Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

As I glide towards 40 like a drunken, partially-naked man down a freshly polished bannister , I am resolved to get myself out of TEFL once and for all. She's a siren that has drawn me onto the rocks once too often, and if I don't send her packing with true resolve, I shall be hunched and nervous in the midst of a lengthy midlife crisis. For this I need to concentrate, and so I have decided to leave the blogalaxy for a while to focus my efforts on regaining some self-esteem through hard labour. I've always fancied the idea of a sabbatical, something totally impossible in TEFL unless you're an eccentric millionaire just in it to chase perfumed foreigners . This time I cannot, and will not fail, according to my wife, Show. I apologise for not commenting on your blogs recently, but I'm trying to wean myself off spending hours a day reading other peoples' largely brilliant writing, which is something most people do while taking a break from work, rather than instea...

Continuing my public-spirited series of Free TEFL Tips , here is a little list I tossed off last night when none of my students turned up. (Don't worry, I've learned not to take it personally.) This list is totally personal and does not represent the opinions of any person, real or fictional, except myself. 11 REASONS NOT TO STUMBLE UPON TEFL (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER): You will receive a starting salary well below that of fellow undergraduates and it will remain largely unchanged for the rest of the century . Your Gran's earnings will easily outpace your own; You will be expected to be witty, bouncy and enthusiastic at all times , even if your house has just been repossessed or a favourite pet maimed in a freak glass blowing accident; You will start seeing caravaning as an economic holidaying alternative ; You will find yourself joining calls for more bicycle lanes ; You will be expected to relentlessly suffer gibbering incognates very gladly indeed; You will be expected t...

The municipal elections take place in October of this year, but campaigning has already begun. Every day, including Sunday, between the hours of 9am and 10pm , baseball-hatted clowns are driving around town belching out some of the worst electoral jingles ever scrawled on somebody's hand during a bender in Pirapora do Bom Jesus . They are uniformly degrading of the political classes (if that's possible to any greater extent than they manage themselves), and my prediction is that it could lead to an outbreak of random knifings , particularly if I don't find professional help soon. When I was a child, local elections were greeted in our leafy English suburb by a lone Ford Cortina containing a member of the ruling class meekly urging voters to, " Vote Conservative, you know it makes sense ". In a scandalous (to me then) attempt at vote-buying, the Tories once offered my mother a lift to the polling station, only for her to vote for the SDP , making it the closest she...

Recently, the local papers have been filled with the gap-toothed grins of local dignitaries posing next to piles of loose chippings, newly asphalted roads or bleak locals holding a length of soon-to-be-installed sewer pipe. The explanation for this explosion of civic progress? Why, it's election year . As we are fortunate enough to live in a bairro nobre da cidade , we have been particularly blessed by the politicians' eagerness to gain the votes of the literate . No sooner had the grass verge the length of our whole avenida been planted with 100 cherry blossom trees to mark the centenary of Japanese immigration (<little-known fact>: the largest Japanese population outside Tokyo is in São Paulo </little-known-fact>), than the sides of the same avenue are, as I type, being graced with palm trees of varying health and height. Whilst this crude vote-courting is broadly welcome, it does, as most things around here, suffer from an almost total lack of planning . An at...

Having spent the last six years bobbing about in the Sea of Unbridled Chaos that is the largest country in South America, it has been a revelation to me over the past few days that the nation still has the potential to surprise, if not delight. On Thursday I found it impossible to use my Internet connection as I received the repeated message, "Access denied: username and password not recognised." Imagining it was a temporary glitch, I resolved to try later, and again received the same succinct message. I decided to call the boobie-run, Spanish-owned Telefonica to find out why their laughably-titled Speedy service was even less so than normal. The first time I called, I was informed by a recorded message to press 8 for Speedy services. After doing that, another recording told me to dial different number, which was babbled incoherently once before the line went dead. I hastily scribbled what I thought was the number in the message, but, of course, it wasn't as I got anot...

Am cold, busy and fretful. More soon. (We were visiting the castle in Pomerania and our guide asked us to belt out a number. Most of the choir were sobbing by the end, but I remained masculine and Anglo Saxon. It's Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium , in case you don't recognise it... I'm the shadowy one with the shiny forehead.)