TEFLers Guide Mexico City

TEFLers Guide Mexico City
Gary Denness (Author)

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Mexico City

At the back end of May in 2005 I packed my bags and boarded a plane for Mexico City. I was on my way to a new life in warmer climes, determined to make a living teaching English to adult learners. I had no prior experience in education, beyond training new staff in service stations in the UK – I had worked in retail, mostly retail management, for pretty much my entire adult life. This would all be very new to me, but then that is the point of setting off to make a new home abroad. To experience new things.

I had in fact journeyed to Mexico before, with similar intent, just a couple of years earlier. That had turned out to be nothing more than a sabbatical, as I travelled around the country armed with a travel guide and backpack, and went home again.
This time I was far more committed. I sold almost all my earthly belongings on internet auction sites and car boot sales, and had a Mexican lady of prior acquaintance waiting for me at the other end of the plane ride. She would become my wife, three and a bit years later.

After nearly six happy years, I am planning my return home, with my better half, to make a new life in the UK. A new adventure. But before I leave I want to share what I have learned during my fairly lengthy stay in Mexico City. I have often been asked, in emails, blog comments, in person or even occasionally by phone, how exactly one goes about packing up and moving sticks to another country, and how exactly one teaches English.
From the beginning of my Mexican adventure I kept a blog, updating it regularly with my discoveries, opinions, photographs and experiences. I have combed through the more than two thousand entries I have made and selected the most relevant posts to put together as the basis of this book. I have edited, abridged, expanded on and made many corrections to these posts, and put them into an A to Z format.

That’s not to say that this is really an A to Z dummies guide sort of a book. There are far too many variables involved – everyone’s experience differs to differing degrees. I for example, made my home in the deep south of the city, in an area where more crime occurs than in the more popular central parts of the city where most TEFLers make their home.

Not that my neighborhood is terribly bad, per se. It’s not. But I have perhaps seen more of the dark side of the city than most TEFLers, and some of my posts reflect this. I do want to make clear now, at the beginning, that the ratio of negative posts to good posts in this book is a distortion on what I have experienced here. They are relevant, but for two simple reasons they feature more heavily in this book than they did in my life, or on my blog.
Firstly, the negative stories often tend to be more dramatic, they encourage lengthy prose and analysis and therefore make good candidates for inclusion. Secondly, if I wrote a book solely filled with ‘be careful, you might very well have fun if you go to such and such a place’ entries – well, it would be a bit boring. And uninformative. The fact is, I’ve always felt physically safer here than in the UK, and I would urge anyone who is thinking of making the trip to pay little heed to the doom mongering media outlets back home, and just go for it.

Back to the book though. It’s not a dummies guide. Nor is it a travel guide, though many of the entries might suggest otherwise. It’s not a TEFL course either, though I include plenty of material of that sort. It is what it is. The adventures and experiences of a TEFLer, told as it happened, over roughly six years. I am perhaps selling a lifestyle. For those who would like to have a similar adventure, there’s plenty of information to get them on the right track. There are plenty of stories to offer a taste of what to expect. There’s plenty of material to provide an insight into the English teaching industry. And there’s lots about the great metropolis of Mexico City itself.

• Rank: #148723 in eBooks
• Published on: 2010-12-08
• Released on: 2010-12-08
• Format: Kindle eBook
• Number of items: 1