English is AWESOME

WOW, How much do I love teaching English?  THAT MUCH!  I feel like I have really found my calling!  It's like everything I ever wanted wrapped up in one job.  I get to be the boss.  I get to correct people.  I get to be the expert. I get to make the rules.  I get to explain things.  I get to charge what I want.  Hahaha, it's everything a bossy know-it-all girl like me could ask for. 

But seriously, it's HELLA rewarding.  I really really like seeing the progress of my beginner students and because my Portuguese is good enough to be able to explain things, I'm able to teach these beginner students.  I really try hard to have the whole class in English but, having been there myself, sometimes you just NEED clarification to make sure you know that you're on the right track. 

In Canada and the States they don't teach formal grammar so that has been my biggest struggle - figuring out how to explain WHY we say this and WHY certain prepositions go with certain words and WHAT a preposition even is!  But I've been reading all of the books and manuals I have, researching online all of the parts of speech, verb tenses & forms, etc and I find this 'English' stuff really really interesting.  

Also, it's totally helping my understand Portuguese on a whole other level.  For a long time I was frustrated because thing's just didn't translate and certain expressions just made no sense to me.  Obviously, you can't translate things word for word, but analying my own language has really helped me understand that we have so many of these phrasal verbs and expressions ourselves that I can't be all frustrated and judgey about things not making 100% sense to me in ENGLISH.  I am speaking Portuguese and what makes you fluent is understanding which situation to use said phrases in.

I'm honestly a bit surprised with myself for coming into this situation (moving to Brazil) with an as close-minded attitude as I did.  I'm disappointed in myself for holding onto my own culture for so long and having that superiority-complex that so many foreigners have when they move to another country.  The feeling of "things are done better in my country."  While that may be true in SOME cases (with reference to administrative procedures and certain social norms) I have to remind myself often (and Ro helps with that) that I am in a city that is MUCH bigger than the one I'm used to and there are MANY MORE people that what I'm used to.  Also, the reality is Brazil is still technically a 3rd world country so many things are not up to 1st world 'standards'. 

It's time to let go of my expectations of how things 'should' be done.  If I wanted things that way, I could always go back, right? 

But I'm here for the long run and now that things have started to take off with my work I'm even more determined to give things a real legitimate chance.... next step, our own apartment, but that is for a future post.