Flashback: Laying the Groundwork for a New Career

Seven years ago, I marked this important event: Laying the Groundwork for a New Career.


Here's what I wrote on November 7, 2010: 

Laying the groundwork for a new career 

 

Today I am in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. I've rented a condo for a month. And for that month, my worldly possessions fit into a small wheeled carry-on and a backpack.

Tomorrow I start a CELTA course in teaching English as a foreign language.

When I finish, I should have a certificate that, in theory, will let me work just about anywhere in the world. Which is really what I've wanted to do from the time I was an adolescent - travel the globe.

During the month, friends Pam and Jackie will join me for a week; later, my mother and Brother3 will join me for a week over Thanksgiving.

As I write this, I hear nearby church bells sounding the hour.

 

 

Palm fruit, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010.

 

 

Georgia: Teacher Talking Time

I was invited to give a presentation at a conference in Tbilisi. The conference is this Sunday, March 4. The organization is CETE (Center for Excellence in Teaching English), which is affiliated with TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages), and of which I am an individual member. 

I cast about for presentation topics and settled on reducing teacher talking time (TTT). Too much TTT was a particular challenge for me in my CELTA training, and it is a decided challenge for Georgian instructors in general. As I prepare for my presentation, I'm really glad I chose it because it's refreshing my knowledge about TTT and how I can continue to reduce mine. 

... and speaking of teaching in Georgia, classroom management is always in the top 5 of the hot topics. So I loved Phil in the Blank's crooked-book strategy for same (reference Phil's #1). Phil used to be a middle-school teacher so he knows whereof he speaks. 

 

Life Lessons from the Food Network Channel

I don't like to cook, and I'm not a foodie.

But I love to watch the Food Network Channel's Chopped and The Next Food Network Star.

The food in these shows are simply the medium used to deliver artistry, beauty, adventure, suspense, and human drama to the viewers. It is ridiculous how much stressful suspense I feel while watching sweating contestants struggle to "plate" their food before the final-seconds countdown ends. Sometimes I have to cover my eyes or even flip the channel for those last seconds, it feels so intense.

But what I find most intriguing are the life lessons I see in these shows:  

1. Radiate confidence in yourself and your abilities. Confidence is, in fact, part of your "product."  
2. You will make a mistake. When you do, own it, fix it if possible, and move on. Beating yourself up avails nothing but pain for yourself and those around you.
3. Your plan will go awry. When it does, take a breath, then move to a different plan. 
4. Remain calm.
5. There will be criticism. Accept it with grace. Acceptance does not necessarily equal agreement. 
6. Be professional: You don't need to push others down to raise yourself up.

When I was doing my CELTA course a few months ago in Playa del Carmen, there were a couple of particularly challenging days.

In one, I'd felt really good about a class I did, and felt dashed when the tutor told me I'd left out a very important piece of the assignment, which affected her assessment of my overall performance for that lesson. I allowed this to rattle my confidence in a big way.

The very next class I did, I experienced a technical glitch that rattled me in a way that was disproportionate to the problem. Once that got fixed (with the help of a colleague), I saw to my dismay I'd made an error on one of my handouts, which compounded my sense of dismal failure. At the time, it was just a horrible, sick experience, again, out of proportion to the grand scheme of things.

During the afternoon critique session, I gleaned two things: 

1. If I make a mistake, don't dwell on it in front of the class - just fix it and move along or, if there actually isn't any substantive impact on the day's lesson, don't even mention it (as doing so adds nothing of value to the students).
2. Lack of self-confidence is a real performance killer. (And to the "audience," it is immaterial if the projected self-confidence is real or acted.)

So come Sunday evening, I'll be settling in to watch another installment of The Next Food Network Star.

Celebration party

The last day!

Estelle, Paige, and Chantal hosted a party at their condo. They rented a condo in a great area on Calle 26 and Avenida 10, in a building called Las Palmas. A beautiful, vibrant little neighborhood. Their place is on the ground floor with a spacious patio in front and a rooftoop pool and entertainment area that all building inhabitants share. What a great view! Not of the water, but of the city rooftops. Loved it.

Much alcohol and good food.


