1:58am: I was trying to fix an old wardrobe...

   And while there was a distinct lack of fauns, and I already have an apparently
neverending winter, I still made an interesting discovery.

   Wedged into the base of the wobbly wardrobe was a veritable trove of items 
which must have been lost over the course of generations. Mostly complete crud 
admittedly, but also a variety of papers and some (very) old photos.

Behind the cut are a small selection of the style.

( Yet more photos, but not mine for a change. )

1:40am: Ah, those Wacky EFL publishers...

   First off, my apologies for the low grade scanning. I found
an old clunker of a scanner in the schools junk pile, so it's
just about capable of image reproduction, as long as I let it
cool down between pics.
  Second, ummm, enjoy? The perils of letting creative people
into the English Teaching Circles is that they start getting
ideas and, well... judge for yourselves.

   All pics link to readably large files elsewhere.

( Cut for multiple images, including some biggish ones. )

   Myself, I just love the words, phrases and sound effects they deemed
worthy of phonetic clarification and common usage guidelines...

10:50pm: Hey momma! Lookit! A fragg^H^H^H^H^H foreigner!
It really does sum up life as a foreigner in NorthEast China.

( Large image behind the cut... )

11:28am: Chinese New Year, An Adventure in Camera Shake.
Nothing too exciting, just a few selected firework shots. 800x600 versions linked from the thumbnails.

Nothing too exciting, just a few selected firework shots. 800x600 versions linked from the thumbnails.

---

I will readily acknowledge that I was ill-prepared for this shooting event. I am still far from comfortable with the fully manual modes of my camera and, frankly, I have my doubts that any camera in the world has a suitable auto mode for catching fireworks. These shots (and everything else taken last night) were all taken, of necessity, in full manual mode and without auto-focus.    The few shots I did take in the standard night shooting modes were deleted on viewing as they were universally black or off-white screens.    I did take the tripod, but the combination of fast moving targets, sky-pointing camera, vast crowds, occasional need to move swiftly away from explosives and requirement for fast access to controls meant it was just not feasible for use.

11:59pm: Warmers, day 2...
They've opened a Subway in the City...
An alternative to McDonalds, rather than an alternative to the bike, but I'd honestly expected to see the mass transit system first...

Not a bad price either. 36 Yuan (about $3.80) gets you an "expensive" multi-meat foot long and a 500ml soda. (For comparison, Mcdonalds meals are about 20 yuan a pop).

Back to the same Level 10 again. They seem happy enough, though one student (One of the schools TA's) has dropped out, citing the young age of most of the students. They're certainly talkative and active enough to make the lessons fun and easy.

We discussed stories, descriptions (of the sensory kind) and relative clauses. Or at least, they did. I sat back and prodded the argument occasionally.

Unfortunately, post christmas, I am quite broke, and today's Subway run was foolish and budget shredding. I now have 93 Yuan to last me till the 25th...

11:59pm: So, when a singular event, being a grouping of lesser events, takes a name that is plural, does it get an "is" or an "are"?

This and others like it are the sort of questions currently plaguing the staff room, along with "How come he's still got two days a week off?" and "If this is the busy season, why's she not got any classes scheduled till Saturday?"...

My new level 10 class is primarily made up of people who have dropped out of other classes I've taken. Including the two that I mentioned as being such a relief to be rid of from my Sunday Level 10's. Talk about laugh. I almost did.

Still, the group overall is quite well balanced. Almost all talkative, with one exception who I've designated as my "demo-victim" for the time being. Today's class? Customs, Cultures and Manners. A quick review of basic articles and Infinitives vs Gerunds. So much fun.

11:59pm: Sunday. Three hours, two hours, three hours.


