Teaching

Well, for one, I quit.

Which feels amazing, I am not going to lie. Teaching English is a great way to travel the world, and I would recommend it to anyone that asks. I will do it again (but perhaps in a country where I am making a little money each month, rather than losing). However, my itchy feet are calling and I just had to GET THE HELL OUTTA BsAs!!!

And so my few observations on teaching. In homage to David Letterman...

TOP 10 THINGS YOU WILL OBSERVE TEACHING ENGLISH IN BUENOS AIRES:

10. Argentinians are absolutely ridiculous. They make teaching very easy as they are highly entertaining. They´re like Woody Allen with Italian hand-gestures.

9. Speaking of Woody Allen, this country is one big neurotic jewish community. In fact, it has the 7th largest jewish population in the world. Paranoia abounds.

8. The morning routine in offices is full of kisses. And, unlike kisses as greeting in other countries, in Argentina the kisses are LOUD. I mean, all you hear from 9 to 930 a.m. is sucky face noises. I kinda love it.

7. ¨Touch and go¨ means something very different in Argentina than in English. They use this English saying to allude to a one-night stand. Awesome, right?

6. For 6 hours of actual teaching, you spend 3 hours running from class to class, 3 hours killing time in between and approximately 1.2 minutes actually preparing your lesson.

5. Further to that, in an hour class you spend the first 5 minutes waiting for them to arrive (sucky face noises in the lobby, exchanging pleasantries with the receptionist); 15 minutes asking how their weekend was, another 15 discussing their children/wife/ex-wife/girlfriend/boyfriend; 20 minutes discussing superlatives/comparatives/past simple vs. present perfect or when you use i.e. vs. e.g.; and the last five minutes asking them what they are going to do for the weekend.

4. You make up definitions to words because either you have no idea what it means, or you are just fucking with them. And thus, lesson learned, you hesitate to use articles from the New Yorker.

3. No one really knows the the difference between a gerund and a present participle, especially you at 9 in the morning.

2. There is a very thin line between teaching English and being someone´s psychologist.

1. No one is safe from laughing like a child at students innocent blunders. The truth is, ¨sheet¨pronounced by a Spanish speaker comes out like shit. And that it just funny.