more, so I shall stick it out, until some clever other English speaking person figures out that I don’t understand what I am doing, at best the children will speak with a South African accent, and furthermore, what the hell are you thinking letting an attorney loose on your kids? Talk about a nightmare.

So, if you are bored at your job, or think you may have made the wrong career move, I have a couple of pointers:

1.    You could marry a rocket scientist and change careers.

2.    You could move countries and suddenly not be allowed to work.

3.    Your English could be very important in ways you never thought possible.

If all else fails, and you married for love and not money, or you are single, then your only solution is to rob a Bank, flee the country and buy an island somewhere. I would love to join you, since I think robbing a Bank could possibly be easier than teaching a screaming mob of little adults to speak English.