Month: October 2017

Language teaching - Life :)

I’ve made it!

October 30, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last week I passed a billboard advertising jobs at McDonalds. It showed the salaries for both burger flippers and trainee managers. I’m now earning more than a trainee manager at McDonalds in Romania. I’ve made it!

I’ll never make a ton of money at this job, but I’m now supporting myself now, just about, without having to rely on my rental income. And it’s extremely satisfying work. When I’m reading chapters of The Twits or Captain Underpants to my junior students, it doesn’t feel like work at all. Yes, Mum very kindly ordered some kids’ books for me – they turned up last week. My teaching job has given Mum and I something to talk about, and our relationship has improved as a result. The benefits of my job seem almost endless.

In previous jobs I’d show up on a Wednesday, and I’d have literally no recollection of what I’d done on Monday or Tuesday unless I’d written it down. Sometimes I couldn’t even remember what I’d done two minutes earlier. My memory was dangerously bad. A big part of that was my depression, plus the fact that I didn’t give a toss, which is part and parcel of the same thing. Now I continually amaze myself by how little I forget. Matei is on £16,000 with his phone-a-friend lifeline remaining; Elena wants to learn about phrasal verbs involving ‘get’; I’ve got a lesson on body parts planned for Oana and Cătălin; I’m just about to start Chapter 6 with Luminița; and so on. Neither do I forget (touch wood) the lesson times themselves, although I keep quite meticulous records of my past and future lessons.

It’s a cool, crisp, cloudless autumn morning here in Timișoara, similar to the mornings you get in Geraldine. My parents currently have Mum’s younger brother staying with them. He’s 66 and has recently given up the monotony of selling insurance. (He’s very quick-witted and would have made a great teacher.) I’m sure he’d like to give up the monotony of his marriage too. His wife never lets him do anything, apart from play golf and watch sport on TV. He’s never been further than Australia. But now he’s surprised everybody by booking a trip to Europe to attend my brother’s wedding. Good on him. He’ll travel around the UK with my aunt, Mum’s older sister.

New Zealand has a new government. I didn’t vote in the election, but would have voted Labour in a heartbeat had I done so. (I wouldn’t have voted Green except perhaps as a tactical vote; they’ve lost their way a little ever since Russel Norman left.) I’m happy, albeit surprised, that Labour were able to form a government. National were competent enough, but I was never convinced that they really gave a shit about people. Maybe Jacinda Ardern’s new government will work out, maybe it won’t, but we all need to keep an open mind.

Both Mum and Dad now think I’ll never come back to New Zealand. Never is an awfully long time, and I’d feel terrible about abandoning my parents in their old age, but they’re right that I won’t be leaving Romania any time in the near future.

Language teaching - Life :)

In business

October 28, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

I haven’t written for absolutely ages, and that’s for two reasons. One, I lost my internet connection. Because I hadn’t paid. In Romania they give you no warning; they just pull the plug. I felt a bit silly when I eventually found out the reason, but also relieved; I paid them for two months (just to make sure) and I was reconnected within minutes. I’m not sure the concept of direct debit has arrived in Romania yet, and I now realise there’s no use relying on my memory to keep track of all my manual payments – I have to actually write them down. The other reason is work. In the last three weeks, my workload has rocketed into orbit. I now have roughly 30 hours of lessons a week. It can be tiring at times, when you consider all the necessary preparation, but it’s awesome. Really. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, or do anything else. Being my own boss is the best feeling in the world. Freedom!

So in case you were wondering, I’m still alive, but I have to sign off because (guess what) I’m about to have another lesson. Hopefully I’ll write a proper post tomorrow.

 

Films - Language teaching - Life :)

First man on the moon

October 15, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve had a big week: 23 hours of teaching over six days. When I came to Romania I thought I might not manage 23 hours in total. There’s a fair bit of preparation time too of course, so I’m working close to a full week now. The competition, or total lack of it, is helping me greatly. In a city the size of Wellington with thousands of people wanting to improve their English for thousands of reasons, I seem to be the only native speaker giving private lessons. I feel like a pioneer. The first man on the moon. Or Pluto. And that’s a pretty exciting feeling. At the beginning I struggled to build momentum and would lose students as fast as I’d gain them, but in the last few weeks I seem to have passed a tipping point: people are starting to like what I do and are recommending me to friends. In the new year I’ll probably increase my prices for new students, but I won’t want to overdo that and price myself out of the non-manicured-lawns market.

In contrast to my private lessons which I enjoy immensely, my new job with the language school is, in some ways, a pain in the butt. The work itself is perfectly fine, but I miss out on other potential lessons due to the travel time, and all the admin that goes with it is a chore. (I mean, I don’t have a problem with admin. At times I even like admin. But only if it’s my own admin that uses my own systems. I really can’t be arsed with other people’s admin anymore.) On Tuesday only one person showed up to the lesson, and we got sidetracked trying to calculate just how many tonnes of lolly sticks are produced annually by the company. We arrived at a figure of 7500 tonnes. On Thursday two people turned up. The most difficult part of that lesson was reading from an on-screen PDF of which one page was printed upside down. I could have rotated the document but then all the other pages would have been upside down instead. I shouldn’t complain too much: the language school lessons are only 15% of my workload, and the rest of the time I’m free to do as I please.

