I've had a lot of good leads since finishing my CELTA certification. I've applied to about 30 language institutes in Vienna and got called in for 5 interviews, all of which want to offer me courses to teach. That's definitely good news, but now I need to worry (a little bit) about over-committing myself. Because I'll be working as a freelance trainer for several schools simultaneously, I'll need to keep a close track of my own schedule and make sure classes never overlap. It's a better problem to have than not having any work though, so I'm very pleased about that.
My first official paid lesson will happen on Monday for Berlitz, an institute which Americans might be familiar with from their foreign language phrasebooks. Unlike the other language schools, Berlitz had their own training course which was 8 hours a day for 6 days. A lot of it was similar to what I learned during the CELTA course except for Berlitz doesn't teach grammar directly in that they don't want trainers to explain grammar rules in black and white. Rather we're supposed to subtly slip it into conversation, which is actually difficult for me because I've been studying English grammar a lot since I decided to try my hand at teaching. I want to show off what I've been learning!
The Berlitz training was also a good time to meet some other native English speakers living in Vienna. It was super easy to make friends in Budapest because I was always with Americans and Englanders and the same goes with the Berlitz training. Looking back on my time in Budapest, I was hesitant to go there, but I met some great people. They were so great that Marlene and I ended up spending my birthday weekend there celebrating with them. We did some touristy things during the day and met up with them in the evenings. The highlight of the trip for me was going to the karaoke bar where we sang a few duets without much response until we did "Got My Mind Set on You" by George Harrison and the place went crazy! Since then I've had the song stuck in my head and have played it dozens of times on youtube.
Another super great piece of news in the last few weeks is that we've officially planed a trip back to the USA for summer. We'll be back in Minnesota (and who knows where else...) between July 10 and August 5. The awesome thing about being a freelance worker is that I can take holidays for basically however long and whenever I want. Marlene has all of July and August free so we could potentially have the opportunity to spend a month or more every summer in the USA which I would love!
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