Teaching: it's got the same love/hate reaction as marmite, hasn't it? And, like marmite, you never really know until you bite in and try to swallow. By then, it's too late. As I book my tickets to Tarragona to spend a month teaching Spanish kids English, I try to disperse the images swimming insistently before me: classrooms crammed screaming kids, wailing kids, bleating kids, late kids, swearing kids, snotty kids; stacks of crumpled papers dwarfing endless mugs of congealed coffee; sick-stained T-shirts and bleary-eyed mornings and shattered nights. Sure, teaching can be hard; but, like all things in life, it's the hardest things that bring the most reward; and you get out what you put in.
The elusiveness of Sant Carles de la Rapita on the North-East Spanish coast, is tempting in itself - my online searches yield very little, but the glimpses of sparkling blue sea , palm tree-dotted beaches and squat holiday houses merely serve to whet my appetite. On top of the beachfront location my teaching job boasts a very satisfactory salary, room and board and what I've heard is a throbbing social life after hours; all this while working painlessly on my Spanish. Ah, being a language student certainly has its perks!
I'm under no illusions, however: it won't be a bed of Spanish roses. Long hours, blood and sweat are needed to reap the rewards such a job offers, and as I'm fortunate enough to be accepted I want to make the most of every stressful, enjoyable, exhausting and wonderful minute. Whatever happens, it's going to be an unforgettable month.
Sant Carles hasn't a high tourism profile, but from what I've seen it's a hotspot for holiday homes; and its official website, though faulty, was at least originally written in a few languages. Thing is, my only real experiences of Spain have always been in holiday destinations: a weekend in Barcelona; family camping in the South; being a maze monster in Mallorca. Untouched, rural Spain is as alien to me as Yemen - but then, in a world where even Space has become a tourist destination, can such a Spain exist? Union Jack-strewn pubs having become a recognised feature of the Spanish coast, it's getting harder to preserve the authentic travelling experience; and to maintain the original national "flavour" it's necessary to keep on pushing the edges of our comfort zones. To choose local tapas bars over the chippy; salsa clubs over the pub.
I'd like to come back home next month not just with a tan, an accent and fifty kids' names, allergies and dislikes engraved in my mind; I want to seize this chance to dip into another culture, enriched and not impoverished by the English-speakers around me. As my flight draws nearer I'm realizing that while July won't be a holiday, it'll be so much more than just a job. If, as I'm expecting, I come home clutching a fistful of addresses, kids' doodles, crazy photos and signed T-shirts, then the tasting and chewing of this new flavour may well result in a life-long love relationship.
And even if it doesn't - well, I still have my marmite.
By Megan Ramsay
