Day 1

anticipation · fear · information over-flow · brain meltdown

Ah, beginnings, how sweet they are! New people, new knowledge. Everything is new. Exciting and slightly frigthening. Even though I have a general idea of how the course works,  I don't really know if and how I will be able to cope with the work-load and keep my motivation. I have no formal teaching experience and I have forgotten most of the „grammar“ I learned at school more than ten years ago.

There are twelve of us and every single one of seems to be nervous. As it is the very first time, many of us, including me, have arrived almost ridiculously early and there's not a lot to do besides staring at walls and waiting for the course tutors to arrive. Small-talk and chatting?  Nah,  I guess we are too anxious to be social.

When the tutor finally does arrive, everything does get a little bit easier – I never knew that ice-breakers could be so effective! After we've done a few of them, we feel relatively relaxed and to my surprise I've managed to learn everyone's names. Usually I am very bad with remembering names!

The group is then divided into two, everyone is given a one letter and one number code which will be our code for the whole course. Well, of course you can't do without any bureocracy, but as I am such a strange person and also a little bit of a geek, in my mind I yell out: I am not a number, I am a free man! Some of you will get it, most of you probably won't :)

And then it really begins! Information, information, then some more information and after that, just to change things a little  - more information. Then we have short break and then we get some more information. It's basically about everything – we discuss teaching techniques, we do some practical exercises, we are introduced to the main guidelines of the course. Suprisingly, no grammar at this point.

It's evening section of the first day that I could call interesting. Puttingit mildly, that is. What it really is, is exhaustion, brain melt-down and practical exercises which under normal circumstances would probably be quite easy. At 4 pm, after our brains have been bombarded with every type of information, I feel I have no level of English at all. I feel that the only thing I am capable at that point is to say I am potato. Despite the exhaustion we do manage to even do some grammar-related activites. Thank the heavens, we're in groups! Collectively we can even come up with some of the correct answers. (Well, actually we did quite good :))

Then it's finally over. What a day! Yet, I didn't feel uncomfortable or worried not even for a minute. Despite this massive load of information, I even managed to have some fun, get to know my fellow trainees and yes, of course  - get a step closer to the certificate I'm after.

In front of the building, after the formal part was over, we decided unanimously how lucky we were for not taking the intensive course!