Category Archives: CELTA

Doing the CELTA in Paradise

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Studying in a place like this could seem like a dream.

For most people who arrive in Playa del Carmen to take Spanish classes, it is. A couple of hours of practice in the morning leaves the rest of the day wide open for scuba diving, snorkeling, paragliding and any number of beach activities, or possibly a visit to one of the local Mayan ruin sites. The nights are filled with heavy drinking, dancing with beautiful Latinos and a quick fumble on the beach before the patrolling police intrude.

For those of us who arrived to undertake a more intense course, however, things couldn’t be more different.

At the International House Riviera Maya, two types of students drift in and out: The aforementioned Spanish learners and the ones with the bags under the eyes.

Should you find the latter, you’d do best to avoid their gaze. They’re under a lot of stress and have no time for social niceties when they’re too busy trying to remember how to conjugate a verb.

These are my people. I was a part of that world for four weeks in November. I was one of those weirdos who wanted to teach English as a Foreign/Second Language and decided to travel to the Mexican coast to study for a CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults), one of the most difficult and intense TEFL courses in the world.

To give you a rough idea of what life was like, here’s an example of a typical day on a CELTA course:

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Hola from Mexico!

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Check out the bags under my eyes!

Do excuse the state of my face! I’m currently running on an average of 3-4 hours sleep a night so you’re seeing a product of complete exhaustion. :P

And apologies for the length. Good on ya if you managed to watch it all.

Detachment

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Photo credit.

[A/N: I just want to apologise if this post is all over the place. It's 1am and my head's fuzzy. I can't seem to concentrate these days for more than a few minutes without daydreaming.]

Perhaps it’s the fact that, these days, I spend roughly 23 hours alone, am jobless, and have all the time in the world to read books, surf the internet and reflect on life but I can’t help but feel lonely lately.

Not physically. I mean, I live with my family, and my friends are only a phonecall away.

I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m going through a lot of changes and am increasingly finding it harder to relate to people.

99% of my internet time is spent looking up forums and blogs related to travel, teaching ESL, hostels, hitchhiking and general vagabonding. The remaining 1% is spent on downloading films and researching books, artists and writers who inspire me.

Yesterday I joined one of the largest teaching forums online – which shall remain anonymous – to find out a bit more about the kind of people I’d be joining in a few months to come.

What I saw disappointed me. These were not the idealists I hoped to enjoy my time with, feeling inspired with knowing that teaching people a second language would help their situations and improve their lives.

Instead these were people I could have found in the next street from me. These were people consumed with the idea of money and things. For any new poster wanting to ask questions about teaching in Latin America, these teachers would reply within minutes, scoffing that in order to make the ‘real’ money, South-East Asia and the Middle East were the places to be. I hadn’t even mentioned money.

What about Latin America, where people’s ability to speak English helps them climb away from poverty?

Don’t be silly, little girl.

I’d much rather be paid nothing, knowing that I helped someone’s quality of life.

Money’s nice to have. It is. It certainly makes things a lot easier. But I’m seeing how it easily controls and manipulates people – even those around me – and turns them ugly.

I know in my heart that I don’t really need things. I don’t need my DVDs, those books stacked in the corner of my room that I’ll never read again, these posters on my wall, this computer. I wouldn’t have a breakdown if I lost it all. It’ll all be gone by November anyway.

I need relationships. I thrive on the people I can talk to and connect with.

But these days I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of consumerism. The people around me fill their lives with jewels and cars and pretty things for their houses and 5-star holiday resorts. … Which is fine, if that’s what makes them happy. I just can’t relate to it. And it can be lonely.

“Happiness is only real when shared.”