Post 2: Our Jobs

Scott and I are full-swing into our jobs now so I figured a post about how we're bringing home the bacon might be interesting. As I mentioned in the first post, Scott and I were both successful in getting jobs within a few days of being here. Scott was doubly successful and decided to turn down his first offer with James Cook Languages in order to be a Program Manager at Charles University for their study abroad program. 

In his office

When asked if he would be interested in sharing a little about his job on the blog, Scott replied, "Yeah I don't really blog". Therefore he has surrendered his right to an entirely accurate description of his role at Charles University but from what I've heard so far he's essentially Anne Hathaway in the Devil Wears Prada except he's more useful and equally  stressed-out. I simply mean that Scott's daily tasks are all over the place and would require a laundry list to cover. A very interesting laundry list, but you might need to contact him directly for those stories. He even got into two tram wrecks and one car wreck in the same day. Suffice to say that if there's something that needs to be done organizationally, technically, or logistically, Scott is out there on the front line. They better be thankful for it or they'll have a tiny, angry boyfriend to deal with. Above is his picture from their website. It's adorable.

My job, while less running around, still requires more travel. I work for James Cook Languages (tl;dr, JCL), as I've said, but that doesn't mean that I work AT JCL. Technically I'm self -employed. So each day I'm at anywhere from one to five different offices teaching business professionals how to sound like business professionals when speaking English. So far it's been really great and the level of English ability here far outstrips the levels I've experienced before (*cough cough, China). So good in fact that I have one student who must have swallowed an SAT prep book because at times I'm left wondering if she's using words I actually don't know or if her accent is making them incomprehensible. I'm praying it's the latter.

My clients are all extremely interesting people that work for some really cool companies, though (Heineken, Pfizer, MetLife, Pilsner)
. More than half of them work in finance and banking, with half the remainder working for beer companies in one way or anther. In short, I get to spend my days talking about alcohol and money which are two topics I've always felt very passionate about. I'm teaching just over 20 lessons each week which is a pretty big amount, but with so much overlap in content and access to more resources that I've ever had with teaching before (*cough cough, China), it's so far pretty manageable. 

The only downside to my job is that my lessons are usually before or after my clients get off work, which has me up pretty early in the morning. Then again, I never have to make the bed since Scott's still in it when I leave, so what do I have to complain about, really?