Running

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last actual post - things have been picking up quite a bit.  I now have two jobs with two separate English teaching companies plus two paid lessons at the church, so if I'm lucky I might pull in enough to cover this month's rent.  In addition to those, I've been doing some free lessons and classes at random times, and on Sunday we're going to sit down and figure out how that's all going to work on a weekly basis.  I hate to admit it, but I'm excited to feel at least somewhat busy again.

I taught my first class for ProLanguage on Thursday night at a factory called Eaton over in Moravia.  I should probably mention that if you want to track these places and get an idea of what I'm talking about, you can find most of them here.  I'm sure I don't have everything there, but it should give you a general idea (also, please let me know if that link doesn't work for you).  Even though I was just a sub, the class went unbelievably well.  I only had three students, all of whom were very different from each other but who had obviously already built some rapport between themselves.  On the way back, one of my students and I shared a bus since we were going the same direction and we got to talking.  I knew from our class discussion that she was a person of faith, but somehow our conversation turned to the two things you're never supposed to talk about in public anyway.  Honestly, I've had a very mixed reaction to living in a socialized democracy, and I'm sure I'll have time to talk about that at some point after I've chewed on it for a little bit longer.  Suffice it to say that so far, I have found Costa Ricans to be incredibly open about their own religious and political views and equally curious about others'.  The first thing my taxi driver asked after I told him where to take me was "so what do you make of this whole thing with Obama and Gaddafi?"

My other job, InLingua, is the organizational opposite of ProLanguage.  At ProLanguage, they focus on the "freedom" a teacher "enjoys" by doing most of the lesson planning, testing, etc...on their own.  To some degree, they're right - I enjoyed, for example, having my class make hotel brochures at the end of our session (mine was for the Hotel California, which got them all to start singing).  At InLingua, however, I am a cog in a massive, international, well-known, and incredibly efficient machine.  I will never write a lesson plan, quiz, test, or progress report for that job, and with the exception of an attendance sheet and copies used in class the entire operation is paperless.  It's a Swiss company (go figure), and I'm really excited about the chance to work there.  My first class with them (which is actually a weekly gig) is Monday night at HP.  Yeah, that HP.  Like I said - it's a pretty legitimate brand.

I have to say that I probably gave the best interview of my life for this job.  It was like I couldn't say anything wrong, and by the end he was starting to bargain with me for terms I could accept rather than vice versa.  I really like my boss so far - he's a nutty but incredibly passionate, energetic, and authentic Canadian.  He knows all the company jargon sounds like a bunch of bull and he jokes about it sometimes, but he actually does believe in it and presents it very effectively as something we should buy into as well.  His philosophy is basically that the higher the percentage of our work that occurs inside a classroom, the better we'll be at it.  Perfect.  He also agreed to let me use their materials in my volunteer lessons at the church (after a little verification with Heidi or Sergio) - the company is big on philanthropic stuff.  Lucky for me, I sent in the trimmed down resume which includes mostly volunteer work and very little employment.