CELTA Love

I just started the third week of my CELTA course, only two more to go!!! It's gone by SO entirely fast, I can't believe it! AND, I LOVE IT! I'm surprised at how much I'm learning, and how much the topics interest me.. which I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised since I've chosen ESL as a temporary sort of career.

Although I live at the beach, I get to look at it more than I get to lie on it or frolick in its luscious waves! The day starts at 8:30 with breakfast, 9:30-11:30 Class, 12-2 Guided Planning, 2:00 Lunch, 5-8 Teaching, 8:00 Dinner. Luckily, it takes 30 seconds to walk to the playa from my cabana, so I aint complaining! The course could be a lot worse, and set up a lot differently from what I hear. I am SO happy I chose to do it here through Southern Cross!

At night, we're teaching adults from the community (they get classes here for free!), which is awesome! I think they're learning a lot, and they really really want to learn English! Some are taxi drivers (one ran over the back of my flip flop.. WHILE my foot was still in it), surf instructors, hotel workers, shrimp biologists ( :) ), and artists. They are super chill (of course) and love life! I've never seen such pretty smiles in my life!! They're just great!

We teach in a thatched roof hut where kittens jump on students and make them scream (claws), our dogs roam in and out, students bring their puppies (as in, a Rottweiler puppy, that chews the screens, and when we tried to pick it up and make it STOP ripping the place to shreds.. it latched on to a students pony tail.. and we kind of had to pause the class to release her hair from its mouth!). Lights often stop working, and we have to cram 16 students (plus 6 teachers and 1 trainer) into a tiny room and teach for 2 hours.. sizzling hot & mosquito infested! The dragon flies tend to fly in at 7:00 on the dot, every night!

Life here is great, super relaxing, I have a choice of about 15 hammocks to lie on. It isn't relaxing though when we have an hour long lesson plan we're working on, paperwork, assignments, etc to do at the same time. But for the most part, I'm in heaven! A lot of the other teachers I'm working with would never call these cabanas luxury.. but I WOULD! OMG, compared to some of the hotels/hostels I found myself sleping in, in Colombia.. I'm living the good life! Sure I have huge bugs in my pillowcase, but you won't see my crying!


Some of the teachers & Some of the students: