CELTA

CELTA / Life — Comments Off
10
Oct 09

Birthday

Although I’m far away from a lot of friends and all of my family, just having a free Saturday in Barcelona is a good enough birthday for me. I made it through the first week of the CELTA course alive. It is pretty tiring, since I seem to be at the school all day long and then I have more to finish once I get home. At the end of all that, I’m dead tired. I wake up, and do it over again each day. I’m certain that it is all completely worth it no matter what I do. If I teach English, it’s the best certificate in the world, if I go to a non-Spanish-speaking country, then I can use the same skills to teach Spanish and English, and if I do anything else then I’m sure it will be useful on my CV.

I need to be apartment hunting, but I have no time during the weeks as you can tell, and on the weekends all I want to do is relax. At the moment, I’m at a bar with wifi. I miss having a good internet signal at home, but when I finally find my own place I’ll be fine. Oh, and I have a new requirement: a balcony. I love the one I have now!

CELTA — Comments Off
6
Oct 09

First Week of October

I don’t have a whole lot to say right now. Ironically, it’s to the point where so much has happened that I won’t bother narrating it all.

On Monday I started the CELTA course at International House Barcelona and after a few hours of instruction, each of the five people in my teaching group taught for twenty minutes. We each did a getting-to-know-each-other excersice, so it wasn’t very difficult in content, but in it we had to practice clear and simple instructions so that people with minimal English could do the task. The next time I teach, it will be for 40 minutes on Thursday. We rotate observing other trainees teach, and then I teach on my own day.

So far everything is going well, it isn’t too much for me to handle, but it is a new and different kind of challenge. All of my classmates are very nice and it’s quite interesting that they’re from different places. It makes for good conversation!

Well, I’m going to have a small dinner now. I’ll try to update at least once a week, but this month will be very busy with class all day and lesson preparation at night.