Job Discussion Forums

[Boy Wonder]

Greece...sometime last cenury..a weary young Englishmen...tired after 24 hrs continuous travel arrives in small northern provincial town.It is late..it is dark...schoolowners meet him off bus and escort him to his home for the next 9 months.
A 3 storey buliding looms up...the side door is unlocked and 2 floors of cold hard stone steps in near darkness are negioated...
A classroom after another is passed..then a door marked 'Apotheki' is opened..(Greek for storeroom)...a room the size of a small shoe box is presented to him....it contains a sofa..not a sofabed but a sofa...a small trestle table on which stands an ancient 1970's baby belling caravan oven ,a bookcase and a rickety classroom chair.
They are the sole occupants of the room....
There is a toilet,sink and bath...in a room even smaller than a shoebox..to the side...and there is a cupboard.
The owners excuse themselves..it is late..I have work tomorrow and leave...Greek hospitality you see..it's legendary so they keep telling us..!!
The cupboard is opened..like old Mother Hubbards it is bare...rather like the faced cheek of the owners...
The puzzled and suprised young man finds no bedsheets..cutlery..cooking utensils...plates...pillows...anything.
He sleeps that night grateful for the winter clothes he bought with him....

The next 9 months progress at the speed of a warthog with one leg crawling up a very steep hill backwards....
....there is no TV or radio provided to while away the hours....and the school phone is rigged to only accept foriegn incoming calls...so that even if he buys a phonecard..he has to stand out in snowbound phonebooths.
The Englishmen...hurt by his employers lack of regard and respect for his living conditions..shrugs his shoulders ..tells himself it's only 9 months..and gets on with the business of his 28 hour a week teaching schedule.
Other English teachers who visit are appalled and disgusted and offer to put him up in their flats....
The school bulding is an eerie place at he dead of night ..the teacher confuses himself with being a security guard..sometimes the school cleaner bursts into his room in the early morning to mop his pitifully small floorspace...the owner sensing and also hearing about his unhappiness..decides to do something about it..he offers the teacher his wages in advance....and er...that's it....
The teacher stays..mainly because it's his 1st job in EFL and he feels he needs the reference...and partly because at Xmas and Easter he takes himself away to places like Turkey..and Italy.
In May he leaves...with no regrets...to meet up with his then girlfriend to tour the Greek Islands for a month and get the previous 9 months well and truly out of his system...end of story....

thanks to Anglo-Hellenic and the good people of a certain town in Northern Greece for this experience!!

I have shared a cucuracha ridden Madrid apartment with 7 colombian illegal immigrants and shared a room in France with a guy who had half beaten two German tourist to death in Benidorm..(he was sacked when the employers found out)...I have visited a teachers flat in another part of Greece..where 2 teachers slept on sofas in the living room and one slept on a bench in the kitchen...but are there any people out there who can truly claim the title of having experienced the worst provided accomodation in EFL...

A prize of a 2 week stay in a luxury QAC apartment in Qatar awaits the winner!!!!

[khmerhit]

Cant compete with that, boywonder, but I'll try--

a dark and mildewed windowless room at the centre of a block of flats in downtown phnom penh, walls half open to the neighbours whose comings and goings were visible but oddly distant. A clay water cistern in the corner, a metal folding table, a wooden bedframe, a w/c with no lights, a Vietnamese neigbour who locked himself in to ransack my belongings in my absence, and--the worst of it all, a Christmas ornament on the neighbour's wall that played Jingle Bells 24/7 at low volume.

khmer

P.S. things got much better after some nice Vietnamese women told me I was crazy to live there, and I left. BTW, in southeast asia, never rent on the top floor, unless the roof has a concrete buffer, and even then it can be very hot. Choose a flat in the middle.

[Roger]

My first Chinese private school employer housed me as follows for the first couple of months:
The ground floor looked impressive enough - the lobby of a three-star hotel. BUt, the accom was not a guestroom, far from it.
It was a room on the rooftop, converted from the staircase. It measured some 2.5 meters in length and maybe one meter and a half across: spacious enough for a narrow bed and for my rucksack on the floor.
The ceiling was 3 meters above. The room even had an aircon...
I had to take my showers at the far end of a corridor past rooms where staff lived; of course, the showers were communal.
I had no washing-machine, kitchen, bookshelf. Yet, my name-card read "Professor...Roger" (No less than that)!...
Twice in 6 weeks, a downpour at night forced me out of that dingy room as it got flooded!
But my boss improved his act very quickly: next I moved to a brand-new block of flats and lived in a two-room piece with a kitchen, a western-style bathroom, two balconies and a safe door, not to mention a waterproof ceiling! Still no washing-machine, though, and no aircon either!

[been_there]

In Nepal, I lived in a hut made of thatch and river rocks held together with a mixture of mud and cow poop. Every day the Didi would Lipnu* the floor to clean it.

Actually, the view was nice, the air was fresh and there was a river 10 meters away for bathing, washing clothes and dishes, and drinking.... Never mind. Boy Wonder wins.




*Lipnu: to smear a fresh coat of mud and (sacred) cow dung on the floor to cover up any dirt that has settled there.

[scot47]

Boywonder ?

What about the accommodation that awaits homeless and unemployed ex-EFL teachers in the UKofGB&NI ?

A park bench ?

[Boy Wonder]

Park Benches......Scot 47
Fresh air....surrounded by greenery and birds singing....the chance to swap stories about the good times with fellow down and outs...yesterdays news in the bins to read....decent security night and day....
it's a place that every unemployable washed up and spatout ex saudi EFL teacher would jump at inhabiting....
What is your accom like BTW Scot47...pray..do tell?

[scot47]

The accommodation I have in KSA is not bad. Certainly better than many of the hovels I have seen on the Offshore Islands where you are headed !

[Boy Wonder]

Not many hovels in the Home Counties....Scot47....and that's where I intend to return!
You may not live in a KSA hovel but if it's anything like Qatar then by God you sure will be surrounded by them.....unless you walk round with your eyes closed!!!!

[scot47]

I wish you well in the Home Counties, but I would no more want to live there than in other parts of that benighted land.

[Joachim]

In Semarang, Indonesia:

A one floor apartment, half outside, half inside. Hastily erected paper thin walls, a major cockroach and rat problem (especially during the rain), no window in my bedroom, a rock hard bed, cheap playwood wardrobe, no aircon (in an equatorial climate). Bathroom had no shower, rather a trough full of dirty, cold water and a squat toilet.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Avoid Studyworld in Semarang!

[Klamm]

Boy Wonder?

Are you from Green Bay WI, USA? There was a band there going by that name. Just a thought.

Did it inspire your name?

K.

[Boy Wonder]

Green Bay WI..in the US of A...
No mate....never erd of it....
I.. the 'tell it how it really is and don't give a monkeys who i upset in the process of berating the bad guys....'SUPERHERO'... of EFL 'Boy Wonder' hail from Cockneyworld.
I eat jellied eels by the bucketload......cheer on the 'hammers'...shout my opinions about politics loudly in the boozer....swear like a trooper....run a market stall selling dodgy DVD's in my spare time....drive a Mondeo...used to be a cabbie....and won't go south of the river ...(cesspit mate)....and think that Canvey Island is God's country...nuff said!

Klamm... I like your style mate...you're a DIAMOND GEEZER.

[gugelhupf]

Gawd bless yer, guv'nor! Proper gent n'all!

[Will.]

sounds like he is more Golden Wonder that boy wonder, and Green Lane Not Green Bay.

[Boy Wonder]

Green Line,mate..best bloomin bus service round London in the sixties!
Lovely Double Deckers!!