Laundry, Radio and Teaching

I've been staying in for most of the weekend, which is completely against my nature. I might reward myself later by going back to the tam-tams. Maybe.

Yesterday, after using up every stitch of clean clothing I had, I picked up my courage and did an evening's washing. Why am I telling you this? Because it illustrates the little differences in everyday tasks, between living in Europe and here. I had to call up the janitor of the building, who lives here, and buy tokens from him for 2 dollars a pop. He's Philippino (I think), and his friendly but frighteningly efficient wife provided me with the troublesome tokens I had been trying to get hold of all week. The previous weekend, I had been taken to a 'coop' which sells environmentally friendly products, to buy my detergent. Something I've wanted to do for a long time and never quite knew where to buy the stuff in Germany. So I did my laundry, and fought a losing battle with the clothes horse, the architecture of which reminded me of those boats people make out of thousands of matches. Or one of those mind puzzles, where an apparently simple pair of metal circles make a fool out of people like me, when asked to join them.

Freshly adorned with my favourite clothing (and no longer having to wear my undersized gear I avoid wearing unless nothing else is clean, during the hottest days of Montreal's summer), I've been preparing meals, sorting files, working out finances... all the boring, annoying stuff. I always put these things off when I was earning a steady income as an international school teacher, somehow able to put them off. I'd get a ready-made meal or eat out on weekends, leave a desk strewn with bills and letters, put bills into a bowl and hide from them till I'd get an angry reminder. I guess this change is forcing me to be a bit more conscientious about this stuff. Tant mieux.

I've had to be around the flat as I am now, listening to CBC's programmes, which range from the ultra-prententious interviews about plurals for double-barreled nouns, to a guy playing guitar as he presents blues tracks. I love the radio here; I find it investigative, interesting, varied, and somehow real. Something missing in a lot of countries, where the news is cursory and uninteresting, the talk is all about stars or pretentious political debates leading nowhere, and the music rarely goes beyond Bon Jovi.

How do I connect this to teaching. Well, it seems to me that these small shifts in habits are an important part of my reevaluation of what teaching is about, to me. I was talking with a former student yesterday, and was trying to explain why I chose to move from a comfortable job in Europe to an insecure, chaotic, badly paid job here in Montreal. And my explanation was that this is partly why I am doing it. I've been a part of an institution since I left university, in the UK school system and in both international schools I've worked for. A state school system encourages teachers to behave institutionally. To expect cares and comforts which aren't offered in other professions, in exchange for commitment to government policies and programmes. In a different vein, international schools institutionalise their teachers as well. They are closed communities, often independent from the country, language and even legal system which surrounds them. The community is encouraged to rely on the school for social events, for assistance with everyday life, from finding an apartment (as a teacher) to the bells which structure the day's timetable. Inevitably, everyone thinks hierarchically, dislikes but yet depends on the institution to support and punish them.

So my struggles with where to buy cheaper milk and how to get hold of the bloody coupons for the washing machine, are useful to me. I'm working outside an institution, for the first time in my life in fact. School, university and then schoolteaching have cocooned my life, so those who still wonder why I've put myself to all this trouble, the answer is, basically, because it puts me to all this trouble.