Open Writing

Until September I was in Cairo working for The British Council as a teacher. I had become immune to the pollution and had begun to enjoy the place towards the end of my contract: the lively shopping district, my colourful students, the seasonal fruit, the fava beans and felafel, and the friendly people in the streets, OK so the taxi drivers and shopkeepers generally tried to overcharge but of course they were genuinely poor and I managed to avoid any conflict once they realised I wasn't a tourist.

On top of my teaching there I also did BULATS testing for Cambridge, was the teachers' rep and wrote language activities for The British Council students' website. Life was a bit too busy and the website work killed my social life somewhat on deadline weeks but at least it was motivating to do something beyond just teaching.

Between January and September I enjoyed two months of paid leave. You might remember that, besides these there were no breaks between school terms; work just churned on, so having these long holidays was really essential to avoid burn-out. My first month of leave came in January, when I headed for Israel. I had doubts as to whether or not I would like it, fearing bleak, cold winter weather and terrorist conflicts, so planned on just spending a week there. However, the country was so beautiful, especially the coast and Jerusalem. The people were incredible friendly and it was refreshing to be in a place which was as clean and organised, albeit as expensive, as Europe. My intended one week holiday rolled into two weeks.

My other break came in June. I had deliberately not gone back to the UK in January in order to avoid the atrociously blustery Yorkshire English winter and with dreamy images of hiking in sun-dappled green English meadows, I packed my shorts and T shirts into my rucksack, along with a few short summery skirts and sandals for picnics in parks blooming with bright English flowers. However, if you were in England in June this year, you may recall that it was hardly meadow-romping, flower-viewing weather we had. During the three weeks I was there it rained every single day; one day, monsoon-style torrents of rain gushed from the grey clouds from 5 am to around 5 am the next day, flooding many places and causing traumatic destruction.

Now I am in Sri Lanka, working for The British Council in Colombo, as a teacher. At first the job seemed great. The weather here is lovely and warm and I actually quite like the tropical humidity. Somehow this balminess makes me feel relaxed. Also it is cleaner than Cairo and so the air is fresher. During my first term I worked as 'the roaming teacher'. This involved doing standby for various teachers and working on admin projects; lots of variety. It felt invigorating to be in a new location, with a new culture to learn about and plenty of different tasks to perform at work. Also, as a standby the students loved me because I wasn't responsible for giving grades at the end of term.

After only three weeks of being in the country, we came to the end of Term 3 and so I went travelling. I saw Pulonaruwa, Dambulla and Sigiria. The first two places were disappointing as they were historical and too much like places in India I had seen, though not as interesting. Sigiria,however, was fascinating. It's a Buddhist meditation site and you can follow the pilgrim route up a huge rock-face.

The day after I returned from my travels, I took part in a two-day course to become an IELTS oral examiner, another international Cambridge exam so a very useful qualification to have. I was delighted as I passed first time. Unfortunately the results took two months to come out so since qualifying I have had a chance to interview only once.

Term 4 then began after the holiday. My timetable has involved three months worth of 12.5 hours of Young learner teaching and ten hours of adults in each week, plus lots of lesson planning, induction and admin meetings. I'd rather have had the ratio the other way round, but most teachers here have the same pattern. The adults have proved delighftful to teach; very easy to please and amuse and due to the calm, silent culture, the classes have been peaceful. However, they began to feel a bit too silent towards the end of term and this passive nature and reliance on prompts from the teacher began to feel like a drudge. The Senior level students and Teens were similarly quiet, but the juniors have been very springy and visibly enthusiastic, although exhausting. Overall, the children here are very obedient and happy to do anything they are asked to do but I definitely feel more tired after Young Learner classes than I do after adult classes.

My flat here is gigantic, twice the size of my parents' house in England. My bedroom alone is the same size as my entire apartment in Japan. It has three large bedrooms (one has been converted into a study), two bathrooms, a long hallway, a long balcony, a huge living/dining room area and a big kitchen. Friends from Cairo who came to work in Colombo stayed with me while searching for accommodation for a few weeks but at the moment I am living there alone.

I am seriously thinking now of getting a flatmate but have no idea where to advertise. At first I tried to clean it by myself every week but as it takes three hours to mop floors and clean surfaces properly I have now resorted to getting a maid to come in once a month to give me a break. She also gets my ironing to do as I have no ironing skills. Unfortunately it's very difficult to get a small apartment here and one-bedroom places are virtually unheard of. I think this is because young people continue to live with their parents until they get married. Houses and flats are designed for families and also many feature living quarters for the live-in maid. Most of the other tenants in my block have such a maid who cleans and cooks daily for 'Mister' and 'Madam'. I suppose my dark and dreary kitchen was designed in such a way as this was seen to be befitting for a maid. It has a separate entrance-the maid's entrance- and also a separate squat toilet for the maid.

The highlight of the term has been the Sinhala classes. They have made me a bit too busy as there have been two sessions of two hours to attend each week. I felt like my worst student as I did no revision until I realised with embarrassment that most people were beginning to be able to decipher the text and so sat down for an hour and made some word cards. However, it has been interesting to meet people other than my colleagues and I really enjoyed learning the nicely rounded Sinhala alphabet and doing the role-plays. I loved acting out the role of unscrupulous shopkeepers reminiscent of those I have encountered here. My teacher also had a book-launch during the term, to which I was invited as a student, so it was exciting to see my teacher's book- the first ever dictionary of Sri Lankan English- in print.

Please don't imagine me basking in warm sunshine here..for the past few months we have been in the rainy season so it's been grey and the rain is very heavy when it falls and is often accompanied by a migraine-causing thunderstorm. For the past two months I have only been able to go swimming twice on my only free night of the working week. I don't mind swimming in the heaviest of downpours but cannot risk losing my life by swimming during a thunderstorm.