Summer is here....

Summer is here again. The air is heavy with the kind of heat that distorts distant roads. Those hot roads that slowly seep through the rubber soles of your shoes and roast your feet. Then you walk around barefoot on cold tiles or shady grass, or plunge them over the side of the pool. The landscape, once made of growing grass is now a snare cockleburs and sticker-patches, waiting to hitch a ride on the unsuspecting passerby. And as the season implacably moves into July, I have entered my own sticker-patch. I have entered a world of pubescent passions and anxieties, of linguistic impossibilities, of being overworked and underpaid... I am at summer camp, once again.

Last year I was in Burgos, land of blood sausage, cathedrals and unseasonable cold. This year, as I was two years ago, I am in Ciudad Real; in the middle of La Mancha, and I am beginning to see why it's most famous resident, Don Quijote, was doomed to go mad. All is dry and hot. Your sweat dries on your skin before it finishes seeping out of your pores. Your tongue is a dry and sluggish lump. You contemplate trying to work your foamy spittle into words, but realize that there is very little to say about Ciudad Real. It is, perhaps, the ugliest city in Spain. There is nothing beautiful about this town. Even the local Cathedral, normally a town's pride and joy, is dull and brown, like the landscape around us. The best thing you can do here is to pour food and drink down your dusty throat. This city is well known for the size and quality of its tapas. But that requires money, and it was my lack of money that brought me here in the first place. My aching pocketbook forced me to swallow the "never again" that I uttered after last year's camp and get back in line with the other ranks of disgruntled summer teachers.

At least this year the ranks are larger and made up of younger people. Last year there were five of us doing the work that 12 of us are doing this year. Most of my work will take place in the morning and in the classroom. New beginnings always make me wary. The idealist inside me wavers between hopeful optimism and the knowledge that nothing could live up to my ideals. Of course, ideals and expectations are quite different, and after last summer, my expectations are more than able to be met. As long as no one is banging their head against a wall...