Hey! This is hopefully my only blog about work during the month or so I'm here.

Just to get future me and you up to speed, the reason I'm in Bangkok is that I'm a student again. Or at least, a student for 1 month. I already have a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certificate, but this is to get a CELTA. A CELTA is "Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults". Although really, it's kind of the gold standard (Along with the competing CERTTesol) for teaching English as a foreign language. And that's kind of my career now, so... nice to have? Honestly it isn't needed to get a lot of jobs in Asia, but it will pretty much always result in a pay bump. So better to do it sooner, rather than later, right? In addition it's required to teach in more prestigious fields, like in university or in other more selective countries. There is a higher level, called a DELTA. The DELTA course is about 3 months long, and about a third fail it on their first attempt. I've never heard of anyone requiring this, but hey, let's see what happens.

The CELTA course itself is a bit dull and consists of a lot of busywork. For example, we learn to dissect a lesson into it's different aims. Let's start with reading. What should we do? Prepare an exercise where students read a passage about future plans and answer questions. This will have an aim of improving reading comprehension, and a secondary aim of seeing the future tense in action. The point is to get you to think about it, but at the same time it's kind of like "Duh". And you can be sure for each minor thing there's a sufficiently large amount of paperwork and further dissection. Certainly I'm not the best teacher in the world, and can learn something, but I look forward to returning the day where I don't have to spend 2 hours filling out a million fields for a 45 minute lesson. Let's just take care of the obvious stuff mentally, OK? If I were the god of CELTA I would have a lot more practical stuff, because like the TEFL it's way too much theory. Maybe because English teachers are very verbose people. Or maybe it's padding to make it seem more worth your money. Anyway, I'm a bigger fan of Occam's Razor. Let's keep things in reality, people.

The class itself is a relatively small group of 8, further divided into two groups. Most are around 30 years old, but there are some that are significantly older. I thought I was the baby of the group, but I learned today a guy I thought was in his mid 30s is actually late 20s. So, bummer. My days are pretty busy, and usually consist of getting up at 7, returning home by 730, homework for another 2 hours, and then bed by 12. It's quite a pain in the ass, actually. Futhermore I'm trying to not eat at the same place twice, but its sometimes a challenge. I can't read Thai, and they're not as big on pictures as China is. I should ask the hostel people who to say "I don't speak Thai, just give me whatever your favorite is."

The school itself is a shortish jaunt up the Bangkok MRT line from my hostel. Which, as I mentioned, my hostel is in one of the most infamous places in Bangkok. It's behind this "massage" parlor, and every time I walk by the same girls say in terrible English "Sir, massage?" I mean, have they not recognized me by now? I cut one off today and said in a high pitched voice "Sir, massage?" to have a laugh, but instead they got super excited and clingy like I was going to buy. So, maybe not do that anymore.

I haven't had a bad meal here yet, so there's that going for me. Come next week I'm going to start shopping around for a job, which makes my schedule even more hectic. At least I have my weekends, and hopefully I'll get some entries with the limited sightseeing I can do.

My precious, precious weekends.