Viajunto

A little bit over a year has passed since I came home from my backpacking journey. Features in Google Photos or Facebook remind of you the pictures you took/uploaded a year (or longer), so I’m always reminded of the crazy things I did a year ago. Now I sit in an office and explain idiotic people how the internet works. Is it worth it? About a week or two ago, I was talking to one of my coworkers about backpacking. We both would like to go to South East Asia. I’m still keen to go to Japan. It’s something completely different and I really want to have that “culture shock” moment. I did not really have that in South America. For my birthday last year my brother got me this scratch map which I think was the best gift I got that year (also because I wanted to buy it myself and this way I saved some money). After scratching off all the places I’ve been to I realized: There’s still a lot of blank space on the map. And I’ve been backpacking for over a year. At this point I have to say t...

Still going happily forward in my new (hopefully) future profession I did the 3rd part of the pre course and only now I found out that this is the end of module one, out of four … ugh. Just take a deep breath and keep on going. Anyhow, this one is something I have pretty much no experience at all. I do am excited about this and judging my level of English I will have to focus more on this point during the course. As every time experience makes you better or as we say “no master has fallen from the sky”. As before they asked you to watch a video about a teacher who talked about a successful English lesson she held. Afterwards they asked you to answer these questions: 1) Why did the learners enjoy the listening? 2) What was useful and engaging about the questions Amy had designed for the interview? 3) What was she doing while they did the interview activity? What do you think she was listening for? Actually, the answers to those questions are quite simple. She enjoyed because...

The second part of my journey of pursuing a long-held dream of mine was to reminisce how it is to learn a language. The idea/goal of this is to think back when you learned English (or a foreign language in general) and about the difficulties you had. Which tricks you pulled out of your sleeve to help you with it. Which ideas/techniques were best and which completely bad so that you can use said techniques to teach and help others to learn. The section is divided into three simple questions: 1. Where did you learn? 2. What helped you learn? 3. Were there any negative aspects that made it more difficult to learn or less enjoyable? In the end they put a video of a Ted talk about learning languages with 5 great techniques to learn a language, which turned out I’ve been doing all 5 of them when I learned Spanish. I was really surprised and I can confirm that it works as you can see from my español muy bueno. Anyhow, I thought I’d share the five techniques with yo...

Before starting the actual TEFL course you’re asked to finish the pre-course task. It mainly consists of some knowledge tests – or at least that’s what I assumed. I subscribed about a week ago and promptly received an email afterwards. To be honest I just quickly read over it to see what it was about without really paying attention as I wanted to do it more thoroughly later. For fun I made one test where you had to count the sounds of the words. For example the word “knight” has three sounds; an “n” sound (as the k is silent), an i sound (like the word eye) and the final “t” sound (as also the g and h are silent). And that with a bunch of words, some easier, some more difficult and some depending on how you want to pronounce them (English or British). I really liked this test because it made me think of English in a different way and you’re not asked to do this anywhere else. On a side note: I only had one error which made me feel pretty good about myself. Anyhow, the email sa...

Oh, well imagine. A couple of days ago I was striving through the aisles of the small corner store when I couldn’t help to hear, no, I couldn’t help to hear an exchanging of words. “What a beautiful melon.” What a beautiful melon said a patron to a stocker. “And yes but what a shame, but what a shame we’re not getting in any more.” I chimed in with a “haven’t you people ever heard of stocking the goddamn store, no.” To which he replied “Please, sir, would you mind your own business.” And I did. However, I came across a so called “depilatory cream”. I heard of it before but never tried it. That was until now. I was intrigued to go home and test it immediately and was telling Ahmed about it but she was like “When you shave off your hair our thing – whatever this is – is over” …. so basically it was a win-win situation. Also she told that those creams smell like shit. Mine was with flower extract so it smells like a field of freshly blooming flowers. While I put it on on my pri...

My alarm goes off at 2 am. What self-hating part of myself decided that this was a good idea? Note to my future-self: whenever I book a flight leaving Barcelona, don't book it before 7 am. Otherwise it's a pain in the ass to get there on time. Michael, my backpacker-self, suggested to just spend the night at the airport. Like in the old times. I'm sorry but no. Not when I live in the same city. Anyhow, because I know that when I get up really, really early I need to grand myself some time until I function completely. So I decided to give myself about an hour before I actually have to leave. I thought I give myself enough time to take a shower, pack the rest of stuff that I need and have breakfast. Well, none of this became reality. I don't take a shower out of respect of my room mates to make too much noise. I don't really need to pack as I have everything back home, so I just take my little beach bag with Marie's t-shirt, my charger, my book and my pal...

Alright, it’s – unfortunately – not posted on my anniversary of the trip and also I went home a bit earlier than expected. However, a couple of weeks later I left again so I count this extra holiday as part of the whole trip. As I did already after six months I wanted to give another review for the second half of my one year “off”. It was partly great, partly awesome, partly horrible, partly sad, partly … everything. Here’s to another great half year. – saw an Albino (not sure if I should mention this but meh) – lived with a guy that I didn’t know – flew 13 times – slept in 4 airports – been to 13 countries in 3 continents (4 continents, depending on how you count) – drank chocolate beer – saw 1 of the 7 wonders of the new world (makes it three in total) – got 2 more tattoos – smashed a piñata on Christmas – forgot to go to watch the fireworks on New Year’s Eve – found out that Guatemala bitches are fucked. seriously – bought stuff in a second hand shop. but shit, it wa...