Chantal sang and played her guitar, as did Maria's boyfriend, Tomas. Then, most everyone sang along with them.

I think the photos (courtesy of Estelle) speak for the warmth and fun at the party:

Jean, Nathan, Neil, Brittany & Sarah, Paula, Estelle, Rosie

Jean, Jordan, and Maria

Chantal

Brittany and Sarah

Paige and two friends

Jean, Tim, Paula, Rosie

Tomas, Chantal, and Estelle

Neil

The hard work is over!

.... this morning I presented my last lesson for the course.

Although I may have some rewriting to do on my last assignment (which I turned in yesterday), all I have to do between now and Friday is show up and be alert. Or look alert. Either one.

In celebration, below is the mass Thriller dance performed in Mexico City on 29 August 2009 for a Guinness World Record:

Playa del Carmen, Mexico: Inside my place

Here is the interior of my home-for-a-month:

My temporary home, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010.

My temporary home, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010.

My temporary home, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010.

My temporary home, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010.

My temporary home, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010.

Homework, massage, and all that jazz

Finally finished an interminable written assignment. Good news! It's the last one!

Before she left, Pam gave me a gift certificate for two massages at Veronica's Massage. I rewarded myself with one of the massages this evening. Holy moly. One of the best massages I've ever received. Thank you, Pam!

En route to my appointment, I walked under the trees filled with bats. They swooped over and around me as they passed from one tree to another. Just so's you know, Playa bats are bigger than Missouri bats.

During the massage, I had the thought: Along with the misery and mayhem we humans can render unto each other, there also exists the gift of one human giving another a massage, that therapeutic power of touch. Later, I had the thought: Yieeee! Hey, that hurts!

After the massage, I walked over to the beach to the last night of the Riviera Maya Jazz Festival. Somehow I ended up right in front of the stage. Not sure how that happened, but cool.

The audience loved Eugenia Leon, singing along to many of her songs. It was fun to be part of that intimacy between audience and performer.

Thanksgiving in Playa

It wasn't Thanksgiving in Playa, so I had class as usual today. Matt and Carol explored towns Valladolid and Chemax, and one of Matt's favorite cenotes from his numerous trips to the area in the past, Cenote Calavera (skull).

Over my lunch break, I connected via Skype with the Thanksgiving gathering at Brother4's house, talking with my daughter and her family, my sister, brothers, and various young'ns. The family was still at Brother4's house when Matt and Carol returned from their adventures, and daughter skyped us so they, too, could connect with home base.

Matt and I later walked up 5th Avenue to Ah Cacao for a leisurely, people-watching coffee, then continued on to Calle 28 and then to the beach to join the International Jazz Festival. Mike Stern and Dave Weckl were playing. A jazzy rock sound. Loved it!

Below is a mellower tune:




So --> terrific music, a gorgeous orange moon that hung from a cloud, a starry sky, fresh breezes, warm sand, and an appreciative crowd.

A good way to spend a Thanksgiving.

Gezellig

Today was a tough day school-wise. Glad it's over. Glad it wasn't as disastrous as it felt at the time. So moving on from there ...

Chantal, one of my colleagues, introduced us to the Dutch word gezellig. It's pronounced like this, though I like Chantal's pronunciation better. 

There's no translation to English. As I understand it, gezellig perhaps captures a period of time, maybe a few moments or an hour or hours or a day or days, where you're in a house or maybe another place, and its ambiance is just right. And you're with friends or family, maybe some wine or coffee, and you just feel good together in that space and time.

Here is a group of people feeling the gezellig:

Makes me feel gezellig every time I look at it. I like the woman kicking up her heels.

System failure

Ah, the cascade effect.

This morning I had a lesson to teach. I don't have a printer at the condo, so I must print documents at the school. We are not supposed to connect our laptops to the school printer. So I email my documents to a web-based email account, access that at the school on a school PC, then print the documents.

So this morning I arrived at school, accessed my email account, retrieved my two-part lesson plan, and discovered that where I thought I'd attached Lesson Plan A and Lesson Plan B, I'd attached duplicate copies of Lesson Plan A.

Uh and oh.

