For some time just before the world was turned upside down with 9/11, I worked as an English teacher in... London. Soho to be exact, next door to the Hari Krishna place. The school was as seedy as its location, run by Janis, a boozy coke-head 50-something, who thought she was a young Marianne Faithfull, with her 2 Polish dogsbodies-stroke-lovers, Andrzejek and Bogumierz (I've changed names to protect identities and help with pronunciation). Andrz and Bog (for short) were both wiry and tall, existing on a diet of dill pickles, tobacco and breathing in the fumes of Janis's Chanel no 5.
We teachers were paid in raffle tickets and peanuts, the building where we worked was shabby and nicotine stained. The carpets had huge holes in them, conveniently placed on landings near staircases and we were forever running out of students' chairs so sometimes students had to sit on the floor or on tables. Everything about this establishment was wrong, but I enjoyed my time there, especially the relationship I built up with many of the students. They came from far and wide: from Colombia to Inner Mongolia, from Burma to Panama, we had almost every conceivable nationality.
The Brazilians were wonderful, often from wealthy backgrounds armed with a desire imposed on them by their parents to learn English. Except one, Raquel. She was and remains to this day an oddity and an enigma. Janis, I and the other teachers used to play guess how old we thought Raquel was, anywhere between 25 and 50 was the conclusion we always came to. I'd try and suss her out in class, asking if she'd ever seen Astrud Gilberto live in her heyday of 1964 or if she could do the Charlston. She never gave anything away. Her skin was as smooth as a baby's - indeed she looked like a baby, a grotesque one. Her cheeks were the size of apples. This may sound very bitchy but I don't believe she was born that way, I think she'd had rejuvenating cosmetic surgery which had gone horribly too far. She also had ample boobs - the baby face and huge breasts forming a nightmarish oxymoron.
Raquel liked to criticise our teaching, catch us out on fine grammatical points. She was pretty sharp, but never caught me out I'm proud to say. Her accent wasn't too good though. We had an argument over "football" one day. I corrected her when she said "futchi-bOL", she then said "futchi-bOL" again, insisting that was how it was pronounced in Brazil. Yes, it may be but not here where the game was invented (was it?). So, we went back and forth with our version of the word "football" until I gave up and let her say "futchi-bOL" for the rest of the class. She was in direct contrast to a Brazilian nun I had, but she presented problems too as I had to go over my lesson plans with a fine tooth comb to make sure there were no swearwords or vulgarities in them.
Yes, I met some wonderful people, and if it were to pay better, I would do it again.
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