About butterflies and chalk boards

Are there moments giving you butterflies in your stomach?
I mean, not the kind you get from falling in love or from getting in a "spin-and-spew" ride at an attraction park. Think not food gone bad, but instead, job gone great.
That's how I feel today. I'm teaching at a secondary school again.

I've been a language professional for over 30 years. Teaching French and Portuguese AND translating from and into both, right from the start. The ink on my University degree had not yet dried, I was already travelling the world, a "digital nomad" at a time when "digital" meant only something your fingers could touch.
I taught at secondary schools, among many other places, but it was long ago. Teaching adults, professionals, on short-term missions was easier to combine with nomadic life.

The thing is, I have grown roots now.

It happens to be in The Netherlands, a country I could not speak the language 13 years ago.
Yes, this master of 3.5 Romance languages (0.5 is Italian - I understand it very well but look like a deranged gecko when trying to speak it) and proudly self-taught English speaker (the British Council attested recently I'm very good at it, so I'm entitled to some boasting), could not even make out single words in a sentence in Dutch. All bzzzzingrrrrggga to me. When someone asks me what love is, I tend to say it's learning Dutch when you come from Romance languages.

It took me the last 10 years to learn Dutch, but now I feel confident(ish) I’ll understand when teenage students will throw at me their best defiant attitude in their mother tongue.

I thought it was time to give a go at teaching here, so I answered a few ads from agencies.
I was warmly welcomed by the specialized pro team at Maandag, and here I am, today, signed contract in hand for a part-time teaching position at Novalis College, a modern and engaging secondary school in Eindhoven (it's a Waldorf school, lovely people, wood all around, they even have a blacksmith workshop and their restaurant is organic!).

Do you know schools have the same smell everywhere? It's something that gets you in the stomach (yes, again, my stomach has a life of its own), it's a smell that has a taste and physically feels like a warm blanket. Except for the chalk, missing now that all is digital, I think it's made of books, crumpled paper, sweat, hormones, laughs, food, coffee, fear, hope, rustling clothes, silence, bell rings, eagerness, ink, wooden tables, disinfectant, and love. Such a combo, once you experience it, you'll never forget.

The best of it all is that it will allow me to continue with my copywriting and translation work. My soul needs all its pieces to feel whole, and my brain needs variety to keep firing properly.

I'm home. At last.