Teaching English for the British Council - Ramon & Bill

Excerpt from the unedited version of On the Job Training: Berlin to Vladivostok

     Bill was quite a storyteller and, together with Ramon, could fill a day, a night, and part of the next morning with colorful stories of their experiences in Poland. Ramon, about 5’11” in his clogs and quite thin except for a small potbelly, had long black hair streaked with some gray in his early thirties. He had a constant large smile that stretched from ear to ear and he always looked like he was ready to tell you a story or a joke. He often did.

     His nose was proportionately large to accommodate the big smile and his eyes were chronically tired screaming for sleep showing signs of late nights, innumerable female encounters or “events”, that often lasted for days according to his stories. These usually started as sad stories he had to listen to and lead to the bedroom sooner or later. His usual inability to say “no” to female propositions drove Ramon to near exhaustion from what we could tell. Residential courses putting students and teachers together for days on end were no exception.

(One story about Ramon that occurred in the early 90's involved meeting the actor, Ben Kingsley, at a local hotel in the sauna. As Ramon tells it, "Ben was sitting on a low bench enjoying the steam room when I walked in. As I found myself next to him, it was impossible not to notice how well endowed he was and that "it" nearly reached the floor from the bench that he was sitting on. After quite a few exchanges about how things were going during the filming of Schindler's List, I told him that my name, by coincidence, was Schindler. With the ice broken and pleasantries exchanged between us, I asked him while pointing to "it", 'So that must be why you are called Big Ben around here'.

Ben seemed amuzed.)

     Bill had equally raucous, profusely promiscuous, and side-splitting stories alongside Ramon’s. His massive body, 6’3” and around 280 pounds, and physical presence sometimes made Bill the real center of attention when the alcohol was flowing as it could. Ramon was clearly the greater prize in terms of the sexual “hunt” that always occurred during the off-site residential courses. 30-50 students, three to four teachers, and the Boss, Ramon, made up the typical course. All of us, together with the secret police "plant" that usually joined us, hidden in a medieval castle or old Polish estate for 2-3 weeks, made for an intensive English course that was not only tiring, but also made for interesting human chemistry.

Courses that had Ramon and Bill together were sure to be fun and the amount of alcohol that was consumed by all increased by at least a factor of 2-3 times compared to a non-Bill/Ramon course. 

When the official end of the day came and Polish was allowed to be spoken,  the women that were clearly single, unattached, without boyfriends at the course, would begin to signal their interest.  Ramon and Bill were very good at parrying the advances that were constant while selectively signaling their own real interests and intentions. Ramon, the director of the program, was able to orchestrate multiple encounters. Despite this incredible "itinerary" he maintained what seemed to me to be the proper teacher – student distance. I would usually hear about what had really gone on within a month after we had returned from a course.

I was often amazed at how little I knew of what was going on and wondered usually, “Where the hell was I when that was happening?!”