Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

It would be quite wrong to suggest that December heralds the start of the party season in Brazil, as since Carnaval people have been pretty much in the swing of things. The Christmas period merely increases the frequency, volume and festivity of knees-ups. Show's septuagenarian aunt (who, incidentally, has recently been crowned Miss Senior Citizen both for our town and for the state of São Paulo, with the Miss Senior Citizen Brazil contest taking place in Natal early next year) organised the first of what will inevitably be many parties on Saturday night, a typical affair which followed the usual pattern - everybody standing around eating with relish , everybody standing around drinking in moderation , then everybody dancing with total abandon . To be honest, I wasn't really in a party mood (something Show was quick to point out to me from between clenched teeth ), but I have to admit that my back's still giving me jip from my entry into the collective hysteria into...

Of all the soul-wearying débâcles that TEFL thrusts upon its traipsing minions, the School Christmas Party has to be near the top of the flammable fake plastic tree . I suspect swept along by the nincompoopery we serve up daily as “Business English” , the school owner decided to “ strengthen our brand ” by delivering a festive “ Happy Hour ” for our gibbering charges last Friday, the fate-tempting title of the event practically guaranteeing a diametrically opposite result. Brands are only strengthened when companies offer something that their customers actually want , I have always imagined. School Christmas Parties in Britain are one thing. There, the students are essentially trapped , as they normally have little or no social life outside the boundaries of their surrogate college – therefore, they are all too happy to turn up and participate, however half-baked and forced the occasion may turn out to be . With our students being sent to study English by their bloodsucking companies...

My favourite quotation about Brazil: "Brazil is not for beginners." Tom Jobim, co-inventor of Bossa Nova My second favourite quotation about Brazil: "Brazil has over four thousand kilometres of beaches. It's full of foxy women. Why struggle to be a superpower?" Pablo Santucci , Market Leader Intermediate, Group 3A

As I came up for air yesterday from my pail of rice and beans , I recalled that I never completed my diatribe on crafty Europeans entitled Cheating Foreigners , the first part of which I published back in mid-August to wide acclaim from No Good Boyo . It isn't much of a story, really, but it was an experience that instilled in me a wild and lasting distrust of all things pan-European . After leaving University clutching a handwritten, gravy-stained bachelor's degree in Special Italian (the most unfortunate of titles, you must agree), I lost no time in pondering my hugely narrowed career options . I had by then resolved that I could never live in Italy again (though I did later for three months in Verona, until I could stand it no more), and even working in close proximity to them would have me gnawing things at regular intervals . I have nothing against the nation as a race, but they are just so entirely different from us that I could never fit into their way of doing things...