Teaching English as a Foreign Language was a short course I took in Manchester prior to leaving for my own year long travel trip around the world, in case I could use it or needed to earn money – even in case I didn’t want to come back at the end of the year!

I loved the people I met on that course who were definitely ‘my tribe’ and I felt welcomed, accepted, understood and free to be me which is rare in my life I have found.

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However I did struggle with the English grammar to the extent I would have to teach it even though I pride myself on knowing my grammatical needs for good communication in writing, but the detail and complexity of the English language reminded of school again.

Not that I struggled but sometimes felt it pointlessly complex with subjunctives and suchlike for no real reason – but I guess language learning is like that. Learning Spanish on my return, though – having realised I gave little back as French was my only language, passable or not, and nowhere I visited spoke it not anyone I met – wasn’t as hard as I always believed, I found it enjoyable and relatively easy to manage (but I did only get to level 1 before the course closed and work-life took over again) and learned more about the culture I certainly could have done with on my trip! Like how to shop in South America, food items and the similarities to the Spanish Portugese in Brazil. And that, I learned, most of the world actually speaks some form of Spanish (learned from a young student I was on a tour of the Masonic town of Paratay, Brazil, one evening. She was a mine of knowledge and information on history and culture, so I got that as an extra on the tour!)

However, I didn’t get to work and my various visas wouldn’t allow it, nor my older age group and the fact at that point I was actually homeless back in the UK having sold my house, some of which I used to live my life long dream of backpacking around the world – no matter the age and timing!

This is a link the an online TEFL site and will share other posts in time too

Further reading

The Top 5 Travel Blogs to Follow https://www.tefl.org/blog/top-5-travel-blogs-follow

Teaching English as a Digital Nomad https://www.tefl.org/blog/teaching-english-online-david