Shift.

So I'm in Southampton.

I'm teaching English to Italian teenagers.

What the fuck.

Here's just a sample of things wrong with the above statements:

• I have never spent any time in Southampton before.
• I do not know anybody in Southampton.
• I have never taught anybody anything beyond rowing, horse riding, and high-consistency swearing.
• I do not speak a word of Italian, unless "pizza" counts.
• I am not an extrovert, and therefore I am shit at standing in front of groups of teenagers and telling them what to do.
• It's rude to swear.

So, I got this job ~last Wednesday, left LDN for home on Saturday, then left home for here on Weds. This is my 5th day here, so I thought it was time for some kind of update.

I am in Southampton. FWL is in Salford, doing pretty much the same thing as me. GRA is in Chelmsford, doing pretty much the same thing as me and FWL.

The DoS here is nice, but very particular about desks and not mixing things up on them. She will not allow CM near her desk, because he will mess it up and the sky will fall. CM is a bit of a tough one to figure out. He seems to be a good teacher. He also seems to treat the kids like dogs, snapping his fingers to get their attention/ a response and making them repeat stuff lots. I am remembering this tactic should my preferred approach of 'hip young teacher' fail (it will). At this point, nobody should remind me what my dogs are like.

CM also seems to get off on stress. He wears tight jeans and struts around talking on two mobile phones at once. He never has a clue about what is going on. He openly gets distracted by things when you are talking to him.

CM lives in fear/hatred of PTI. PTI is head honcho. Head Honcho Who Fucks Things Up. For example, PTI didn't book any buses for the trips away this weekend. PTI changes his mind about what the kids should do in the evenings an hour before the kids are due to do them. Nobody likes PTI very much. I hope never to speak to him.

I have my first classes tomorrow, because I was away for an interview on Friday (more on that in a paragraph or so). I'm currently trying to come up with activities that make the kids do most of the work. It's not going very well...

But essentially, I'm working on the idea that talking is the best way to improve their english, so doing lots of things involving talking will magically succeed with minimal effort. I imagine this idea will come crashing down in about 5 minutes tomorrow. Oh well.

On Friday, I nipped back up to LDN for an interview/ assessment day. Everyone else there was really nice. One girl had also done law at cam and was in my year, which was cool. Another girl was from Belfast, we do get everywhere. The third girl had flown from Uruguay for the interview (wow). The group exercise was ok, but I felt like I didn't contribute enough. The verbal reasoning was.. well, it was verbal reasoning so it probably went shit. Then there was the scary presentation/interview bit. I think my presentation was just about within the time (5 minutes). My panel were very nice, both with legal backgrounds.. which sadly means they probably didn't buy any of my waffle. They questioned me quite a bit. I said the show I would decommission would be Dick and Dom. >_<

So, I'm not really holding out much hope for coming in the top 8 out of 55. Which sucks, because the scheme sounds so amazing, and it is something that I actually do really want to do. Oh well.

Yesterday, the kids went to Oxford. 120 kids on a train. Yikes. Somehow I managed to sit next to middle-aged ladies on the way there and back. They were both very nice. They both thought I was Canadian. I don't really understand why people tend to think I'm Canadian. But I quite like Canada, so I don't mind. The lady on the way back had done all sorts of interesting skills classes like flint-knapping and pre-historic cooking. FWL and I are going to go do these ASAP. FWL does not know this yet. But I know she'll be down for it.

Hmms. I should probably get back to "planning" my "lessons" for tomorrow.

~over and out