CELTA day 5: The Wave Comes in, and Retreats

The weekend brought with it a handsome escape to Mount Falcon, a local mount Katie and I mounted by way of footpaths, all the way summit-side. The week had been hell on me: each day I rise at six or six-thirty and am on the bus not forty minutes later, at the very latest. Most days I wait in the parking lot of the school until 8am, when the doors open for the work-hards.

I've found that by the end of the day I'm too tapped to formulate a coherent lesson plan, read, write, or talk to just about anyone. This program asks for every drop of mind-energy you've got, given in the form of close attention for nigh on ten hours per day. The day officially begins at 9:30 MT, but I am, like I said, in the door at eight. I fill my coffee tin and up the stairs I go to the computer lab. Two of four machines, old Dells, are equipped with MS Office. This means, of course, that there is jockeying for positions between the eleven other students in my class and several other students who are legitimately trying to learn English all day long. There is gracious yielding, thank yous, and curt farewells as people lose and regain their coveted seats. The thing about this is that each of us twelve have paid in $2,500 for the opportunity to be CELTA certified; it clangs on my ear that such production-vital software only sparely exists. Hurdles aside, I haven't failed to finish my lesson planning before lecture begins at 9:30.

Mountain Mahogany

Now, these lectures are valuable. The main instructor has just this year come in from teaching in Hawaii for the last X number of years and before that she was in Italy and Thailand; she speaks Thai and a little of the indigenous Hawaiian language. The secondary instructor lived in Japan for ten years, did a short (very short) stint in Morocco and just returned this month from Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The tertiary instructor, I forget...she's been to Asia and South America, I think, and maybe French Canada (I could be mixing stories on that front.). These women, they have many stories from The Front, so to speak, and often use their life experiences as framework for lesson-teaching. I like that. From them I've gained the understanding that my field is dynamic and sometimes violent (secondary instructor had to be evacuated out of Morocco when the first Gulf War started) and roundly rewarding, if not TOO enlightening. I sense that these women, all in their 40s and 50s, have seen a good deal in the world; the affect which is thereby produced is a sort of porous carapace, or membrane: theirs is a geniality with promise of NO bullshit to be taken, or else THE TEETH...and good for them. I like each one of them separately, for different reasons, and they function well as a team. First lecture lasts until 10:45 or so, when we get a quarter-hour break. At eleven, lecture resumes and lasts until 12:15, at which point we're awarded an hour's reprieve for lunch. It's at this time that I usually call Savi, and call her again each of the dozen or so times Skype kills our connection. 12:30 here is about the time the bars get interesting in France, and so on occasion we've not spoken at lunch but have instead held off until it's late here, and early in western Europe. Of course I'm no more rested for our habit but what's lost in sleep is payed forward in morale: I'm going to Spain in just over three weeks, to live for eight months with her. 

Red Rocks Amphitheater

To progress onward without paying too much mind to the bizarre formatting mutations happening here: I've not followed anyone before. I mean, this is my first time really putting my hat in the ring for someone and to me, it's huge. I've already bought my plane ticket to Madrid and I'm selling my car and my bike in the interest of helping to keep us afloat awhile. I'm not going broke; far from it, but for me to subsist in Spain I'll have to work illegally for the latter five months. The business plan, or so they call it, is to establish myself quickly as a resource in Zafra. This means business cards, flyers with email addy fringes, and some real snooping for strategic spots to post those things. To my mind, all this must happen in the first month I'm there, coupled with online work originating in Germany and East Asia, and probably others; I have a meeting Wednesday with Bridge's jobs guy about working illegally and what Bridge can do to connect me under the table. It'll be an interesting experience. If what my instructors have said is true, there is more money in tutoring than in contract work, and that'll be all I'm about this round. Next round's on me: preemptively thinking Czech Republic (Hi, Vladimira!) or Costa Rica. There's a good deal more money to be maid in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East but the Caribbean...I mean...palm trees and beaches, and slow island living. Maybe surfing's in the cards. I think I'd like to climb around on some more mountains, too.

After lunch we review our lesson plans for an hour or so, until about quarter past two when students begin to arrive. The most I've taught is 14. My class is largely Mexican, with a light dusting of Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Mongolia, and Belarus. Today I taught vocabulary and a cool thing happened...well, every day a cool thing happens in class but today it was more personal. I was "monitoring", as it's called in this hell of jargon, which means I was hovering over my students, gradually over all of them, and I spied, to my surprise, that one of my students had written my name on the corner of her paper and the word "coolest", as if to distinguish me from my peers. I'm not cooler than anyone; I'M COOLER THAN EVERYONE, BWA HA HA HA HA!!!

Okay. Megalo-freakout concluded. Thanks for keeping up with this rambling. If you haven't got the point of the pictures yet, go ahead and click on them. That will open them in your browser. After that, click the picture once more to see it in its full splendor. Good night!