Job Discussion Forums

[hburns]

I'm three weeks from having my CELTA (am typing this in-between preparing for tomorrow's lesson).

I want to get to a small-to-medium sized city in Russia or Uzbek/Kazakh/Kyrgyz-stan. My goal is to spend one year there learning Russian, plain and simple.

From reading this forum, I have the sense that I'm probably not shrewd enough to avoid getting swindled and cheated. I've accepted that as being unavoidable. If I could earn enough to pay for the CELTA fees, and speak some more Russian, and have some interesting stories, I'd feel fine about it. (I don't want to cheat other EFL teachers by being a hapless scab, though -- I know that's unethical, and if that's what would be happening if I were to take a job, let me know)

With all that in mind, do you have any advice about picking specific cities to concentrate my job-search efforts on? Or McSchool chains? I've read that there are too many expats in Moscow to learn the language.

My plan is to get an international calling plan, and start cold-calling the local schools listed on Yandex and Rambler. Is this insane? Will they have any idea how to help me get a visa? It amazes me how many small schools don't employ any native speakers.

And lastly, anyone know a good place to get the visa's requred HIV test in the SF Bay area? (I hope that's a real requirement, and I didn't find a bogus visa application form).

Thanks for any information.

hburns

[yakov1]

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