There’s a cinema underneath my apartment block. I’ve wanted to go there since I moved in, but I’ve had nobody to go with. This weekend Timishort, a festival of short films, has been running, so yesterday I went there on my own. It cost me just 5 lei (a pound!) to see five 20-minute films. Incredible value. One of them was Eat Me, a thought-provoking Bulgarian-made musical about food. Where does it come from? What does it do to you? That would be my pick of the five, though I also liked The Committee, an amusing Scandinavian-made film about choosing a monument (or something) to replace the current stone at the Sweden–Norway–Finland tripoint. The cinema itself, which is only open four days a week, is a far cry from your modern multiplex. It reminds me a bit of the cinema in Geraldine. It has a single screen with a surprisingly large capacity. The seats are rather hard so some people brought cushions, and it got a bit chilly in there. Next time I’ll know.

We’ve had lovely weather of late; the autumn colours in Timișoara are really quite beautiful.

Language teaching - Life :)

7/10/16

October 8, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s a year to the day since I arrived at my hotel in Timișoara after two days’ train travel. I surprised the receptionist by knowing how to say “four nights” and “water” in Romanian. Just to lie on that bed felt great. I’ve made it. Of course I hadn’t made it. I’d landed in a very strange country with no job, no contacts, no nothing. And I’m now very glad I did so.

I should have at least 20 hours of teaching next week, perhaps as many as 24. My evenings are now jam-packed with lessons. It’s bloody fantastic to be honest.

Language teaching - Life :) - Travel: Romania

It feels good to be alive

October 6, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last weekend was great for all of us. There were so many interesting little things along the way, like the animals we met, the old (and not so old) ladies in headscarves who congregated on benches, the villagers who gave us surprisingly accurate directions, the big places on the map that turned out to be tiny, the tiny places on the map that turned out to be substantial, the significant places that were missing from the map altogether, the ramshackle cafés we visited, the lady at one of the cafés who politely commented on my overly aspirated pronunciation of the letter T, the slabs of meat we ate despite our best efforts to avoid them, and the crazy road surfaces I drove on (a skating rink for ten miles, the surface of the moon for the next ten, then a signposted main road would turn into an equally signposted muddy farm track). Unlike my parents who are basically the same age, my travelling companions never entirely left the sixties behind, so they had fairly relaxed attitudes to a lot of things. They enjoyed their trip and their time in Timișoara. I hope they come back.

I gained some valuable experience of driving on this side of the road, facilitated by a very competent navigator and the absence of anybody related to me. I drove 700 km in all. Returning the hire car on Monday in rush-hour traffic was a challenge, especially because my phone was going like billio, but we managed it and got back our deposit.

I’m getting quite a lot of work now. Yesterday I started with a ten-year-old boy called Octavian who obviously comes from a well-heeled family. On Tuesday I had my first session at the lollipop-stick factory; only two employees, both senior managers, showed up. Tomorrow I should be having my third lesson with the shy 4½-year-old girl. After a trial run on Tuesday, I should also be doing short (15-minute) phone-based language assessments which could be a useful money-spinner because they require little preparation.

My life is interesting and varied; it feels good to be alive. I won’t be leaving Romania any time in the near future if I can possibly help it. I wouldn’t mind having a fuller social life, and I hope that will come in time.

I’m just about to watch at least some of Game 1 of the series between the Red Sox and the Astros. I like Baseball because it kind of makes sense. Very little else in America seems to right now.

Language teaching - Romania - Travel: Romania

A relaxing weekend away

October 2, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’m writing this short post from Pensiunea Laura in the bustling village of Chișcău, almost right next to Peștera Urșilor, a.k.a. the Bears’ Cave. We visited the cave this morning; at almost a mile in length it was a sight to behold. As we entered the cave, it was strewn with bones from bears and other huge beasts. The stalagmites, stalactites and columns at times looked like marble figures. It was quite fantastic, as if we’d stepped into a scene from Lord of the Rings. (Mines of Moria? The first film? I forget.) After the cave, we walked down the long high street, stopping at a museum on the way. This was really a makeshift (but extensive) museum of farm machinery and tools, including all sorts of weird and wonderful Heath Robinson-style contraptions that we couldn’t figure out at all, and are probably still in use in Romania today. It’s been a relaxing and sunny Sunday.

Yesterday was rather different. I drove the best part of 300 km from our beautiful lodgings in Zolt to our booked accommodation in Chișcău, which I thought we might never reach. Things were fairly plain sailing to begin with as we stopped at Făget and Brad, but figuring out the last bit without GPS or a detailed enough map was no easy matter. We ended up a couple of kilometres from our destination but the only way to get there was down an extremely narrow gravel track that our car certainly couldn’t handle. Darkness was about to descend. Check-in supposedly ended at 8pm. We were hungry. Had I been with my parents, we’d have needed to scrape Mum off the roof of the car. Instead we kept our cool, rang the hotel people, got some surprisingly accurate directions from a man in one of the villages, and everything turned out fine. The level of calmness inside the car just about blew me away, as did the beauty of villages we passed through. We also met just about every farm animal I can think of except pigs.

The most stressful part for me was before we even started, when we had to find the rental car place.

Yes I really am starting the new job on Tuesday, with four students from a company where they make, as far as I can tell, lolly sticks. Somebody has to. Tomorrow morning I have to take a Skype call related to this job, after which we’ll head back to Timișoara.