Day 1 TEFL

Do you know that feeling when you start something new and after the first day your brain hurts inside your head? That was me Monday night after Day 1 of TEFL classes. It reminded me a lot of the first day I started grad school for school psychology back in 2011. I remember sitting there thinking, "Shouldn't I know more than this? What is this RTI thing? Tiers? What have I gotten myself into???" Yesterday was exactly the same.

I started my day taking my Spanish lesson in town at Chaki cafe (a great little boho-themed cafe right next to the TEFL school). I take Spanish lessons through Preply which is an online learning platform. I have been learning from Andrea, who lives near San Jose, Costa Rica, for over a year now. We spent the time working on practicing automaticity of reading and listening and writing numbers. This is something that I have noticed I need frequently here.

Chaki cafe. They also offer yoga classes here.

After that, I headed over to the school for day 1. Day 1 focused on logistics, getting to know you, and honestly diving right into learning lesson planning. It was A LOT. I have always had respect for teachers, but I have a feeling my respect will only increase tenfold during this experience. We learned about Steps to Mastery, some classroom strategies, and began reviewing our first lesson plan and trying to get an understanding of how we will teach it and what materials we will need to create. Everyone in the program has been a lot of fun to get to know so far. We have people of all ages from the United States, Australia, and England. If you are interested in learning more about the program here in Samara, here is a link to some FAQ. Feel free to list me as a referral if you decided to apply!

Our July group at TEFL

I will keep sharing more week by week about what I learn. But for now, I wanted to make sure you know that it isn't all butterflies, monkeys, and tropical plants here. When you move somewhere new, especially somewhere tropical, you encounter a number of new challenges. We came home one night and realized very quickly that we had left just a bit of cheese and egg on a burner. How did we know? Look away if you hate ants.

Ants swarming the stove. We had to kill them with heat.

Let's end with something more delightful. One of my favorite things so far about living here is all of the fresh produce, especially the fresh papaya. I have been experimenting with combinations of fruits, including mango, passion fruit, papaya, and banana. I have been starting each day with a fresh fruit smoothie! Stay tuned for more of the good and the gross!

Papaya and Passionfruit