One of the things you learn the hard way when teaching English is that mental preparation is as important as coursework preparation. You may have the best lesson plan ever, but if you are too upset, you will start jumping from point to point, misread excercise numbers and, worst of all, have trouble reading a classes reaction to it ( Read more... )

Since the winter term is coming to a close here in Spain, I had to write some reports yesterday (and have Anna translate them, because my boss is not responding to my pleas for an advanced Spanish class ( Read more... )

I have been an English teacher for more than six months now, which makes it the job I held down the longest in my life. My contract will be over soon, though, because, ya' know, summer vacation and the kids are going away ( Read more... )

Last night when I was travelling from Bilbao, a woman left a piece of paper, a stubbed pencil and a ring made of twisted wire in my lap and then rushed out of the train. On the piece of paper she wrote "Se agradece ver a gente sonreir" - "It's nice to see people smile". This happened somewhere around the Bakiola station, on the C-3 line ( Read more... )

The job search is over! I managed to score an interview with Centro de Estudios DINI in Vitoria and aced it. They hired me for 12 hours a week, which means my evenings from now on will be full of English teaching. I always wanted to NOT become an EFL teacher, but I guess this is how life goes sometime: you avoid getting into an English teaching ( Read more... )

For some time now I have been working in association with the Langloo EFL portal, delivering texts about the cultures and histories of English speaking nations. The job is not that hard, as each article is usually no longer than 500 words ( Read more... )

I have four main social media outlets: my LJ, my Twitter, Facebook and my Jogger. That's not counting the various forums I'm on or that deviantArt account that's left to fallow ( Read more... )

This post is long overdue and for that I apologise. A lot of things has happened between today and February 10 and still do not know how to deal with or even convey some of them ( Read more... )

I want to post at least once every week until the end of the year. This means you will sometimes get posts like these.

Numbers are crunching

• Gigahurtzes in new laptop: 2.3
• RAMS in new laptop: 4
• Working CD drives in laptop: 1
• Stickers on laptopt: 3 out-of-factory-tech-speccy ones, 0 user ones.

• Number of books currently reading: 4

Project MAPLE is developing in a steady manner. The next phase release is delayed as I work it into the direction I want the thing to take.

That's really all there is to say on the matter.