General complaints

Today my students cancelled 3 hours of lessons. This month there's been loads of cancellation, so far more than 13 hours gone.
I'm currently working with 2 agencies, with different policies regarding cancellations. In the first agency they said that classed cancelled with more than a day in advance are not to be charged. The second agency said that the teacher has to offer alternative days to recover the missed time but all classes are to be paid regardless. My problem is that I've got more hours with the first agency, so when my students cancel, I don't earn any money. That's resulting in my monthly earnings fluctuate accordingly and I have empty hours in which I feel I could be doing something more productive.
It's hard not to take it personally, as I spend time and energy in preparing my classes. And is definitely the worst part of a job that I quite like.

I'm still looking for a more stable sort of job but I'm handicapped by my lack of the Catalan language as most jobs required at least a basic level of it.

So, I went to the local council to find a Catalan course for immigrants as I've heard loads of politicians on the news talking about the need to integrate immigrants and the value of the language, etc etc.
Well, the council does run free Catalan lessons for foreigners but the timetable is totally idiotic, there's classes only during working hours, so you cannot work normal hours and attend the classes at the same time. I complained and then I've been told that most immigrants are not supposed to be working yet as they don't have proper visas to do so; thus equating immigration with illegality. (A bit of what some newspaper do in the UK when they talk about "asylum seekers" when they mean immigrants). Then, after talking a bit, the person that gave me the information told me that for her I'm definitely not an immigrant because a- I have a British passport and b- I'm Argentinean. She mean that British here hardly ever even try to learn Spanish, let alone Catalan, because they usually live and work within their own community and that Argentineans are not really immigrants either because we have the same cultural background (I also think she meat racial as well). The girl meant all this as a sort of compliment to me!!

I was, and still am, flabbergasted.

I've always known that there's a fine line to distinguish an immigrant from an expat, I had that in my introduction to this blog! But I never expected to be that thick, meaning that the difference is bot blatantly racist and discriminatory and stupid, total nonsense. It reminds me of Winnie-the-Pooh "wrong kind of bees", apparently I'm the wrong kind of immigrant for the person who timetable the classes.

Sometime ago I suggested in this blog that the Argentineans are perceived here in some ways as the Indian community in Britain, now I've changed my mind and agree with "the husband" who once said that we're perceived here in the same light as Australians are in the UK: a sort of long lost cousin, a bit foreign, with funny accent and words, but part of the family anyway.

Whatever. Now, I have to choose between working or attending the classes. Or wait to see if they change the timetables next term. Or I could go to another town and check there. It must be another choice, I've just have to find it.