Day 2: Teeching is Fun!

I have now gone to the internet cafe no less than three times today, for all the same reasons as yesterday.

When I wasn't running away from the sounds of construction, I was teaching. Teaching has taught me first-hand what comedians mean when they say, "tough crowd." Some groups of people are just hard to handle, for whatever reason. But I'll save the cross section of my five classes for a future date--believe me, you're gonna hear all about my Gang of Monks, as well as my frustrations with the 20-year-old junior high schoolers in my morning class. But another day.

Today, I had a classroom observation. Usually this means you are under scrutiny for doing something wrong; in my case, I was showing a new teacher how to teach. I wish I'd been afforded that luxury when I began teaching--instead, I was rather brutally placed in front of Chinese kindergarteners and their vicious mothers, along with an assistant looking on at all times and judging my every move. And I had no idea what I was doing. AWKWARD.

So I'm always glad to help out a newbie. I enjoy mentorship. I'm probably more flattered that they chose me than I should be. (I have a paranoid friend who tried to insist the new teacher in question was a mole designed to judge me; the thought that that might be true hasn't been able to break through the wall of flattery yet.)

I teach for six hours a day, every day; I earn more than a lot of Khmer teachers who work harder than I do under far more deplorable conditions. Yet despite my relative luxury, my salary is low enough, and my skin white enough, that I will never be able to afford to go back to America. That's the thing about EFL--once you begin, you're essentially stuck in it for life. There's really no escape.

Damn, I just depressed myself.