Christ! Has it really been several months since my last proper blog entry?! I have a lengthy one for all of you to read to make up for my neglect.
Well, three weeks in and I’m still alive and not phased at all about becoming an English teacher. It’s been absolutely manic, with 4 hours of sleep each night, lesson planning, teaching, assignments, marking, and personal tuition. Oh, and our weekly night out getting absolutely wankered with my fellow trainee teachers and students on Corona and Jagerbombs!
I have the priviledge of living with 4 girls and as the man of the house, it’s up to me to take care of such duties as making fire and hunting. Actually, scratch the last two and replace them with making the internets work and killing spiders and other creepy-crawlies and you get the idea. We all get along famously and after only a week, we all felt like we’d known each other for years with our own in-jokes and codes for speaking.
Let’s start with the lineup:
The first housemate I met was Sam, when I scared the shit out of her on night one. She’d moved in quietly whilst I was out having dinner with Alan and Lisa and upon my return, I hollered “Helloooo?” only to receive nothing in return. Several minutes later, I saw a figure come out of the darkness downstairs and proceeded to say “hi” only for Sam to jump out of her skin. Sam is like the older, wiser sister for me. We’re both smokers so we keep each other company outside the house when we’re furiously planning lessons in the middle of the night. She’s an Aber graduate like too so we show the others the sights and sounds of our favourite sleepy sea-side town. She’s also a fellow victim of redundancy and took the same decision as I to explore the world a bit whilst the economy is on its knees.
On the following day, Lis was the second housemate to arrive. Having only recently returned from a teaching assistant job in Spain on her year abroad, she wanted to complete the course before she graduated next year so she could get a job lined up. Lis is like the little sister I never had, a role she has perfected with her own older brothers over the course of twenty-one years. We play practical jokes on other housemates: we managed to trick two of them into believing that one of our housemates had moved out due to a guy on our course giving her unwanted attention when really, all she had done was move into a spare room upstairs. She’s also my fellow piss-head, staying out with me until 3am on our nights out and was my partner in crime when we infiltrated the Jewish stronghold that had been setup in PJM.
The next housemate was Heather, everybody’s favourite Canadian. Having returned temporarily from an aupair job in Italy to complete the course, she has aspirations of teaching English to children. Studious and elegant, she has an air of nobility about her but beneath this veneer is a warm-hearted girl who’s just dying to have fun (we sang Weird Al’s eBay song whilst drunk, walking back home). Ever helpful and good natured, she’s perfect to teach younger learners. She was also core to our practical joke, walking into the kitchen after we’d told the house that she’d dropped out of the course, causing everybody to do a double-take after five seconds of standing there.
The final housemate to arrive was Jane. Deciding that she wanted to work whilst she traveled, she shares many of our reasons for ponying up the best part of £1600 to be able to work one’s arse off. Whilst a lot older than us all, she still knows how to have a laugh and is world-wise; she’s the crazy aunt that would introduce you to your first joint or buy you a stripper for your birthday! She’s usually always out with us and has a wicked sense of humour that always cracks the entire house up.
We’re only a small part of a much larger lineup of trainee teachers, who are all fantastic to work with. All our tutors have told us all that we’re the most close-knit group they’ve had in a very long time. The students themselves can see how united we all are and it shows in our lessons, with one flowing seamlessly into another.
In my teaching group, there’s Enzo, Kay and Hannah. Enzo just recently returned from teaching in Japan for two years and would like qualifications to go further in the field. Kay is a local from Aber and has been like a mother to all of us on the course, inspiring us all to be creative and consoling us when things haven’t gone right. Hannah is one half of a couple on our course and has the most eclectic fashion sense I’ve seen for a long time (think Madonna during the 80s).
The next teaching group consists of Heather and Lis who I’ve already mentioned, and are complimented by Richard and Edward. Richard is possibly one of the most laid back people I have ever met. He rarely lets his emotions get the better of him and along with myself, we’ve been teaching our students colloquial English (“quid”, “minger”, “fittie”, and “battyman” to name but a few) which they’ve all appreciated. He also shares a liking for Borat with me which seems to have permeated the entire student body of the language school… He’s my comrade in wearing suits to teach and damn, do we look sharp together. And then there’s Edward from Romania. We’re not sure why he’s on the course because he’s expressed that he doesn’t want to become an English teacher and has “higher aspirations” in mind. He also pervs at Lis and Heather which gets me lairy most of the time.
The last teaching group consists of Sam and Jane from my house, and are bolstered by Trystan and Pat. Trystan is the other half of our couple in the group and was born to be a teacher; he even has a fascination for tweed and extremely loud ties which sits him firmly in teacherdom. He taught English for a year in favellas in Brazil and is a keen Spanish learner and has the best Welsh accent ever. Pat is an older lady from Aber that wants to teach in Spain when she and her husband retire. A very gentle lady, like Heather she would be perfect to teach younger learners.
My group and I were dropped in at the deep end with the advanced group of students who are a formidable unit. Their English is only a few notches beneath that of a native speaker so it’s much harder to plan a lesson based around refinement as opposed to learning something entirely new. They warmed to me early on since I’d gone out drinking with a lot of them, and my lessons are focussed more on discussions as opposed to trying to forcefeed them with what they may not actually want or need. I’ve just recently finished teaching my advanced group and will be moving on to an intermediate level consisting mostly of Spanish girls; they’re a feisty bunch from what I’ve seen of them so far in my lesson observations. Unlike the advanced group though, their level of English is considerably lower and so they’re more like empty sponges, waiting to soak up any and every bit of English that you throw at them. They’re incredibly competive as a group, and respond very well to games, which I’ve been dying to utilise in my lessons for weeks.
My time in Aber has flown by in the blink of an eye with only two weeks left. I have met people from all walks of life and am proud to call them all friends. Feeling like I was missing something inside, I seem to have found what I was looking for. The world is certainly getting smaller, but for me, there is still so much more world to see.
