Familiar line - nothing posted lately, but it's not for a lack of things going on. Currently, I'm in a crappy apartment in Budapest, where I'll be staying for another 3 weeks (except for a quick trip to Vienna this weekend). Hopefully Marlene can come visit on one of the other 2 weekends.
The course I'm taking is the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA). It lasts 4 weeks and I'm almost a week into it. It's extremely intensive. There's 8 hours of teaching observation or class per day along with an average of maybe 2 hours work in the evening. The amount of outside work depends on if I need to give a lesson the following day, which happens every other day. The classes we observe and then teach every second day, are real students. They are aware however that it's a class where teachers are being trained and I was told it's a lot cheaper for them compared to courses with one real teacher.
The first day was extremely overwhelming and then first thing in the morning on day 2 I had to teach a lesson. After that it's been more relaxing and I feel I've already learned a ton. Tomorrow I'll teach my second lesson and it took about half the time to plan as it did for my first try. I'm sure the rest will get even easier.
Because I don't have much free time I haven't done any touristy things. Hopefully I'll have more time for that later in the course when the homework doesn't take as long to finish. I forgot to bring my camera so I don't see too much point in seeing the sights since I wouldn't be able to "prove" it. My camera's one of the things I'll want to bring back when I make the 3 hour bus ride to Vienna.
