15 July, 2007 | Enter your password to view comments

28 June, 2007 | 8 Comments

I moved today. This is my fourth address in 2007 — and the year is only half-way over. Woo-hoo! Who knows what joys the rest of the year will bring.

I must admit I’m a little bummed that not one person I know in this city lifted a finger to help me find a place. My situation was greeted with total indifference. It sort of makes me feel…the opposite of warm and fuzzy.

But let’s not dwell on that. I prevailed…with a bit of luck and plenty of prayers and happy thoughts from my peeps back home — not to mention the well wishes of blog readers. Here is the view from my desk:

Not too shabby.

26 June, 2007 | 12 Comments

Someone got a summer job as an instructor at a major London university, teaching English (specifically writing skills) to international students about to embark on their degree programs. Someone will spend part of July and August teaching not only undergrads, but graduate students as well (master’s and doctoral). [And someone may not become homeless later this week, but that's still iffy.]

The someone of this tale, a person most of you love but a few of you hate, would be me. Woot!

Stay tuned for more developments…

14 June, 2007 | Enter your password to view comments

29 May, 2007 | 8 Comments

I’ve been back in London for more than six weeks and the bad news is that I fear many of my internal organs are shutting down. For the past couple weeks I’ve felt consistently unwell and I’ve been quite lethargic. I blame the food.

I feared something like this might happen. My body was used to French food. By French food I don’t mean steak and béarnaise sauce with a side order of cigarettes. I mean fresh whole foods and foods lacking chemicals and preservatives, which are commonplace in France. It’s possible to get food like this in the US and Britain, but it’ll cost you a lot of money. And I’m too poor to eat that way here. So illness it is!

I’m at a real disadvantage because I have a picky tummy. Very picky. And not having my own kitchen really sucks for someone like me. There is a fridge on each floor of the building and a microwave, but the last time I left food in the fridge (mango chunks) someone stole it. Lovely. So I don’t leave much in there and it’s not possible to really cook anyway without a stove, oven, pots, pans, utensils.

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12 May, 2007 | 2 Comments

I shouldn’t blog when I’m feeling this way, but oh well. I finished my grueling course today. I passed. In four to six weeks, Cambridge University will send me my CELTA certificate. I can’t remember the last time I worked so hard for anything.

I should be happy. And I am. I now have a lot more extra space in my brain. This course was so much work and it was so intensive that I could not have continued with it for much longer. Not even a day longer, probably. I feel proud of this accomplishment. But I also feel completely gutted that this experience is over.

I hate when life surprises me like this.

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5 May, 2007 | 2 Comments

I just finished the third week of my class. And now it’s a 3-day holiday weekend. Hurrah! This has been a hellish week. The course I’m taking is notoriously difficult. And it’s been made more difficult because during the first week, one of my teammates dropped out, leaving us with four people instead of five. So we have to teach all his lessons in addition to ours, meaning that I have to teach almost every day. Grrrrrrr.

I’m not surprised he dropped out. During the first — and last — lesson he taught, the students terrorized him. He tried to lead a class discussion. The topic was:

Where were you on 9/11/01?

He wrote this on the board, with the date in the American format (m/d/y). This is obviously how people around the world refer to this date in history, regardless of how they write the date in their own countries. But the students immediately began to raise their hands. “We don’t understand that date.” Little lying bastards. My fellow teacher and teammate was very flustered by this point because the rest of his lesson had not gone well either. So he rewrote the date in the European way, but made a mistake:

9th September, 2001. Where were you?

[And for our next assignment...Where were you three days before Kennedy was shot?]

He was oblivious to his mistake, even though me and the other team members were signaling to him from the back of the classroom. And the students took full advantage of this error. They claimed they could not possibly remember where they were on the 9th of September, 2001. And they were laughing. To complicate matters, several of the troublemakers hail from countries that, while not quite “Axis of Evil,” are close cousins. So my fellow teacher thought they were just being insensitive to what had happened on 9/11.

And things went downhill from there.

After this disastrous class, he fled and refused to come back. In fact, right in the middle of the class he was teaching he said he considered “doing a runner.” I really want to kill this guy for being a quitter and adding so much work to my life. During one of our planning sessions this week, I remarked to my teammates: “If I see Steve, I’m going to tell him off.”

“Oh no,” a guy in my group said. “No. If we see Steve…we drown him.”

Right about now, that sounds like a good idea. But at least it’s Friday. And I have three days off. Excuse me now while I pass out…

2 May, 2007 | 6 Comments

In my previous post I mentioned the fact that yesterday and today, I had to do my student teaching while being evaluated by the meanest instructor in the program. I managed to survive, but boy oh boy! Today was quite explosive.

First, what happened yesterday. After my teammates and I teach our lessons, our students leave and the instructor gives us our feedback as a group. Yesterday I got a good grade. I had a fairly easy lesson. The instructor told me one of my strengths is that I am very calm when I teach. Others have remarked on this as well, which is stunning to me. Inside, I am literally on the verge of a panic attack. It’s a mystery to me how I can feel one way on the inside yet appear the complete opposite to everyone around me. Anyway, he said I was calm (dot dot dot) but I am almost too calm. “You’re calm to the point of being too understated,” he said. Then he told me: “You need to vary your speaking voice. You speak in the same tone of voice all the time.”

So to translate this for you: I am so calm I look like I don’t give a shit. And my California accent gets on his nerves. Well, at least I don’t sound like Hannibal Lechter…or dress like him…or act like him.

