Herefordshire

Finished the CELTA course on Friday. That was some month! Very little time off, and that time was taken up with doing as little as humanly possible. It was very intensive and I underestimated the amount of work involved at the outset. The result was that I was that I now believe I have just scraped a pass grade; the results were posted out the afternoon we left, so we'll have to wait and see. The majority of students just receive a 'pass', which means that our first teaching posts will benefit from being in established schools that can provide support to our initial year or two of practice. Xenia, my housemate, got an 'A', which was good considering she was already an experienced TEFL teacher and had been working harder than most of us on each of her assignments.

The course consisted of 15 participants, split into 3 Teaching Practice groups, and over the month I came to rely on my TP partners for a lot of support; without them I would have been sunk, and would probably have quit! Because the majority of them smoked, I took it up again just to be sociable and we 'became' the smoking group, which helped with solidarity.

Now back, took the bicycle out for a mild clean and a quick spin - everything seems in order, to be tested tomorrow on the Xmas shopping run.