El Peregringo

I don’t have the actual statistics, but my best estimate is that more than 50% of the passenger vehicles on the road here in Spain are diesel. What’s most interesting to me is the number of cars here that are diesel that simply don’t exist in the US in a diesel version. Fords of every stripe, Jeep Cherokees, Saabs, BMWs and more. From luxury to basic transportation, most of the cars and all of the trucks here are diesel.

In just a few days I’m headed back to the US and I have a couple of months to buy two vehicles to replace the cars we sold before coming here. I’ve been doing some searching and while there are a few diesel vehicles in the US, they’re pretty rare. I’m really hopeful that I can find a diesel for myself. Given my commute in the US, in which I hit 60 miles per hour within 2 minutes of pulling out of my driveway, and maintain 60 miles an hour until 2 minutes before pulling into the parking lot at the school, a diesel would be the perfect commuter vehicle for me. Most of the models I’m seeing are getting 45 miles to the gallon of diesel, which would mean that I could get back and forth to work on one gallon of fuel instead of the two gallons it would take me on gasoline.

Why is the US so backwards with respect to transportation? Our trains suck and don’t go anywhere, and our cars suck gasoline. I guess I’m focussing on the many negatives of life in the US as my return date nears, but forgive me if I continue to think that the US could have the best if we’d only get our heads out of our asses and get rid of the repubtards permanently.

I’ve just spent an hour trying to buy a train ticket with Renfe, the Spanish rail company. I simply cannot understand how a company, in this day and age, can get away with such an awful mess as their online system. Even using a Spanish credit card, it was virtually impossible to actually buy my ticket.

Things were looking good until I got to the point of actually charging the card. Renfe includes a disclaimer saying that the window that was going to open was from the bank and that if the user had trouble, that it wasn’t Renfe’s fault. I did have trouble, and I still blame Renfe for not having a better system.

Part of the problem may be with the Caja Navarra bank. They have the single WORST online banking I have ever seen. They don’t even include a valid doc type or encoding method in their html, and then once connected, they use frames in places they’re unnecessary and have spurious scroll bars in unlikely places. The National Bank of Middlebury has an online banking and bill paying experience that is orders of magnitude superior to the Caja Navarra.

I am a teacher. If I look back at my life, I’ve always been a teacher even when I wasn’t actually working as a teacher. For the past four years I’ve been dealing (off and on) with becoming a licensed teacher in the State of Vermont. This is not hard, but it sure is tedious. I opted for the peer review route to licensing since it’s a reasonable way to avoid going back to undergraduate school to get an education degree. For the most part, this has been a valuable experience.

Creating my portfolio was frustrating at times. One is expected to document things in a brief summary that have been the subjects of dissertations and much argumentation over the years. I think I did a decent job of it, but boy were there moments when I wondered if it was worth it. In retrospect, it forced me to think about and to “verbalize” in writing my thoughts on education. I don’t know yet whether I’ll be granted a license, but I think I learned something in preparing the portfolio (my portfolio is entirely electronic and online, but I’m hesitant to link to it because many of the people who wrote letters or provided other documentation of my teaching did so with the understanding that it wasn’t a public document–if you really want to see it, write to me privately and I’ll see about giving you access). My good friend Debbie Hadeka thinks I won’t have any difficulties with getting my portfolio approved. I hope she’s right…

Anyway, as for the rant portion of this post… OK, so I applied to peer review in 2004 and was to have submitted my portfolio in 2005. Ana was diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 2005 and all life went to hell. It essentially took me 2 years to get myself sufficiently organized again to finish and submit the darn portfolio–complete with a check for $1200. So I just got a letter that from the State letting me know I screwed up and didn’t ask for an extension. The woman with whom I’ve been dealing, Linda, is truly helpful, and, like most Vermont State employees I have dealt with over the years, defies the otherwise universal norm of state employee who exists only to screw with you. Linda has been terrific.

Still, the “law” requires that I submit yet another check for $35.00 to apply for peer review–the same peer review that I am already scheduled to have on June 13th. So, my licensing expenses to date are:

If I didn’t love teaching, I’m not sure I could have justified the expense.