Three hours of teens (L10) who are actually quite decent now that the two arrogant pests have dropped out (after I declined to rush through the book and "do the talking stuff afterwards" so they could just attend the grammar lessons and skip actually learning to speak, read, write or comprehend spoken English). A fun enough class, covering intonations expressing surprise and shock (short and simple), oral reporting, story telling and verbs used in reporting speech indirectly ("admit","confess","ask","declare","explain" etc). I stuck with a previous topic of "Mysterious phenomena" as this group can be a little morbid at times.

Two hours of my precious young teens (TB3A) class. While today's class was a bit down on recent ones with these guys it was still a fun run through. Today was their first real introduction to comparisons. It looks like whoever had them for TB 2A didn't finish the course as they're supposed to get the basics then. I do hope that wasn't me. Today was comparisons between the past and present, combining base comparisons with their first experience of mixing tenses within a sentence. Some got it, some didn't. I need to restructure next weeks lesson to scoop up those who didn't.

Finally, my new Hell Class (everyone has one). Three hours of teens (L8) aged 13 to 17 who really don't want to be there and don't much care about their results. There's a lot of them to boot. A full 17 in attendance today. A quick vocab check back over topics they were supposed to have covered before I took over the class left me considering going to the "front desk" to ask if anyone had actually confirmed their previous teacher had been attending classes. One person recognised only two of the 18 test words I used. No-one else recognised any. These words were all selected from the specified key vocabulary of the previous 5 lessons, and are all key words in the courses final exam. Today we covered basic question formation (not part of the plan, but it turned out to be needed (quelle surprise)) and necessary to complete later exercises, vocab relating to foodstuffs, explaining reasons for actions and choices (using vegetarianism as the topic), and finishing out with some refreshers on "'few', 'a few', 'little' and 'a little'."

I had to go "Bad Teacher" (Like Good Cop-Bad Cop, but without any escape route for the victims) to make any headway, but they were all partaking/speaking by the end, and definitely got the hang of the few/little routine, and most even figured the difference adding "very" and "only" to the mix made.

Once that lot were sorted I paused only to grab the level 10 book for my tuesday class before leaving the near deserted school (I'm the only one on a 3 hour class on Sunday evenings so all other members of the foreign staff were long gone) with only two things on my mind. Specifically ice-cream and hot chocolate.

11:59pm: Friday, the weekend begins...

Weekends in this job are usually the painful times. Most teachers have 6 classes (totaling 14 real classroom hours) over the two days. Mine total 15 hours, but this suits me fine for reasons that just today became clear to the rest of the "junior" staff.

For four months a year, two summer (July and August) and two winter (January and February) the rules for teachers change, and we move from a maximum of 20 (real) hours to 26 (real) hours a week. Keep in mind, every hour in the classroom is matched by 40 minutes split between preparation, paperwork and downing as much caffeine as possible in the mid-class breaks. This brings the actual working time _almost_ up to a regular working week back home.

Every 2 real hours is counted as 3 academic hours. My contract states that over 39 academic hours a week (during the 4 months of busyness) requires overtime payments. Also during busy times the usual weekday 2 hour classes become 3(* Note below) hour classes.

With the conversion from 2 hour classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday my academic hours total 36 hours a week. This means they cannot add another class to my schedule without putting me into overtime. Which they will not do lightly.

End result? In exchange for the single extra hour (actually an extra 40 minutes) at weekends I get to keep my second day off each week for the busy times. My chosen phrase to express my feelings on this? "Sweeeeeeeeet." Other staffs chosen phrase on learning I'll be sleeping each Thursday while they sweat? "Bastard!"

Anyway, all this was revealed along with the first "Busy season" timetables at today's meeting, which was otherwise a standard meeting. Necessary to attend for general maintenance info, but not reportworthy.

The evening class, my favourite little monsters were, as always crazy. I had a temp replacement TA for Cindy. Unfortunately the replacement was a close relative of the schools general manager, so when she started shushing kids I'd spent 20 minutes getting to get up and be active I was rather stuck with it. I'll let it go as a one off, but some TA's need to remember the "'s Assistant" part of their title and not try to take over and run classes their way. Especially when they're only there on a one off while the regular is off getting crowns done or something.

