Last Saturday all the Lattitude volunteers leaving in the next few months met up for a briefing day in Reading Town Hall. Luckily for me it's a stone's throw away, but others had taken planes and driven from 4am in the morning to get there on time! It was great to meet all the other volunteers going to Fiji and getting to know each other a bit (though I'm sure the 20 hour journey will be a much better opportunity) as well as talking to the returned volunteers about potential tropical diseases and how much they're missing their placements now!
James (India), Lizzie (Ecuador), Merry (Ecuador), Me! (Fiji) and Pete (Vanuatu) touring!
After the briefing day, the next week was spent in London at a teacher training course learning.... how to teach! As we were in a TEFL school, most of the teaching was centred around teaching english with lessons on how to teach grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation but we were also taught a lot about general teaching techniques such as lesson planning and making lessons interesting. Something that should've been obvious, but that I didn't realise, was that we'd be doing some teaching practice on the course ourselves and lucky(?) for me, I was going on the first day! Approaching a circle of expectant students on the first day of the course was a bit like diving into the deep end but after a lot of support from the teachers and newly made friends (also fellow teachers), I think I did an alright job! The course was incredible fun and I learnt so much, definitely glad I could go.
Mornings were spent in the classroom learning and taking notes, afternoons were spent either lesson planning on the balcony or teaching foreign students and the evenings were spent sitting in the park, chatting and watching the boats bob along the lake in Regents Park. There were eleven of us on the course which was a great number. We all got to know each other pretty well and we all had a lot of fun learning together! Definitely feels like the start of my gap year hanging out with lots of people in the same situation and I had a fantastic time with everyone :) If that's just a week, I'm looking forward to the next 3 months!!
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