Moving on to today. I got a bad grade. Very bad. Poor me. This instructor has pretty much slashed his way through my team and I was his last victim. Not to bore you with these details, but I was assigned to teach a section of a chapter in the textbook by our main instructor and I did what she said. The instructor who evaluated me today (her underling) criticized me for not deleting about half the lesson because it was too much material for one person to handle. I agree it was too much to handle, but I was under the impression that I had no choice but to teach all of it.

So he gave me my bad grade and immediately, a woman in my group said: “That’s ridiculous. She did a wonderful job. The other instructor assigned her this lesson. She had no choice but to teach it.” And she went on from there. After that, a guy in my group jumped right in and basically said the same thing. Well, I was quite stunned. In my experience, people rarely come to the defense of others, especially when to do so goes against their own best interests. It means a lot to me that they would stand up for me like that. I’m very touched by it. My team really does function as a team and that makes this experience more bearable.

But that’s not all. My four-person team actually turned on the instructor and began letting him have it. This wasn’t about the grade he gave me, but about his awful treatment of all of us over the past few days. One guy just blew up and told him that he was just trying to intimidate us with his actions and behavior and that he wanted us to fear him. Everyone then jumped in with their own gripes. I’m serious! The instructor just sat there, completely shocked. It was painfully obvious that no one had ever called him on his behavior until today.

He responded by saying that we were all clearly very upset with him and that if we didn’t like his tactics, we should have told him. Oh please!!! He then apologized, but he was just going through the motions — I’m sure it wasn’t based on any sincere feeling of regret. But it was fun to turn the tables on him. After the feedback session was over, he left the room. My teammates and I were chatting. A few minutes later a woman from another team came in and said: “What did you guys do to [the instructor]?” She could tell there was something wrong just by looking at him.

I feel bad about my grade, but at least I don’t have to deal with this guy again. It’s another instructor’s turn to evaluate my team for the rest of the course. I have so much work left to do that I can’t let this bring me down. I have to dust myself off and all that.

But there was still a bit more humiliation in store for me. I was running to catch the central line today (for those who don’t know, this is a line on the Tube). I sort of leapt through the doors as they were closing and I stumbled a bit. I reached out to steady myself and my hand landed on some guy’s…lap. Yes, it’s true. I said, “Oh, sorry!” He laughed and looked down and said: “No worries.”

It’s always nice to end the day in style.

30 April, 2007 | 8 Comments

Your truly is truly a nervous wreck this week. The tutor that is now evaluating me and my teammates while we do our teaching is a real hard-ass. We met him today for the first time. After one of my teammates got done teaching and our students left, our tutor asked him:

“What were you doing up there for the past 40 minutes?”

“I was teaching.”

“Oh, is that what you call it?”

In his critique of another teammate, he said: “You talk too much. You love the sound of your own voice.”

She said: “No I don’t! I don’t talk too much.”

“Oh really? Next time you teach, try videotaping yourself.”

Last week, Essex woman told me that he told her: “Your whole entire lesson gave me a f–king headache.”

And this is the guy who will be evaluating my teaching for the next two days! Poor me!!! He is going to rip me apart. I can’t even control the class. Whenever I teach, they all start chatting with their friends. There’s a block of very naughty Brazilian and French boys who try to disarm with me with their flirtatious charms. And this isn’t very hard to do. The other day one of them said: “Miss [insert my name], I never hear your name before. It’s so pretty. I love it.” I’m such a sucker for a Brazilian guy with a ponytail.

So anyway, tomorrow I expect my life to be ruined. On the bright side, this week I discovered peanut butter Kit Kats.

30 April, 2007 | 1 Comment

In “Is my crush gay or straight?” news, today:

He told me I have a beautiful accent. [Good.]

He asked what brand of shoes I was wearing. [Bad. Very, very bad.]

In other news, today two new classmates started winking at me — one of them a 60-year-old woman. I just don’t get it. Also today, I got into an argument with the guy who winks at me all the live long day (one of my teammates). This little dust-up (more of a mini-argument) wasn’t about his winking, but about him being a very macho “I must dominate” control freak. And he accused me of being a whiner! So I gave him the cold shoulder for several hours and then we started speaking again. And then he started his winking crap once more.

We were talking after class and his mobile rang. He told me he needed to take the call so he could “break up with this Russian bird.” Who talks like that?

21 April, 2007 | 2 Comments

Wake up very late on Saturday morning, make myself semi-presentable and walk down to the dining hall in flip-flops. Eat a fully cooked breakfast. (Cost: £1.40.)

While eating my eggs, I read the magazine that comes with the Friday Evening Standard. Princess Beatrice looks like Prince Andrew in drag. Poor girl. I converse briefly with the Jamaican guy who is one of the cooks. He doesn’t believe I am American. He is convinced I’m from Spain. When I asked him why, he said, “Because you look like a Spaniard.” I wonder if Spaniards have very pale skin? Perhaps.

I leave my dirty dishes for someone else to wash up and go back upstairs to read the newspaper.

Oh, and did I mention I have maid service once a week and don’t even have to wash my own linens? I’m not living in the lap of luxury — they insist on cleaning our rooms once a week to ensure health and safety standards.

See, the life of a student has its perks. Yes, I’m in my thirties and I don’t have a kitchen. But I don’t have to shop for food, cook it and wash up. See how that works?