I ride home through day three of rain-soaked streets, a three hour gap of impertinent design in my impossible-to-manage schedule. Should I be enjoying this time, sifting through chapters of the book I’ve been trying to listen to for three months, with never enough time to complete it? Should I be watching television, feeding myself on Spanish versions of family board games or documentaries on subjects I can barely understand in English?

Here I sit, finding solace in the words I write. On Monday, I did something unfathomable–I missed a class!! This is pretty much one of the greatest fears of my life: to not show up to work, to be absent, tardy, or incompetent at what I do. How could I have missed yet another change to my schedule? I had iPhone calendar ready, in hand on Monday morning, and it promised me that I didn’t have to return to school that day.

The old saying, every day is a new day, has a new meaning for me in this space I fit myself into. I am, perhaps more than anyone I know, a person whose life is embedded with routines. There is a reason I love teaching, and it’s not just reaching out to students and summers off. It is the consistency of the same routine day in and day out, both in the schedules of my classes and the way that I set up a classroom–begin first with a warmup, engage the students, write things out for them under the document camera, cycle through the room to check for understanding, call on students who may not know the answer and pry it out of them. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Also: rising at 4:18 each day. My solitary breakfasts of checking on my University of Phoenix classes, sipping hot tea, and making some smart-ass comment on Facebook. Then pulling on layers of cycling gear, packing up my saddlebag, and enjoying that ride across town, where I could change clothes and keep my bike inside my pod, its seat, helmet, and chains protected from the evils of nature and society. Seeing the same familiar faces of colleagues, chatting about the stupid Broncos game or asking me what would work best for this lesson today. Going to the same six classes, planning for the next day, then cycling home, to arrive at the same time as my daughters, and to be able to enjoy every moment of their fit-pitching, homework-groaning, shower-whining fights, their I-love-yous, hugs, and snuggling up on the couch at bed time reading stories. Bed time for me two hours later, after writing, reading, chatting with friends, relaxing in my recliner and piling high mint chocolate chip ice cream to top off the simplicity of my everyday life.

It’s so funny how the mundane routine of life could be desirable. On top of everything else I have had to adjust to in Spain, I think my schedule will bear down on me more than the words I think I’ll never learn, the cultural nuances I’ll miss, and the absence of adequate teaching tools (chalk dust is embedded in my fingerprints). While I only work twelve hours a week at the school, the times vary each day, and are constantly being switched around, cancelled, or augmented. No matter how many times I’ve copied the printed calendar into my iPhone, I can guarantee I’ve missed at least one change. I never quite know if I will see my girls off to school or be able to meet them at the last siren. And at the school? I attend twelve different classes every week, have to work with seven different teachers, have no time to plan anything in advance with any of them, and must walk into each classroom not knowing a single name of any student (all of whom are together all day, sit next to their best friends, and have been in the same class together for years). So when the teachers step out or simply do not care about classroom management? I can’t call out José or Patricia and tell them, in words they will understand, to be respectful and pay attention. I am just a substitute to them, swirling around in a world of chaos.

And to top off the inconsistency of that, my tutoring schedule varies with such extremes that I have become the worst clockwatcher of all time. I even bought a watch!! Working five to six hours every evening, with random gaps between, I have actually had to make a calendar for Bruce to know when to fix dinner every night (there are some things I will NOT let go, and one is dinner with my family). I have to rush between tutoring appointments to the extent that it is no longer possible to walk; I must carry my bike up and down the six flights of stairs all day and all night long. I rush between four or five clients a day, trying to plan activities for preschoolers, fifty-year-old men, mostly-fluent adults, and apathetic teenagers.

When I arrive home some time between 9:30 and 9:45 each night, I wish I could stay up late, relax, watch a movie and know that I can sleep in the next day. But I can’t. I have to rise before dawn each morning to work with the girls on their homework, learning the Spanish words I will never need to use, such as the parts of a snail, the inner ear, or synonyms.

How is it that I am only working forty hours a week? It feels like sixty. The loneliness of such an oppressive schedule chokes me, as I can never talk to anyone back home during the week, since they are all just rising right when I begin my second cycle of work. Here in Spain, every day is a new day, literally. I never know just where I need to be, whose class I might lose control over, or exactly the right materials to bring with me as I pedal across town. All I can hope is that I will learn to adjust to this as I have adjusted to everything else that I have flipped upside down during the past six months of my life.