Friends with (linguistic) benefits

"What's happening to your Portuguese?!?" she said, ...and it wasn't a mere enquiry. In fact, it was the opposite of a compliment.

When I still lived in Spain, Teresa, my Portuguese teacher and friend, and I used to see each other every week. Since my move back to Germany nine months ago, we've been catching up on the phone once or twice a month. And, of late, she was clearly less than impressed with the deterioration of my fluency.

Something had to be done. I'd put in too much effort (and money!) to let it all go to waste. I love, love, love Portuguese! Plus, I wanted to maintain my friendship with Teresa without having to switch to Spanish or English when it came to expressing more complex issues.

So, I posted a message in a facebook group called "Portugueses em Munique," offering German and/or English in exchange for Portuguese. I made it clear that I was looking for someone who lived close to me, either in my town or an adjacent one.

I had quite a few responses, mostly from people who actually lived in Munich, which to be honest, is a bit far to meet up for a coffee on a regular basis. I just don't have the time for a 4-hour round trip twice a week. I very nearly agreed to get together with one woman who lived in an inconvenient-to-get-to part of Munich...until she revealed that she had a 12-month-old baby. No way(!) am I schlepping all the way out there and back to listen to a bawling baby and endure monologus interruptus about the trials and tribulations of motherhood in a foreign country. Meh...!

I also had a response from a guy who lived very close by, but who then turned out to be a young teenager. Sorry, sweetie, I was actually looking for people with friend potential... although I could probably have done with someone who could drill me on smartphone shortcuts.

And then there was Ana. Who - I could hardly believe my luck! - lived just around the corner from me! Actually, Ana had been the first one to respond, but we didn't pick up the conversation until the next day.

We met in a restaurant down the street a couple of days later, and we clicked right away. Ana told me that she worked as a secretary at a local engineering firm that was owned by a Portuguese company. She had only been in Germany for a couple of months and wasn't fluent in German yet. Although she had studied German at university a decade ago, she hadn't really been using the language and had forgotten most of it.

For just over a month now, we've been meeting up about twice a week, exploring the nearby towns and villages and indulging in far too much ice cream. We are both delighted to finally have made a local friend.

And I am also delighted to report that my last conversation with Teresa was something resembling A PROPER CONVERSATION :)

At The Precipice of Change

A quick update, since I'm in the middle of packing... and still pootling about in my PJs after midday. Scandalous! I'm off to Spain tomorrow for two weeks and a bit, catching up with my friends and having a social life again - HURRAAAAH! -  punctuated by boring things like closing my bank accounts and working.

I'll be staying with three different friends which, so I hope, will give my domestic Spanish a bit of a boost. Knowing a language well, I feel, is very much about competently navigating as many different registers as possible, and since I've never actually shared my day-to-day life and living space with any Spanish speakers, I still have some considerable gaps.

The other piece of news is that, a day and a half after I get back from Spain, I'll be starting my CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) course. After an involved application process, I was accepted onto the course, and for me it will be the start of a new era.

Frankly, I'm anxious about how I'm going to manage it all, keeping up with my work commitments (I've got a brand new corporate client to please on top of servicing the existing ones) AND taking two days out of every week to attend the course, write lesson plans, complete assignments, do the reading and other prep work. But there's no point fretting... I've made the decision and now I've got to follow through. And as daunting as it seems right now, I'm actually very excited about learning new things, meeting new people and expanding my skills base.

But as for now... that suitcase won't fill itself, I fear...!

Time For A New Direction?

I'm not 100% sure yet that I really want to do this. It'll be a lot of money and a lot of work. Not to mention having to get up early. There's still time to change my mind. But I had to kick off the process - there are deadlines involved.

For years now, I've been thinking about turning my obsession with languages from a hobby into a "proper" profession. There are two obvious routes: translation and teaching. Translation would mean more hours glued to the screen, poring over minutiae, and frankly, I already get enough of this with my current work. What I need is more people interaction, to get away from the computer. Therefore, teaching is the obvious answer.

Teach what? German? It's my native language, and with the current refugee crisis, demand for German teachers seems to be outstripping supply. But no. German grammar reduces grown men to tears, and I'm convinced that modal particles made Mark Twain chew the carpet at least a couple of times during his illustrious lifetime. Also, when I briefly checked out what it would take to become a German teacher, it seemed to be a 2-year process, and that really is beyond the pale for me.

Spanish? I would love to. People go to Spanish classes because they want to, not because they have to, and they're just the kind of people I would want to spend my time with. However, I feel my Spanish simply doesn't cut the mustard.

English it is then. I researched courses a while back, and it seems that the CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) is the most widely recognised, and there is a course provider in Munich. Trouble is, they only run one part-time course a year, from March to July, and they only take 12 students. (Full-time is not my preferred option, since I don't want to tell my clients that I won't be doing any work for them at all for over a month.)

So, I completed their 3-page application form, scanned in educational certificates going back to the first trimester of my mother's pregnancy, wrote a cheery essay and just about scraped the January 7th submission deadline.

They responded on Monday (8th). At least they don't hang about! They sent me a 9-page English language awareness test, which foxed the hell out of me. Here's a couple of sample questions to give you an idea:


Look at the sentences below. In each set, which is the odd one out? Give a reason for your answer.

a. An avalanche has engulfed a small Swiss village.
b. The Prime Minister has announced his retirement from politics.
c. She has lived here all her life.
d.The Dow Jones has fallen twenty points in the last half hour.

Which of the items in each group is different from the others and in what way?

 Cottage, house, flat, farm

I completed it and returned it to them, red-eyed, at 2:30am.

I'm booked in for an interview & selection workshop this coming Tuesday morning. They will be running these all week, so I guess the odds of actually being accepted for the course are pretty small. Let's see what comes of it. I'm kind of looking forward to the event.