---

The note I promised you:

• 1 academic hour = 40 minutes real time, but does not include the breaks.
  
• Children's classes are two hours in the classroom, separated by a 15 minute break. So for 2 hours, 15 minutes spent in the school the teacher gets tagged as having worked for 3 hours.
  
• Adult classes are 2 hours and 40 minutes in the classroom, spent as :- 1 hour, 10 minute break, 50 minutes, 10 minute break, 50 minutes. So for 3 hours spent in the school the teacher gets tagged as having spent 4 hours working.
  
• Some rare weekday adult classes are done in two hour sessions, the same as the kids classes. These are universally disliked as they mess up folks routine lesson plans, do not allow for much homework to be done (daily rather than weekly), and usually leave both students and teachers sick of the sight of each other by the end of the 4 weeks they take to run.

11:59pm: Well, Pauls back in Ireland, mostly intact, though some of his souvenirs took travel damage.

The earlier part of the day was divided between some extra sleep and preparing a full 6 lessons for the weekend.

Come the evening I had to once again handle the swarm of littlest kiddies they send my way. It's a class of 18 "boisterous" 5 to 7 year olds. They're actually quite fun to deal with. Today's lesson was all about forming "Is it", "Does it" and "Can it" questions. They took it well, and we covered the boring aspects rapidly, leaving plenty of time to teach them to play 20 Questions.

By the time they're finished with each week, while feeling good about the lessons, I always feel so drained that the most I can do is stagger home, eat some [whatever's available], watch a bit of Naruto and sleep.

11:59pm: New years... And what a year...
January First, 2006. New years day, and I woke up in a cheap hostel in Beijing.

Today was spent walking the Great Wall of China, or at least a small 2 kilometer section of it about 60 km north of Beijing City. It's a little over touristy (no big surprises there), but pleasant enough and there's far fewer beggars and high pressure souvenir sales folks than in and around the city monuments and sites.

If you're ever trying to get there, skip the tourist buses and just hop on the route 919 bus. (It's terminals and stops are marked on any half decent map of the city). I recomend getting on at the terminal, as it does get to be standing room only pretty darn quick. Ignore the guys who try to lead you away from the bus terminal, including the ones who insist that the 919 does not go to the Wall. Its about 90 minutes each way, and the bus runs every 15 to 30 minutes from about 9am to about 5 pm (but do check the last return time when you get there).

Good day, good weather for the most part, if a little hazy, and some good photographic results, though nothing really great.
A pleasant day all told.

---

A few pics from the wall...

Click the picture for a bigger copy.

---

9:09pm: I shaved...

I Shaved

I probably shouldn't have, and certainly not right before temperatures dropped ten degrees (from a starting point of minus ten Centigrade). But I did anyway.

I then faced off against 6 classes in 2 days, all of whom have known me for between 3 and 6 months as the bearded Barbarian teacher/invader.

So I had a little fun.

---

[YT] : Yours Truly
[TA] : Teaching Assistant (Reasonably English skilled Chinese assistant)
[Sx] : Student x (where x is between 1 and some number)
[S*] : All the students
*Description* : Narrative action in the class.
Thoughts

---

( Class the first : Saturday morning, 15 early teens, potentially noisy if you get them in the right mood, but more often quiet and gloomy on a weekend morning, missing their Naruto fixes... )

---

( Second Class : Saturday afternoon, 8 mid-teens, High level English for their age. Good enough for genuine conversation. )

---

( Class C : Saturday evening, 9 High level English speakers from late teens to mid-forties. )

---

( Class IV : Sunday Morning. Lower English levels, 10-12 year olds )

---

( last-but-one : Sunday Afternoon, 10 to 14 year olds. 18 of them. My favourite class by a country mile. )

---

( The Finals, Sunday Evening. My Demon Class. 12 to 15 years old. I would live happily knowing I would never see any of them again. The TA is nice though. )

12:44am: High Flyers 3A : A buh-wha?!?
[Me] = Me.
[R7] = Random seven year old.

