Spanish views from a small town

I am now on vacation. It's an unpaid one, but I get to have my days all to myself. This, however, doesn't mean I can forget all about my classes. This is the time of year I start pulling my hair out by the roots. Mothers (almost always mothers, as if the fathers had nothing to do with their kids' education) start calling me to set up their kids' English classes. I have little room, so I can't take more than three, or, stretching it, four kids an hour, preferably all of the same or similar ages. Here's the problem. There are five hours of classes in each day, but it seems some children have more than ten hours of busy time each afternoon. "Tuesday's a bad day because Johnny has football practice and then he goes to kayaking. After that, he has a swimming class. Thursdays he has trombone practice, and theater, followed by some more football. Have you got anything for him on Fridays?" "Not for his age group. I do have an hour on Wednesdays he can...

After about a week or so of daily writing, I've stumbled against another day bereft of energy or ideas. So, yesterday I took a sabbatical. And I heard some English. I have always loved murder mysteries every since I started to read, I think. I don't know why, exactly, since every book is a mystery unless you've already read it. That love extends to shows on television. Detective shows tend to catch my eye, unless they are really badly conceived and badly written. And now, real life murder mysteries have caught me. Late at night, after everyone has gone to bed, I watch a British show that tells of real-life tragedies. But I watch it more for its Englishness than for the actual stories, which one can find in just about any newspaper. I like to see the different towns, and listen to the different accents. I was a francophile as a small child, and when I got my hands on English literature, I became an anglophile. I've already visited France; someday it will be Britain's...

When I left Boston I was twenty-two years old. I left against my will. But I was an only child, my parents were retiring back to Spain, and they used the guilt trip to bring me back with them. When I first arrived I missed living in a neighborhood of a busy city, where I could go easily from place to place on public transport and find almost whatever I wanted. I missed the cadence of New England English. I even missed commercials on television in English. I had to resign myself to live surrounded by Spanish and someday find a way to move back to Boston. What a difference time makes. Come July I will have been living here twenty-five years. I have gotten used to this place. My ear has gotten accustomed to different Spanish cadences. So much so that when I first heard a movie on our new DVD in English a few year s ago , I had difficulty following the cadence and understanding the actors. It didn't matter that I had always spoken English to ou r d aughter, my ear had falle n out ...