Spending time in somebody else's shoes

Now, anyone who reads this (the proverbial two men and a dog in all likelihood) has probably heard that they should walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Well yesterday, I took a pair of someone else’s shoes and ran like the clappers to try and get the bus to Colegio San Alberto Magno.

This blog post was supposed to be about my run in tomorrow’s Elche Half Marathon and other not directly teaching related experiences. Well, the strange twists that life takes struck yesterday and that will all have to wait one more post. I had woken up in the morning, got ready and padded down in sock-clad feet to get breakfast. Having had my breakfast and feeling relaxed about being in plenty of time to brush my teeth, put on my shoes, collect my bag and meander to the bus stop, I went to turn the door knob to my room … and it didn’t budge. My calling out brought an enquiry from Jess as to what was going on, and my explanation of being unable to get into the room. It’s worth noting at this point that it’s supposed to be impossible for this to happen. The room doesn’t have a key lock, you can’t shut your keys in the room. The room only locks with a catch that you turn from the inside, but it nonetheless seemed pretty clear the catch had slipped and locked inside my bag with any materials I had planned to teach with that day, my toothbrush, wallet, phone, and more significantly with regards to walking to any bus stop, my shoes!. After 10 minutes of me kicking the door, wrestling with the knob, banging, and shoulder charging the unyielding door, the sanguine figure of Ben emerged from his room to enquire about the noise from the other end of the corridor. Having explained the situation, he asked my shoe size, and provided me with a pair of size nine shoes (I’m an eight and a half). “What time do you have to get the bus?” he asked. “Pretty much now” I replied and headed off. Now I’m a fair 10,000m runner but the dash to the bus stop was more like a middle-distance burn-up with a defeat being the result as I arrived to see the only bus already reasonably far away down the road towards San Alberto Magno, which is by the motorway to the North-East of Elche. After 30 seconds of ‘what on earth do I do now?’ thoughts, a car pulled up. “San Alberto Magno”? enquired the female driver, telling me to get in. Sitting in the car, I greeted the familiar figure of Andres from my five year olds class, and learned that my ability to get into school that day was as a result of Andres saying “Mummy, my teacher” from the back seat. So I enjoyed a ride in with Andres’s family and beat the bus to school.

Now, I had nothing that I had prepared with me. Isabel taught the 3 year old class that I was scheduled to teach in the morning with me assisting, and then I used break time to re-prepare the “Dictionary of the Sea” for the five year olds to do in the afternoon and found a different book for their storytime to the We’re all going on a Bear Hunt that I had planned. Bizarrely the result was probably my favourite lesson so far with the five year olds who really engaged with the story of The Magic in the Castle (after a bit of a battle for attention after they came in hyper from lunch break!). There were also some great ‘dictionaries of the sea’ that they produced.

And the door? Well I arrived back at the apartment to find out that Ben took a few seconds with a hairpin to get it open after I left. I owe him plenty for my decent outcome to the oddest day of my teaching career so far!

Now for 21.1kms tomorrow.

Cheers

Hywel