[Me] : "Ok, shoko-lah" (As near as I can get to the phonetics for "Class is finished", used to dismiss the kids on their 15 minute break)
Many {NM]'s : "YAY!" *Rampage*
[Me] : *Retreat*

[R7] : *Accosts in corridor* "Teacher! Come here!" *tugs on shirt*
[R7] : "Teacher! You look like Wah-wah" (Doll/teddy bear apparently (Didn't learn this till later)).
[Me] : *Thoughts of a mug of hot tea* *cannot move till I can disengage my shirt*
[R7] : "YOU BE MARRY ME MY HUSBAND!"
[Me] : *Tea Thought Train derails. Casualties in the hundreds*
[R7] : *leg clings*
[Me] Internal : "Aiiiiyaaah! Crud! Why me? Paul's cuter! Choose him!"
[Me] External : "Ok, honey, you ain't no Shampoo, and even if... Ummmm... Look, it's not that easy..."
[R7] : *leg clings*
[Me] : ummmm... OK.... ummm... Ni Mah mah uhhhh TALK Woe Mah mah, ummm, ok? [Very bad chinese/english mix for "Your mother talk to my mother, ok?"]
[R7] : Ok. Bye. *vanishes into the mob*


My only hope is it's forgotten before she gets home.

11:55pm: China is...
Saving money by driving a very hard bargain with the sign printer...


Ummm, yeah...
The owners got a leeeeedle bit pissy when we tried to poke the paper loose...


This is the closest we could get the camera. However, basic analysis tells
us the first letter can only be an 'f', the second must be a 'u' or an 'a',
the third has to be short, and the fourth, being tall, but lacking a
rounded bottom is limited to 'h', 'k' or 'l'.

12:57am: Of China and the Free (or at least surprisingly cheap) Market.
Gather round my kith and kin and hear tell the Ode of the Hard Drive and the Hard Cycle...

( Bright was the day, and light our hearts when we first set forth... )
So my kith and kin learn well ye of this saga! Fear the EFL teacher for he is strange, large scarey and covered in hair and sweat! And liable to do strange things in pursuit of sparkly IT items...

12:35am: Quick introductions and clipped training...
At the end of the first week I'd observed several lessons, participated in two, and was feeling pretty good (despite severe travelers stomach).

At the end of the second week I was working a full schedule of classes on my own, as there had been an interesting kerfluffle of the old "You can't quit if we fire you first" style, and suddenly the only person in place to pick up the spare classes was the newly (incompletely) trained guy (Y.T.).

At the end of the third week another teacher departed quite suddenly, and workloads moved into the red all across the staff board.

Five weeks in now, and I'm teaching for 26 actual hours a week (39 academic hours) which is the max contractually allowed, even for the busy seasons (July/August/January/February). It's not been easy adapting, but the actual work itself is easier and lighter than the last two months of any serious IT project.

I have one regular 4 days a week class, and seven once-a-week classes, six of which are at the weekend. I teach one three hour lesson a day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with about thirty to forty minutes preparation for each. I teach the fourth three hour lesson on Fridays, followed by a two hour children's lesson on Friday evening till 19:45.

The weekends are toughest by far. Saturday morning, 09:30 to 11:45 a two hour class of absolute beginner 7 to 10 year olds. These guys don't talk, and don't want to talk. After that there's one and a quarter hours (time for either a quick lunch, or an emergency lesson plan preparation session) and then back to the same room for a somewhat louder and less controlled class with the 12 to 15 year olds, who talk, but do not listen. To finish a saturday I have a smaller adults class, 5 to 9 people in their upper teens for three hours. At least one of the ladies in this group tends to leave comments on the whiteboard along the lines of "J't'aime" with lengthy chinese commentaries and lipstick marks alongside. I get out of the school at about 19:30 to 20:00.

