Last week, through Wednesday evening, was taken up with teaching lesson after lesson. Thursday I turned in my workbook with all of my written reflections on the course and had a brief exit interview with Khaled.
So, the good news is that I got my TEFL Certificate. The bad news is that everyone got their TEFL Certificate, so apparently I put waaaay more effort into this than I technically needed to. However, even if I am lazy, reckless, and a procrastinator there's one thing I'm not -- and that's someone who does something half-assed. Even if I don't become a teacher eventually (and due to time challenges, I probably won't be a full-time teacher near-term) I enjoy teaching and take it very seriously. I've had some excellent teaching experiences and I definitely think I learned a great deal from the course. Before the course I was pretty sure I could teach English; now I know I can. I know there will be plenty of challenges ahead of me but I'm excited about them.
Thursday evening, as part of the TEFL package, everyone on the course went to Sharm el-Sheikh, a resort town on the tip of Sinai. Sharm el-Sheikh is great for people who are living in Egypt and have gotten nostalgic for Western prices for everything. I general spent, each day in Sharm, about 2 times what I spent per week in Alexandria. Eventually to prevent myself from not buying anything I had to pretend that Sharm had a different exchange rate and that an Egyptian pound really wasn't as much as I thought it was.
On Sunday I went snorkeling for the first time and discovered an interesting thing about myself: I am afraid of depths. Looking down the coral reefs to the ocean bottom far, far below gave me some severe bouts of vertigo. By my third snorkel (the trip included 3 different locations) I was slightly calmer, but still only snorkeled for around 15-20 minutes. I think I could probably try snorkeling again, but maybe in very, very shallow water. Since I wasn't up for snorkeling for the whole 45 minutes, I spent a large portion of the boat trip soaking up the rays -- and getting the resulting sunburn and sunstroke. But I'm all better now and my sunburn has transformed into a glorious tan, bringing me just that much closer to prematurely aged skin.
Gotta go; laptop nearly outta juice.
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1 comment:
What a great post. You are so funny. And we're so proud/happy/delighted for you that you learned a lot, and now KNOW you can teach English. I'm glad you worked waaay harder than you needed to because that probably made it much more rewarding than it would have been otherwise.
"So - what happens next?" asks Dad.
Love,
Mom
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