Blanca does some TEFL, has epiphany

[Blanca]

Hidilly ho, neighbourritos

If you're not Hustler, you probably won't be aware that I'm currently studying to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL). The reasons for this are several:

1) I've got almost no chance of getting a real, graduate-level job in the next 6 months, and would otherwise be sitting behind my computer for 8 hours per day.

2) I don't WANT a real, graduate job, working for The Machine in London and worrying about how my dinner table defines me as a person. At least not yet.

3) I WANT to experience life in other countries - not just travelling, living. This I see as a fundemental experience and a way to have the best few years of my life. The sort of thing I can think of on my deathbed and go, "Christ I've done fucking loads".

4) Thanks to pick-up (and mostly this forum), my mindset has undergone enormous change over the past year or so. I don't feel vastly different, but when I look back at how I was, I realise I've become a much richer and better person. Hence having the confidence to say "balls to the norm, I'm going to do what I want to do".

Hence TEFL. Now most of the course is done online, but the bit I'm most interested in is the intensive 20-hour classroom course which I attended this weekend. A course designed to teach you how to teach English, by learning about how English works and how to teach other people a completely new language. Fine, but you might be thinking, "But Blanca, how does sitting in a room taking notes on how to be a teacher relate to pick-up?"

Because I've just had the best, most fun weekend I can remember. The guy who taught us was fantastic - a bloke who believed the best way to learn anything was not to take notes but to play games, do role-play and make a complete idiot out of yourself. As such, I'll give you a brief run-down of some of the dozens of games we played:

Learning German - One of the first things we did was to learn some basic German from our teacher. Nothing hard, just joke shop material and "my name is". No note taking, no English, just using the language through playing games.

Teach others your language - We were put into groups of 4 and had to teach the other 16 people some very basic phrases in another language. We learnt Polish, Cantonese, Japanese and Spanish and we all loved it. I was sadly placed in the group that couldn't speak any other languages (and weren't keen on learning French from me) so we did English. We still sang "Heads, shoulders knees and toes" though, with me on the guitar.

Aliens - We drew aliens made of basic shapes, and once we'd had a game describing them to our partner (mine had an M16 because I'm cool) we had to act out how our alien walked and talked (difficult when it's on tank tracks and is called Keith).

You get the point. The most important thing to take from this anecdote is the fact that, through playing silly games, making idiots out of ourselves (by talking entirely like Daleks or giving ourselves silly names like Ace Alex, with actions) and having fun, every single person in the class had a great laugh. Once the ice was broken on the first day, we were off. Everybody's confidence rose, everyone got thoroughly stuck in and we all had an amazing time.

The upshot of all this? We all got on like a house on fire. I made more of a connection with those 20 people in 2 days than I did with most people at uni in 3 years. For about 48 hours I was absolutely buzzing (a phrase our teacher used to describe a class that's, well, buzzing as we were) and my state was through the roof. I'd spent 2 days without any sense of pride or dignity and I felt fantastic.

And so we see how this ties in to our little pick up world. Anyone here who goes to improv will be able to relate exactly to what I've just said. Sadly, due to problems with the venue and lack of people turning up, ours never really took off, but I now see the potential value of it. After 2 solid days (11 hours per day) of improv-style exercises, I now wish we'd done more to make improv successful.

Now the only disappointing news. There were no fit girls there. The only potentially chat-uppable girl was a gorgeous Polish girl called Leanne. She was the image of Zooey Deschanel. Sadly, she was about 10 years older than Ms Deschanel, something which dawned on me throughout the process. I went from "oh she looks about 26" to "actually maybe she's more like 30". Her actual age? 38. Still had a banging body though.

Anyway that wasn't important. What was important was that I had a bloody good laugh, formed some meaningful, enjoyable connections and relationships and most importantly of all, I did something I couldn't have done a year ago - gone into a room full of strangers and established myself as the guy whom the fun revolves around and everybody wants to talk to. Everybody (including the teacher) loved me and the girls were fawning over me.

It felt fucking great.