With very little respite I'm back in action at 09:00 for three hours on Sunday morning, teaching another semi-adult class. While Saturday nights class are fun and creative Sunday mornings group just want to plod through the book and avoid talking/interacting at all. They are on average a little older than Saturdays adults. Once they're out of the way I have my favourite class of the week, a mid-range children's class who listen well, repeat well, and then go absolutely berserk if anything in the least bit competitive is introduced.

Finally to close out each week I have a low-level children's class from 16:00 to 18:15. These guys landed on my plate quite out of the blue last week, so I've only had two classes with them so far, and there's only two classes left in their course. They don't speak easily, but are nice kids who will try hard once you get them past the whole shyness stage. A few games and a little clowning, and ensuring that everyone has reason and time to speak has worked wonders. I'm not altogether pleased with whoever left them in the state I found them in however.

Mondays, I sleep, buy bread cheese and yoghurt from the foreign stores (Wal*mart and Carrefor) as the local variances are just not appealing to my palette. Then it's back in to work on Tuesday (Though at least I do get to sleep in till midday).

5:21pm: China Arrival. (june 19th 2005), posted much later.
It's been a month already... Where're the posts? Here's a few to be catching up with...

On the 19th of June I touched down in China, and lost about half a kilo in pure heat sweat in the first 15 minutes.

All told it was a pretty average flight. It had it's crappy bits, but overall was very bland. The first hop, From Dublin, Ireland to London Heathrow, England was over two hours late, meaning that instead of a casual stroll across the terminal I had a mad dash in search of check-in desks and shuttle buses, and made it to the gate only minutes before boarding.

I saw nothing from the air at all, being in aisle seats every step of the way. The route taken was a northern great loop, so we passed over Norway, Finland, Russia and Mongolia. Far enough north to show a pure white landscape (seascape?) for much of the flight.

The Beijing flight change was simpler, and more timely. With the aid of a few friendly folks from the flight I showed my visa, got stamped into the country, collected my luggage, and promptly checked it right back in again for the final short hop.

Shenyang arrivals were pretty straightforward. Off the plane, down the ramp and into baggage collections, where a small group of folks with my name on a page stood waiting. From touchdown in Shenyang, to exiting the car park took less than 12 minutes.

A quick round of name exchanging, a Korean style BBQ meal, and a good natured team effort to haul my 35 kilos of luggage up the 108 steps to my apartment later, and I was ready to collapse and sleep.

8:52am: And so it all began...
3 hours till the bus to the airport. 6 hours till the flight. 25 hours till I reach Shenyang...

My luggage is almost down to the allowable quota, but my razor is buried at the bottom of my largest bag. Guess I'll be making a barbarian style appearance on arrival.

So much stuff I've had to throw/give away...

All I ask is that no airline official points out that the rule is one carry on bag less than seven kilos, and a small camera _OR_ a laptop.

2:49pm: Ah gawts dah jawb mah!
Well, as per the subject, I've only gone and finally gotten a job offer. It's with an English First franchisee in Shenyang in China.

Shenyang is a sizable enough city in North-Eastern China. It suffers from some fairly sever pollution and heavy dust from the local desert. It's a historic city, with many well preserved monuments of various dynasties. It's well off the tourist routes, but has a sizable ex-pat population. Apparently there's actually a small GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association : Sporting wing of the Irish republican movement) league out there.

English First is a franchise operation. the quality of individual schools tends to vary noticeably. The Shenyang school has a pretty good reputation online, and the two teachers I've exchanged emails with (one current, one ex) were pretty encouraging about it.

The housemate of one of my brothers has spent time in Shenyang fairly recently as part of a banking job. I will be visiting him shortly to get reams of info and the promised contacts list.

Tomorrow, make an appointmentfor vaccinations, and get the last of my dental work sorted. Also need to pick up an English First book or two to get a feel for them...

