A lot has happened since I last wrote. Last time I was despairing because I had no job, no house, and didn’t know anyone in town. Well, last Thursday I dropped off my CV with a company, had an interview that afternoon, and was hired the next morning. Yay! Henceforth, my employer shall probably be known as The Company or Inc. or Co. or something like that. I mean, probably not too hard to figure out who I am if you find this page but less easily googleable at least. Of course I’m sure I’ll have nothing but stellar things to say about them : ) but just in case it’s good to be a bit circumspect. Anyway, so it’s a really good company. They are very legit. They hire most of their teachers from abroad instead of by walk in, which is unusual in many Mexican language schools. Hence, most of the teachers are trained and have some experience. It’s run by a European in a European way, which is nice. That means that paycheques are always on time and the business side of things is run much more like I am accustomed to. They get the FM3 for you (the type of visa you need in order to work legally) and they do regular evaluations (every three months) to give constructive criticism and possibly a pay raise. It’s salaried, so you always get the same amount every month. The curriculum is a bit strange and the teaching situation doesn’t always seem ideal, so there are definitely some drawbacks that I can already see, but I had a long orientation with the DoS (Director of Studies) this morning and he seems really realistic about the situation and what you can expect to achieve in your classes, and he has a lot of good suggestions for making the curriculum work for you. I like him: very professional, smart, but with a good sense of humour and a healthy sense of skepticism and sarcasm. So, I started this morning. I had my orientation this morning and this afternoon I’ll observe the three different varieties of in-house classes: vocab, grammar, and conversation. These kinds of classes will be most of what I’m teaching. The other kind of class I’ll be teaching are in-business group classes. These are more traditional style classes that follow a textbook and for which I am responsible for preparing a lesson plan (the in-house classes are already completely prepared and we just show up and walk them through it, more like tutors than teachers). I’m starting off with a two hour business class twice a week, but because of my “finance background,” I’ll probably be getting more and more of those. I’m happy about that, because I think it will be nice to have a mix of no prep and prep classes (a lot of people only do the in house no prep classes). So, I have my first business class tomorrow at a local factory and then five hours back to back of in house in the afternoon. My schedule for most days looks something like 7 – 9 in the morning and 4 – 9 in the afternoons. Pretty normal split shifts for TEFL, although not exactly desirable.
The other great thing about getting this job is that they really try to take care of their teachers, so when I let them know that I was staying in a hostel, they got right onto it and asked around about flats for me. Turns out one of the newish teachers had just moved into a flat about five minutes from where I had been staying and her landlord/roommate was still looking to fill the other room. I came round that evening, had a really nice time meeting the teacher and the roommate, and moved in the next morning. So since Saturday I’ve been living in this really nice flat just a couple of blocks from the main city centre (so not right in the middle of things, but in a central residential neighbourhood just a very short walk from most things). It’s also only a half an hour walk to work, so completely doable and also an enforced two hours of light exercise every day. Perfect, really. And if it’s a really bad day (really cold, I have a cold, etc) I think a taxi is only about three dollars. So not an everyday thing but definitely doable if circumstances deem it advisable. Also, the walk from school to home goes right by a Gigante supermarket and home is just around the corner from the main mercado in town, which is kind of like a mix between a farmer’s market and a flea market, complete with butchers and florists and even a seafood restaurant. My roommates are the other teacher who is 23 and from Massachusetts. She’s a fluent Spanish speaker and was teaching for a year before this in Spain. She reminds me a lot of my cousin Ayla. The other is 29 and from Veracruz. She works in a pharmaceutical plant outside of town. She speaks very passable English, so conversation in the house is pretty bilingual: often when she’s speaking to me she’ll speak in English and when the two of them are speaking it together it varies but is mostly Spanish. It’s great for me. If we’re all talking together, the language changes almost with every sentence. I’m hoping that this will help me with my listening. I’m trying to speak as much as I can, as well. Some of the other teachers at work take private lessons with this one woman and I’m going to see if I can get on her schedule; twice a week grammar and vocab lessons would be really helpful. I’m trying what I can online, but most of the material is oriented towards true beginners and Spanish from Spain. But it’s helping a little bit.
The other main thing that has happened lately is that it was the holiday celebrating Mexican Independence Day this past weekend. Tons of red, white, and green everywhere, lots of fireworks, lots of people dressed in costume. But that is going to have to wait until another post. I need to go look at the curriculum for my factory class tomorrow morning.
