Will we? Won't we?

We had a lot of things to consider when we were trying to decide if we could go to China or not. The first hurdle was attending an information evening to see if the courses advertised would be any good or not.

Peter and I were very excited driving home that Monday night. It would be a huge adventure. This would be something different. What a blast! What a change! We could go together, something just for ourselves. After all, the past forty years were spent bringing up our family and looking after everyone else.

We’d just attended a two hour information evening about TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language). The speaker, Lesley, was from one of the accredited organizations that would train us. Once we gained our TESOL qualifications, we could apply for vacancies. She sat there, giving us all this fantastic sounding information. Lesley was a very interesting woman, about 60 years old with a petite figure, red curly hair, and dressed in a snazzy denim pants suit with rhinestone patterns all over. She was a psychologist who’d worked in Asia and got into teaching English because of her non-English speaking staff. She gradually moved into the teaching area and was now in charge of training in Australia and New Zealand. She sat on the corner of the desk, legs swinging, her gravelly voice enthused about teaching English overseas.

‘It’s a piece of cake,’ she said. ‘If you can speak English you can teach it, or you’ll be able to once you’ve done our course. There are thousands of jobs available. You can make some money and have the experience of a lifetime.’

Peter came with me to make sure that this information evening wasn’t a scam. ‘Let’s face it, there are plenty of people out there ready to take any ready cash you’ve got, or any cash you haven’t got for that matter,’ he said to me. ‘Let’s just check it out. It sounds a bit suspicious to me.’

I didn’t mind. After all, if it turned out to be worthwhile, this would be something we could both do, so I wanted him to come along and see for himself.

However, it seemed legitimate and so exciting. For me, it would be an escape from the barrel. I would take the bull by the horns and bloody well go, come hell or high water.

If you are in your ‘middle age years’ you are probably like me. The first twenty years basically was a stable upbringing and teen years. The second twenty years were spent getting married, having five fabulous children, doing everything for them, and working part time. The third twenty years were spent in the barrel on varying levels, working part or full time, but often down in the muck and mire. By the time I was in my fifties the family was old enough for us to leave New Zealand and head to Australia to do something different. The thing is that they followed us. That wasn’t such a big problem, but we hadn’t really done anything ‘exciting and different’.

More to come....check out more at www.englishstoriesforfun.com