Last weekend we went to visit a very famous temple near my wife's hometown with the intention of asking the "Gods" for a little assistance with finding work, which we did. Of course that was all a little new to me. I followed my wife around the crowded temple trying to breath through joss-stick smoke, praying to the various "Gods" for a little help.
Low and behold on Monday the "Gods" appeared to have been listening and I suddenly seemed to have some success with my job hunt. I struck up a great rapport with a manager from a rather well presented adult language centre in the better part of town, who insisted that I was perfect material for his school and that he could mould me into a perfect teacher to match his vision for the school. I should have known he was a "fruit cake" from that moment, but when you're feeling desperate your vision can be a little clouded.
On Wednesday I returned to school having prepared a couple of short teaching demos (bear in mind that I have not a jot of English teaching experience), but nevertheless he seemed suitably impressed and wanted to "train" me to be a teacher. He said that he thought that I was very creative and had a lot of potential, weird right?
On Thursday evening I returned to the school to take part in the "training", which was meant to consist of sitting in on a couple of lessons and then working with my new mentor on how to conduct a class. It is true that I did sit in on a couple of classes, but the mentoring was a little short of the mark in terms of being of any use whatsoever. It was training of the "erh, just do it like this and like that" school of thought, but anyway I was still feeling good about the whole thing. I was invited back for the next day to take part in a class with my mentor and then to put together another demo and have a go again.
So, I arrived there again on Friday with my wife who was there to offer support, as she has a lot of teaching experience.
Suddenly, the whole feeling about the situation had changed (I don't think that it was to do with my wife being there as they had met before), my mentor seemed tense and uneasy, but nevertheless invited me to prepare for another demo, although he "no longer had time" to let me help him with a class.
I prepared for the demo which took a little longer than it should have due to computer problems (I know that is not a good excuse). The demo was completed and certainly went a little better than the first two that I did, so I felt quite pleased about that.
There is one character, however, that I haven't mentioned in this little story yet, that is my mentor's manager, a local Taiwanese guy, who spoke pretty good English (all learnt from watching movies, he told me, yeah right!). I had a long chat with him outside after my Thursday evening "training" session, and I think that is when my fate was sealed. Although the guy was all smiles and chatty (imagine the Japanese soldier smiling as he slits your throat), I am now sure that I pissed him off somehow, and the word was passed to the mentor not to hire me.
Although I was allowed to go through the process on Friday, it was when I was told, just as I was leaving, that the mentor had gone home and that he would "call me later in the evening" that I knew things had gone horribly wrong somewhere. My wife had sensed it also. The call never came.
So here I am back at square one! I am not sure if I am going back to the temple again this weekend to pray for help as it didn't seem to work, or maybe the "Gods" are just pissed at me for not praying in the right way or something and wanted to teach me a lesson, who knows?
Anyway, I am going to try and chill out a little this weekend and make an attempt at feeling normal again, Taiwan style!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment