Celta in Solihull... Halfway done....

I have been taking this CELTA course now for almost 2 months now and we are just about halfway done. We have a short break for the half-term next week and it is definitely a well placed rest.

Normally I teach on Thursdays but as chance would have it a classmate rang me on Sunday as I was preparing my lesson for Thursday and asked if I could switch with them for this week. I was very happy to do so as that means that now I do not have to really to do any lesson preparation for about 2 weeks.

There are some assignments I need to work on though. I am finding those more difficult than the rest of the class for some strange reason.

But overall I am positive the class has made me a better teacher. Particularly because of the Saturday theory classes we have that involve some great teaching concepts and methodologies to utilize inside the classroom.

I have found out that I am excellent at teaching vocabulary but need to vastly improve my ability to present grammar and form.

As for the class in general then I would recommend it and if you have the ability to take it at Solihull College then I would recommend that as well. The CELTA instructors have a lot of experience and definitely know what they are talking about. They are quite helpful and very available and approachable for guidance outside and inside the class. Feedback seems to be on par with what I would expect but the ideas they give you as to what you could have done to improve a lesson is insightful.


The Tudor Grange house where we teach at Solihull College is amazing. It is like some sort of mansion you would see in a Jane Austin film adaptation or an old haunted mansion form the Scooby Doo cartoons. There are old fireplaces and beautiful carvings of different objects in the wooden frames. I will try to take some photos of the inside on Thursday to post.

10 year anniversary pics

As promised...

Since my laptop was being repaired and I couldn't post any photos from when I first landed in Germany with that particular blog I will post them now...

The view from my dorm, building 177 room 301 on Spangdahlem Airbase Germany. All those semi-circular concrete structures are called Hardened Aircraft Structures (HAS for short) and house F-16 or O/A-10 aircraft.



The room was about 12' by 10' and I had it all to myself. I did though have to share a toilet and shower with one other guy.



Here is the other side of the room and the sink and mirror area right before the bathroom door. As you can see I didn't have much to bring with me at 18 years old.



The said bathroom area that I had to share.



An old German village that I took my first drive off base through.





The office where we were when we weren't working and weren't supposed to be as opposed to where we hid when we were supposed to be working.



An organized tour that we had to take when we first arrived to the closest city named Trier. Yes, that is a monkey on some sort of musical instrument.



This building in Trier is actually a McDonalds...

It was the Busiest of Times... It was the best of times???

I guess it has been absolutely nuts for me and my family over the past month. I cannot recall ever being so busy in my life... And believe me that is saying a lot considering that I was assigned to a fighter squadron in the U.S. Air Force for almost 4 years.

Between preparing and then attending the CELTA course in Solihull 3 times a week I have also revamped the inside of my business and moved into a new home. The latter was probably the most stressful though as my former landlord decided he was going to be too cool for school.

I decided to take a house in Small Heath area of Birmingham back in the first week of April and of course after putting down a £400 deposit I attempted to call the landlord of the flat I was in immediately to give him my 30 day notice. As the apartment I was in was in good condition my intention was to try to find someone I knew who may be looking for a decent flat to move in. This way I wouldn't have had to pay the full 30 day notice until the 6th or 7th of May and the landlord would not lose out on any income.

So on the night of the 6th I rang his personal mobile number 2 times about 20 minutes apart. No answer.

Again the next evening I tried to call him again 2 times and again no answer. Even worse in my opinion was that I never had a returned call from the 4 times I tried to ring him.

So a couple day later I went down to the shop under the flat and asked if they had seen the landlord and if they could verify that I had the right number for him. They told me that I did but that they thought he was out of the country as he hadn't been by the shop to collect the rent from them when he was supposed to.

With that I kind of put the whole affair to the back of my head as I had so much other stuff to focus on. I tried calling him again on Monday the 13th of April and again no answer so I decided to send him a text message. I basically just wrote that I had found another place and that I would be moving out on the 1st of May. I still had no response but I did get a delivered message and again but it to the back of my mind.

I tried calling him again on the following Monday the 20th and he finally answers his phone. I tell him that I have been trying to contact him and that I will be moving out on the 1st of May. He took issue with that. He told me that he would take my 30 day notice from today (the 20th of April) and that if I find someone suitable to move in the flat that he would reimburse me the amount for whatever days I would be owed.

So I told the landlord that I didn't agree with him because I had in all earnest tried to contact him. At that time, after hanging up the phone with him I thought the easiest way out of this was to get someone willing to take the flat on the 1st of May or earlier.