Now, what immediately essential preparations have I completely forgotten?

1:08pm: Interview, all sounds good...
I just got off the phone having talked for almost a full hour with a charming lady from English First, based in Manchester. We were discussing my past experiences in teaching roles, why I wanted to be a teacher, my CELTA course and what I expected of working life in the Peoples Republic of China.

Overall, it seemed to go well. There were no negative indicators from her side, though I don't feel I represented myself all that well.

Now, I just need to send my referees contact details, and evidence that I do actually have a CELA certification, and we're off. Probable start in mid-June.

(Yes, I am aware of EF's "mixed" reputation, but for that first experience getting year I'm willing to put up with a lot.)

4:09pm: Slow going...
I've been back in Ireland for a month now, and things aren't going quite so smoothly as I'd hoped. I'm sending out applications to schools in every location I think I can survive (climatewise), but most don't even acknowledge receipt.

I knew all along that this would be the tough part, but having had to shell out rent money at Irish rates again has hurt my morale somewhat. I'm also keeping an eye out for any part time work here that'll protect my savings till the next start of term recruitment kicks off, but despite a few near misses haven't picked up anything yet.

I'm resigned to taking whatever I can get in order to clock up my first years experience, but even at that there seem to be 30 experienced applicants ahead of me for every job. I have higher hopes for a NOVA position for a year, though being outside the States makes interviews etc that bit more awkward. I also have applications in with a few Russian schools, including BKC/IH who have been posting openings recently.

Various folks (mostly family) keep asking me why I don't get work with the english schools in Ireland, and seem quite surprised and puzzled when I explain that even the lowest rated schools in English speaking countries have higher qualification and experience requirements than the best of the schools in non-English speaking countries.

Still, whining and self-pity aside, I feel better than I have in years, and am not about to run out of options (or finances) for a while yet. If I'm still unemployed and in Ireland at the end of August, well, then I may have to reconsider. For now its back to the searches for odder more out of the way schools.

6:02pm: Only one more lesson to go...
Todays lesson (number six of seven) did not go particularly well. I got a "meets the standard, but only just" rating and review. It could have been great, but just didn't quite work out. Things moved to slowly. I let students talk for waaaay too long and ended up running 5 minutes over the allotted time, even after dropping one exercise completely and truncating another.
*shrug* We live, we learn, we suffer.

The assessor's pretty nice actually. Pretty pretty too. (I suspect a bit of Goth in her past). English born I think, but operating out of Prague these days. We chatted briefly before my lesson, and then the entire training group had a 20 minute sit-down "feel free to comment on CELTA/the tutors/this school etc". We could see the schools managers peering out of their office window across the lobby and in at us in the teachers room, looking quite nervous, but in actuality there were no real complaints. A few generic comments, some light praise, but no whinging. I think everyone in the group knew what they were getting in to when they signed up for Europe's best budget CELTA package (There's a googleable phrase for you).

12:07pm: It's been a while... There's no time to post.
I'm actually quite burned out at this stage. Not to mention feeling a little put upon, possibly cursed by fate. The course assessor is visiting on monday. It's bad enough having a session on a monday morning two weeks running, but first session, with the assessors presence making it the make or break session for the whole course. (Ralli is following with the second session. I worry a bit for her. She always looks exhausted these days. Not too much though. I save most of my worry for myself at present.)
To crown it off, the final essay (Student Case Study plus Language Related Tasks: 2000 words) is due Tuesday morning.
On the bright side my lesson gradings have gone "fail-borderline-meets the standard-meets the standard plus-meets the standard plus". If the trend continues then Monday and Friday's lessons will be well into "exceeds the standard". Working against that, though, is the perfectly understandable need for the school and tutor to be extra harsh on Monday with the assessor watching.
Still, my first essay passed without issue and there's been no bad news on the second yet. Additionally the essays I've seen from the last two years have had a quality to them which I'll be nice and describe as "simplistic and childish".
I did break a key rule of CELTA though and disagreed openly with the senior tutor. The subject was the timelining of a future perfect sentence. Hopefully she didn't take it personally.

