A Weekend in Madrid

One of the perks of international teaching is being sent away for training. Sure, it means setting a day's worth of cover, forfeiting a weekend and ascending the heights of peak extrovert in a group of other teachers. 

But it also means an all (mostly) expenses paid trip to a city that you don't live in. If you're unlucky, it could be somewhere like Bolton. Or Coventry. Fortunately, this time around I got shipped to Madrid, a city I spent a little bit of time in in the youth of my early 20s. 

I arrived late Thursday night in a fug of flight delays due to strikes over French airspace, winding my way through the eternity of Terminal 4 at Barajas airport only to be met with a 400-metre taxi queue that snaked and snaked and snaked its way down the outer edges of the terminal. A 12:30am hotel arrival made the next morning's start a bit rough but I guess that's show business.

I'm one of 14 teachers in my conference group and one of the more experienced IB teachers here. This makes a crucial difference to my other two conferences--an MYP one in 2017 in Vienna and a DP one in 2014 in Beijing--where I was entirely new to both programmes. Then, I desperately took notes to decipher the jargon that the IB uses to disguise what is actually a well-considered framework of conceptual practices. This weekend, I seem to mostly actually know what I'm doing. 

The weekend has, thus far, been a proliferation of: sharing best practice; meeting teachers new to the programme whose fear-fuelled gaps of knowledge of the DP I can appreciate; and finishing days at 5pm to slowly meander towards the city centre. 

The sun is shining, it's 20 degrees outside. And Golden Hour in Madrid is one for the books. 

Yesterday, I wandered with two women from the conference. Today, I needed a bit of down time for earbud wandering anonymity. Both have their perks. 

This evening, armed with city knowledge from one of my lovely work colleagues, I took to the city's streets chock full socialising friends lounging in the dwindling sunshine. It's a social place, Spain. And so, alone, I didn't stop often but I loved wandering the food markets, checking out the street art and popping into little boutiques. 

I eventually talked myself into sating my hunger at a little bar in the Barrio de la Letras, one of Hemingway's favourite neighbourhoods. My imposter syndrome is real and when I eventually stopped at Casa Pueblo, an atmospheric bar and people watching spot, I apologised profusely, in Spanish, for my bad Spanish. 

That didn't stop me from loving the wine and olives and tortilla. Or from appreciating that, despite my apprehension of eating dinner alone in a foreign city, I did it anyway. It may sound small and silly and completely trivial but it felt like a victory. 

So the pictures may look like I had a lot of time to wander. Alas, I did not. But rumour has it, one of my good friends from Shanghai has just got a job here. So I'll be back!