When I got home I told my wife of the conversation and we both tried over the next two days to find a suitable individual. We found a couple people interested but come the evening of the 22nd we made a crucial decision. As we felt that the landlord was being unfair with us and our rent was due again on the next day (the 23rd) we decided that it was in our best interest to "do a runner."

We packed up all out things that night and moved out belongings that would not be needed for a week to a friends home and then with the other things and the kids we drove to my wife's sister's home. We cleaned the apartment to a good standard and left the key with the caretaker of the building.

Of course the landlord was not pleased when he came to realize this. He and I played phone tag for a few days and then had a conversation where he relayed to me what he thought he was owed. He had now changed his mind and decided that he would only take a payment for rent up to the 9th of May and not the 19th of May. I told him that I would never agree to that as I felt it was 100% his fault that he did not receive my notice. I called him 4 times on the 6th and 7th of April and he did not answer his phone nor did he return any of the 4 calls I made to him.

On top of that I felt aggravated that I was put into a position where I had to move in the middle of the night like a bunch of Carnies with my kids. I had been made to be uncomfortable and leave my home before I had desired to because of his unjust stance. And of course he lost 2 weeks rent I would have paid him because of his audacious stance.

Anyway we are in our new place and getting comfortable with that. The house we have moved into is an old 4 bedroom Victorian home. For the area of Birmingham I am living in it is in excellent condition. I really only have three complaints and they are bearable really.

1) The water pressure is very poor.
2) The parking is very difficult particularly at night. When I come home from my CELTA course on Mondays and Thursdays I will not find any parking nearby the house.
3) The bottom floor toilet is only accessible by... Going out the back door into the garden. But we of course do have a full bathroom on the middle floor of the house.

Almost There!

I just recieved a call from the Mac shop in the Bullring shopping centre and will hopefully have a working laptop this afternoon...

keyboards

I am still without my laptop and have to frequent internet cafes to actually get anything done on the net. To hell with using the net on a mobile... Work still needs to be done on that front...

I spoke with the Mac shop in the Bullring yesterday and they said all my parts are in and that the labor should commence immeadiately.

The main reason I hate having to go to internet cafes is that the damn keyboards drive me crazy. Sometimes you have an American keyboard but a UK computer so the computer over rides the American keyboard and other times you have a UK keyboard but an American pc...

I want my standard American keyboard and laptop back... It drives me nuts...

But on a side note at least the UK keyboard is not as bad as the French keyboard... You have to be deranged to like that non sense!!

My 10 Year Anniversary

Yup, 10 years ago today I landed at Rhein-Main Airbase on a military chartered civilian aircraft that departed from Atlanta. Rhein-Main was located on the south side of Frankfurt International Airport and has since closed and been swallowed and redeveloped by the International Airport. The only building I still recognize on a regular basis is the large old hangar that Lufthansa Technik now operate out of. I tend to always taxi right by it when I fly from Birmingham International to Frankfurt International.


I remember stepping off the large passenger plane and walking across the tarmac into the arrival terminal and having to show my military ID and orders to some guy before being able to go and get my luggage. In the luggage hall there were all kinds of signs talking about how your bags could be searched and that this item and that item were not permitted.

Typically when you arrive like this you are met by your prearranged sponsor who would either sign out a vehicle from motor pool to come and get you or drive their own personal vehicle.

As I was arriving at a time when the squadron I was assigned to was deployed to Aviano Airbase in Italy to bomb Serbia I had no one there to pick me up and I had to take this navy colored school bus from the terminal to Spangdahlem Airbase on my own accord.

I do not remember the exact details of how I figured out which shuttle to catch but I do remember it weaving in and out of Army installations throughout the Frankfurt area before hitting an open stretch of autobahn.

I remember being amazed by the scenery and landscape as we drove down the autobahn. The hills and villages are really unique sights compared to what you generally see when driving down American highways.

We eventually left the autobahn around a large town named Wittlich and took some really windy and narrow roads towards Spangdahlem Airbase.

About 2 and half hours after we left the arrival terminal we pulled up to the main gate of my new base and had our military IDs checked before proceeding to billeting AKA the base hotel.


I went inside the hotel and used a phone to call my shop to announce my arrival. They sent over 2 young airman like myself, both of whom I recognized from tech school and they drove me to the dorm manager to get me a set of keys for my new place.

Unfortunately the photos I have of this are all on my laptop at the Mac shop...

Computerless

My laptop is with the Mac people getting a new LCD screen and I am only able to use internet cafes for the time being...