Enough of this displacement activity. Back to listing anticipated problems inherent to learning the various uses and meanings of the word "work" along with the relevant pronouns, a set of generic job adjectives and a few co-locations in that lexical set.
(How do you spot the ex-computer geek on your TEFL course? He's the one who lunges for the jargon/terminology like a duck lunges for a drowned worm.)

6:17pm: It's begun...
The CELTA is a harsh and hurried course of study. Four days in out of thirty by the calendar, two days in out of twenty one by "working" days, and I'm exhausted already.

On the upside there are seven of us on the course. For a while it seemed there would only be three. Myself and Sam (30, married, 2 year old daughter, son on the way, living and teaching in the Ukraine, heading back there once he finishes the course) are the only guys.
There's three Bulgarian nationals:
Ralli (Rallitsa) - 21, student, overworked,
Marietta - 40's, teaches aviation english to pilots
and Niki (Nikoletta(I think)) - 20's, teaches english locally.
Two americans:
Michelle - 20, from Texas, youngest of our group, plans to head to S.E. Asia (Thailand or Indonesia) for a year.
and Terry - from Colorado. In her 40's I think. Been in Bulgaria for 3 years on church work with husband and two kids.

That's all I've really got for now. Exhaustion has set in already.

3:06pm: A quieter day...
I got up about nineish, and headed out to find some breakfast and some colorfull card and related artsy supplies to suplement the materials supplied by the school. Sam is 30, originally from London and teaches in Odessa. We found a place by the name of Jimmie's which while mainly about coffee and icecream also served a pleasant variety of paninis and teas. We then strolled on into the heart of Sofia admiring the architecture and variety of life. I didn't bring the camera as it was very dull and hazy when we set out, and given the size of the buildings in question any shots would have to be quite distant. We never did find any suitable card, but got most of our needs and saw some of the rugged beauty of this city.

According to my GPS the city is half a kilometer above sea level, which makes the 2.5 kilometer high mountains outside the city that much more impressive again. The first non-hazy day that I can get a few daylight hours out of class I'll be going on a photography rampage.

I've been sleeping for too many hours and feeling continuously thirsty, so its back to some salty snack foods for me.

12:18am: CELTA Day 2 : Pain.
The morning lesson went far worse than I had anticipated. I forgot the tape for one of the exercises, got flustered and rushed bits I should have extended to compensate (and which the students would have benefited from), leaving me with only my fallback extension exercise which I would have needed even if I hadn't skipped the audio work. The last ten minutes particularly were a complete waste of the students time. Even wothout the tape issue however there were several problems. I completely failed to get the students even slightly motivated. Despite my best efforts they remained near motionless, and only spoke English if I was right alongside them at the time. As soon as I moved more than two meters from them they reverted back to Bulgarian. I have an idea for dealing with that if it reoccurs on Tuesday. My timing was way off, and my written dialogue example contained other terminology that many of them didn't know, which caused some disraction.

It could have gone worse, but not by much.

In feedback, the tutor explained that he was glad I said I felt it had been a disaster, as he would not have liked having to correct me if I'd said I thought it went ok. The other two "newbies" did rather better, though again none of the classes were graded better than "fail".

The afternoon lectures went smoothly enough, including the language lesson which I'd been worried about. It actually turned out quite fun, and definitely the lowest stress level section to date.

Four of us went out to find a coffee shop or similiar for a brief chat and snack before several of the group had to show up for their observation exercises. Michelle and I headed deeper into the town for further snacking and conversation. Michelle is 20, from the US and is living quite a distance from the group of three I'm part of. We killed time till about 10pm and before delivering Michelle to her place and heading back to my own room. A few minutes of music and reading and a brief LJ-Update text to post later, and its time to snooze.