When you show up at a new place, there's always at the beginning that period of time where you desperately grab for whatever is given to you. Be it resources, advice, information, kindness, and especially....friendship. Finding friends is always top priority in my opinion, because without people to spend time with, you might as well be sitting in front of your computer, in your room, at home, instead of using all of that energy and money to get halfway across the world again. Let's ignore the fact that that is precisely what I'm doing right now. I'm leaving in the next hour, though, so there.
Anyways, I discovered that the best thing about working for Moscow's biggest language school is that you are part of a group of interesting people already, who speak English and love to travel! All you have to do is find them....which I did. For various reasons, I've decided to camp out at one of the bigger schools, Kuznetski Most because there's a big library, helpful people, but also because there's what they call the "fishbowl," which is the teacher's room. It gets its name from the fact that most of its walls are panes of glass. This sounds scary, being so exposed, but actually its great. Not only are you visible to everyone, but everyone is visible to you, which leads to inevitable socializing, since teachers of course never miss an opportunity to gab. By the end of 4 hours yesterday, I was not only directing other teachers to resources, or how to use the printer (already been there, check!) but I had new facebook friends, invitations to parties, coffee breaks. Oh, and I got some lessons planned. It just makes life that much easier, when you know that you will have things to do, and friends to go do things with, and the sooner the better, before the work really kicks in!
No comments:
Post a Comment