One month can change a lot. Around this time in December, I was getting on a bus to the Madrid airport and happily leaving Logroño behind me. I had grown frustrated with the language barrier, with controlling classes of misbehaving children for four days a week, and with having more free time than I knew what to do with. After a two-week visit with my family in which I took full advantage of the Canadian winter, my proverbial batteries were completely recharged.
My return to Logroño took over 30 hours, but it was not without its high points. Indeed, I found plenty of reasons to be thrilled to return as the trip progressed. While waiting to check in in Toronto, I discovered that a friend from Logroño was following the same itinerary as me. Although we weren't sitting together, I had just been thinking about how I never bump into people while traveling. Quite the positive omen. My situation only improved when I found that I had been upgraded to World Traveler Plus on my British Airways flight, which meant more elbow and leg room. After flying overnight and connecting in London, we landed in Madrid and were required to wait several hours for the next bus to Logroño. Although waiting is not the most enjoyable activity after two lengthy flights, we were pleased to find that three more mutual acquaintances were waiting for the same bus. And even though the return bus ride to Logroño passes through some nauseating mountains, I was fast asleep for the worst of it. When we arrived, I was probably happier to be in Logroño than I ever had been.
That's not to say things have gotten worse since then. One of my biggest concerns, the language barrier, has greatly diminished in importance. Although my Spanish is nowhere near perfect (or even fluent, I would say), having left and returned somehow makes me feel more confident speaking to people I don't know in a second language. I seem to have finally overcome my fear of sounding like an idiot and settled on sounding like a foreigner, which of course is all I sounded like to begin with.
Although my students were well-behaved for the first week after the holidays, they have quickly reverted to their normal, insane behavior. By the same token, I have certainly found that my class control techniques have improved. One thing I began to realize before the break was that the teacher's voice often dictates the student's behavior, at least as far as volume is concerned. Thus, speaking softly can prevent many problems before they start. And if things get really out of hand, an open palm brought down with sufficient force on a desktop makes enough noise to calm everyone down. I just hope I don't develop callouses.
But perhaps the happiest discovery I've made since my return is just how large my network of friends is here. Before the break, my housemates and I were beginning to think we were each other's only friends. As it turns out, we were wrong. I didn't even need to try to bump into people I knew when I got back, and every pintxo night, party, and tutoring appointment only serves to remind me further how many people I know here.
I don't know why, but every time I've lived abroad and returned home for Christmas, I have returned to my home away from home feeling ten times more comfortable in my surroundings. I hadn't even considered that possibility before leaving this time, and I have been happily reminded of it.
