A few updates; since I need to store notes for my inevitable "book on TEFL in Russia" somewhere, and some of the content is inappropriate to be stored in emails to my mother.
On day 1 I was very pleased to discover that my coworkers were almost exclusively, beautiful, English speaking, Russian girls of my own age. On day three I was disappointed to discover that every one of those girls is also one of my students. I'm reliably informed that everyone in Russia has hepatitis and I didn't bother getting vaccinated before I came, so it's probably for the best. After typing that I suddenly felt the need to go and remove "Gelgarin" from my facebook profile, just to ensure that nobody I know should ever stumble upon that last observation.
In my first week as an English teacher I was expected to deliver lessons to people who had been doing the exact same job for up to three years. I was under the impression that I knew what it meant to feel self conscious before, but it turns out I was wrong. In the end I settled for teaching them to be polite instead, spending 90 minutes on the concept of why calling someone I liar is inappropriate. Oh those crazy Russians.
On the topic of crazy Russians; here is a short list of things that this hole in the ground does not appear to have: Pesto, fruit squash of any description and cheddar cheese. I am certain that the list will grow exponentially as the weeks tick by, but these are the ones that are bothering me today.
This job seems to have been tailor made to look better on a CV than it deserves. I get to do small amounts of business English, medical English, IELTS (the big international language qualification), young learners, and CEA (basically teacher training in this capacity). This will all look very good when I start trying to escape to the Middle East.
I forgot to bring any nail clippers with me and had to resort to stealing scissors from the office in order to keep myself looking presentable.
I've been various degrees of ill since I arrived. I knew exposure to foreigners was bad for your health. The bigots had it right all alone. I'm a British male so I of course continued to stumble into work pretending nothing was wrong. Still, I think I'm over the worst of it so am making the best I can.
