Donnerstag, Juni 15, 2006

Career....

well, maybe not quite what I'd call it, but anyway. All depends on your ambitions.
I'm not really that interested in a career in teaching languages as such, but over here it's a good way to earn a living.
Let me start with the beginning. Emmett, one of my American housemates, went to Germany on Saturday. For the worldcup. He actually managed to get tickets for the three US football matches. "Soccer" is what he calls it, but then the Americans don't really know what they're talking about, as anyone who saw the US play the Czech Republic would know. Anyway, football is another topic, sometime soon, when it gets a bit more exciting.
He went off, and asked me to be his substitute at one of the language schools, that he's teaching at. So yesterday was my first full day of teaching English. It's a lot easier finding English teaching jobs than German ones. And it's a lot easier to teach, grammar and all. It was mainly small groups of elderly housewives, who like travelling. Emmett had already taken me along to a few of the classes, so could meet the students, so this week everyone had a few questions about Germany, food, how the reunification had influenced my life (has it? well, I guess otherwise I wouldn't have been able to live in Friedrichshain or meet my sweet Ossi-girl....), what I thought of Japan, why I had come here, what I was doing here, whether I had a girlfriend. And in almost every group there was someone who wanted to introduce me to their daughter... Teaching wasn't really very difficult, everyone's motivated, and it's mainly conversation. A bit of grammar and a few excercises. And I'm even earning more than I was at J****

I also had an interview at GABA, the second biggest language chain school, one-on-one teaching. Managed to go through that and through 2 days of training last weekend. And now I can pick my schedule and work any time I like. As long as it's weekends or evenings. During the day it's not very likely to get enought students. So at least for a start, I'll be working every weekend and maybe 2-3 evenings a week. See how it goes, be starting on Saturday. I'll keep you updated, if I'm not too lazy. Fucked up my camera, so for now, there won't be any new pictures. Hope I can get it repaired quickly.
Working weekends is actually OK, in Japan, there's not much of a difference between weekdays and weekends, as all the shops are always open, as are the bars and even some clubs. But as clubbing is so expensive (between 30 and 50 euros just to get in, then another 6 maybe for a beer) I won't be doing too much of that.
I'll rather be "helping people to achieve their most audacious goals". And who can claim to do that. Definitely not J****. Teaching will be really strucured, just follow the designated book, do one lesson in 40 minutes, give some feedback, do whatever the student wants to do. Every booth in the "language studio" (not school! very important!) will have a laptop, which has informations about the student and his aims, bio, level, preferences and hobbies. Also, there are additional exercises and grammar explanations. Everything already prepared for you. Easy as pie.......don't know where that came from....
Well we'll see on the weekend, I'm sure I'll still be a bit nervous. The most annoying thing about the job is that it's suit and tie only. For the summer I don't necessarily have to wear a jacket and tie, as it'll be close to 40 degrees soon, but as soon as autumn comes, I will have to. See if I'll hang around that long.
Looks like my planned holiday didn't last as long as I was hoping, but I just had to take the opportunity to work. Money gets spent very quickly in this town. You can quite easily save some, especially if you work a lot, but it's even easier to spend it.
So I figured if I started work now, I might still have some left, when I leave for Australia, or Thailand, or Indonesia, or wherever we're gonna go next. Hopefully Maren will finish with her exams in time, the dissertation is already done, so I'm pretty confindent, and then she'll turn up here, and we can do a bit of travelling in Japan first. We'll see. It looks like China's not an option anymore, but anything's possible and nothing is decided.

Oh, and finally, thanks to all those, who are writing to me, I'm not that good with replying to emails, one of the reasons for starting this blog, but I'm always happy about hearing (or rather reading) the latest gossip or anything at all from all of you!

2 Kommentare:

Anonym hat gesagt…

http://alexhouben.blog.intrinet.de/schimpfen/moselfraenkische-beleidigungen.html

damit du auch irgendwann mal eine sinnvolle Sprache unterrichten kannst...

grüße
ralf

Parin Mehta hat gesagt…

hey peter ,

I have been waiting for a month now for some new posts and more cultural insights into Japan ...

well Jo and i are having a good time . We went to pondicherry and mamalla puram had tonnes of fun . U should think about coming to india


Cheers