No problem. I'll just pull out my laptop, send it to myself again, and I'll be good. No. I didn't think I'd need my laptop, so I'd left it at the condo.

No problem. I'll just go online with the school PC and access my web-based backup files (which I hated to do since I really don't trust the school PCs' security). So I pull up the website, enter my login and then my password, only to find I'd entered the wrong password. Hmmm, don't want to re-enter the wrong password, because I don't want to be locked out of that account altogether (like I'd been locked out of a gmail account the week before - more on that later).
 
No problem. I'll just go to another account and retrieve that ol' password (which I hated to do because I don't trust the school PCs' security). Oh damn it. My password for that other account is such that it includes some keys that are very different from those in the U.S., and I could not figure out how the heck to get to certain symbols, which was the cause of my lockout last week with an entirely different web-based account.

Result: I walk back to the condo, fire up my laptop, send myself Lesson Plan B, pack the laptop in my bag, and trudge back to school. All making for a very poor start to my day.

Important lessons learned:

• ALWAYS have at least one accessible Plan B in my pocket (i.e. I should have taken my laptop with me), even when it's kind of a pain in the ass; and
• Select passwords that are strong, but which don't undermine you when you encounter foreign keyboards.

You might ask - hey, why don't you just take your flash drive with you and insert that into the school PC? That would be much more portable, to be sure. The problem is I don't trust the PCs and I ain't gonna do it if I don't have to. In another scenario, I may have to do that with a strange PC, but I don't have to do that now. 

A note on the email account I got locked out of last week. Super annoying and still unresolved. Thank God it wasn't a critical email account for me. In response, I set up a brand-new email account with three features: 1) It has a good password that's easy for me to remember, 2) which doesn't use symbols that require advanced study of the foreign keyboard, and 3) which has as its sole purpose homework stuff. It's what I call my "stupid" account. If it were to get compromised, there's nothing lost. I wish I would have thought of doing this earlier.

Playans, Playan traffic, and the street grid

I have yet to meet a native Playan, though I'm sure they do exist.

The other day I dropped off laundry at the launderia around the corner. When I picked it up later that day, the three staff and I chatted. Two of the three have lived in Playa for about a month; the third has been here for about three months.

Usually I hear a range between one and six years. People I've talked to came from:

• Mexico City
• Chiapas
• Queretaro
• Guadalajara
• Sinoloa
• Brazil

According to one source I read, Playa del Carmen is one of the fastest-growing (or was til recently) places in the world. For a time, about 100 families moved to Playa every month. This is a drop in the bucket for a city that is already large, but for a town the size of Playa, that is huge.  

From 1990 to 1997, Playa's population grew from 2,000 to 20,000!

Newcomers like the lack of congestion and other problems that come with large populations.

But speaking of congestion -- Although 5th Avenue is a pedestrian street, cars reign supreme on parallel streets 10th and 15th. Fortunately, these are both one-way streets so you only have to look in one direction before risking your life to cross the road. Occasionally, a driver will slow down for you to cross.

10th Avenue has a cycle path (or, as I misheard my British tutor say: There is a psychopath on 10th Avenue) that pedestrians and cyclists share, sometimes with disconcerting results. 

In theory, Playa's street grid is logical and easy to follow. But this only holds true after you also learn that avenidas ("avenues") run parallel to the beach and calles ("roads") run perpendicular to the beach. Plus, you must learn about the "half streets" designated with bis, as in Calle 10 bis.

Furthermore, the avenidas (which run parallel to the beach, remember) go by 5s, so there's Avenida 5, then Avenida 10, then Avenida 15, etc.

Calles, on the other hand (which run perpendicular to the beach) go by 2s, so there's Calle 2, Calle 4, Calle 6, etc. Oh, except for the calles bis. These are tucked in between the Calles 2, 4, 6, 8, etc.They are not alleys so much as they are streets that don't go the length of the city as the "full" calles do ... OK, never mind.

So until you know the concept about the calles versus the avenidas and about the bis streets, the idea that you seek Calle 10 bis, which is between 10th and 15th Avenues, is a straight road to getting-lost hell.

Now I can go directly to the intersection of Calle 10 bis and Avenida 10 and know that I have not, in fact, slipped into a weird parallel universe.

Outside the classroom 2

In the International House courtyard, the palm and coconut trees:

Are coconut trees a kind of palm? Yes, I guess so.

Portable speakers for MP3 player

The other day, some of us observed an experienced teacher, Dena, as she taught an intermediate-level English class.  Dena played music at several points, and I could hardly wait til the end of the class to find out where she'd bought the MP3 player speaker system she used.

Here it is:

An HDMX portable speaker case. It's a great little cool thing ... runs on two AA batteries, comes with the jack for the MP3 player, and you can even carry your player around in the zippered speaker case.

I don't know where I'll be teaching, thus I don't know what sort of technical apparatus will be available, so this is perfect for me - it's small in size and weight. Oh, did I forget to say I went out to the Playa Walmart this afternoon and bought one for myself?

Oddly, the Walmart had no AA batteries, so I picked some up at OXO.

Paige

Paige, another fellow student, is from Darwin, Australia.

She doesn't have a travel blog, but she does have a story, which she told while the group of us students watched a downpour from the balcony outside our classroom.

Paige's story is one of drama. Of beauty. Of epic sound. Of unavoidable tragedy.

Hers is the story of Darwin frogs.

Photo by Dragonoletra

*The above is not a photo of Paige. 

When it rains in Darwin, the frogs come out en masse. Their chorus is so loud it is impossible to talk on the phone. You find them everywhere. Even the toilet.

Paige reports great debates as to whether or not to flush the frogs or to retrieve them for release outside. It doesn't really matter, she says, because regardless of your choice, the next time you visit the toilet, you'll see a frog's smiling face.

And this report from Australia's Froggy News:

It seems that cane toads are quite the trouble makers. Australia has long been battling with issues of toad invasion. Their introduction to these territories lead to a population explosion which has begun to threaten a lot of the local native wildlife and has been deemed one of the nation's "biggest mistakes". It's become a huge issue, with Vietnam Vets now enlisting in the war against the toads.. There are now reports that crocodile populations will go up as the cane toads provide them with plenty of prey. And even weirder, it seems that cane toads are still dangerous even after they are dead. Evidently, a fertilizer made from pulverised cane toads is now under recall because the stuff starts to explode when it ferments. And now all the neighboring areas that still aren't overrun by the croaking intruders have even added toad sniffing dogs to their border patrols. And they're not joking around either - folks caught importing cane toads into presently unravaged areas such as Victoria face enormous fines for the offense.

10:52 PM - Report Froggy News

Nathan

Another fellow student of mine is Nathan, originally from Wales.

Like Estelle, he's been around the block a few times. You can read his trip-around-the-world travel blog, the Ramblings of a Pragmatist, aka Around the World in G&Ts (gin & tonics).

Light

I've been watching the play of light through the black-mullioned window of our classroom for a week now. Today, I captured it.

Estelle

Estelle is one of my fellow students here at the International House school in Playa.

You can read about her solo backpacking trip in her blog, Around the World in 180 Days.

Where I live ... this month

My temporary home in Playa del Carmen:

Outside my classroom door

In the International House in Playa del Carmen, here are the views outside my classroom door.

TEFL students - a good-looking lot

It is fascinating that all of my fellow TEFL colleagues are attractive and interesting. I look forward to learning more about them.

Without compromising anonymity, a brief run-down of our most superficial characteristics --> out of 10 students:

• Six Americans (1 Texas, 2 Colorado, 1 California, 1 Missouri, and 1 Delawarean who's lived in Mexico for a number of years)
• One Dutch
• One Welsh
• One Australian
• One South African

Seven women; three men

I'm going to guess that eight of the 10 are under 40-ish, some considerably so. Two are over 50.

Embarrassingly, I've yet to get down to the beach. I've seen glimpses of it - and it looks ... the only possible word is .... glorious.  By the time I arrived on Saturday and got settled in, it was already dark. Today, in addition to honing my getting-lost skills, I had money-changing to do, and then getting some  provisions at Wal-Mart after getting out of class about 7:00 p.m.

I've not taken a single photo.

I did pick up a delicious cafe americano here. 

I will try to get down to the beach in the morning before class starts.