First Four Days in India
April 7 - 10, 2007
Day 1: April 7, 2007
When I finally arrive in Calcutta (about five hours later than expected),
I’m met outside the airport by a man from the TEFL International staff who
is rather disgruntled after waiting more than four hours due to my
cancelled flight. I’ve slept about four hours in the past two and a half
days so I'm not feeling particularly sympathetic--especially because I had
no way to contact him from Delhi to tell him of the rescheduling. While I
wipe sweat from my forehead and fend off a crush of taxi drivers and
baggage carriers, he retrieves the company’s silver Land Cruiser, its
seats still covered in dealership plastic. And then we take an indelible
drive through the crowded streets of Calcutta, a voyage that changed my
life in ways that will take a long time to describe - but that I will
eventually attempt to depict in future emails. Naked children bathing on
the sidewalk, cars, buses, bikes, and pedestrians battling for momentary
control of the road, and a riot of sounds and smells - mostly festering
shit or rotting garbage. In some general way the poverty I've witnessed,
and the landscape itself, reminds me of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.
Picture opportunities are endless but we’re never stuck in traffic long
enough for me to frame any images.
The driver leaves me in the lobby of Glen Tower and tells me in broken
English that someone will be along to help me in 5 or 10 minutes. The 10
minutes turns into 20 and then an hour so I try to stretch out on a black
vinyl sofa. But the random beep of a nearby air conditioner prevents me
from sleeping. Ninety minutes later, I put on my black high tops and
approach a guard behind a desk to ask for a bathroom. “First floor,” he
points and, unable to locate a staircase, I ride the elevator there.
“Another country without toilet paper” I mumble absently after I enter the
blindingly white, austere bathroom. But my main goal is to brush my
teeth—a task I must complete without drinking the local water. I reach
into my backpack for an almost empty bottle of mineral water which I pour
over my toothbrush as a janitor enters to clean the floor . Back on the
lobby couch, five more minutes pass before I notice a man sitting next to
me, sorting through a folded paper list of the trainees and trying to
determine what apartment I’ll be living in for the next four weeks. There
are two ‘Jo-els’ in your apartment,” he tells me without introducing
himself. We he opens his mouth again, I notice a shocking collection of
crooked, stained, or missing teeth. And before I have a chance to tell him
that my name is actually “Joel” and not “Jo-el” he dials his cellphone and
begins to converse in Bengali. He shouts to make himself heard and then
hands the phone to me. “My last name is Hanson” I clarify for the
English-speaking woman on the other end of the line who also doesn’t
bother to introduce herself. The most pressing problem resolved, my
unnamed guide stands up and motions for me to follow him. I hand him my
rolling suitcase and then hoist my heavy duffel bag, backpack, and
hammered dulcimer onto my shoulders and follow him over a quarter mile to
my apartment in Bay Tower.
When we reach my apartment on the 12th floor, I’m drenched in sweat. When
I enter, my roommate Victoria is standing in the white-tiled, white-walled
room as though she’s not sure what she’s supposed to be doing there. She
has long red hair and is dressed in a lacy but conservative white top
which she confesses she’s been wearing for the past couple of days because
some airline lost her baggage. “I’m glad you’re here,” she says shortly
after we’ve introduced ourselves. “I’ve been sleeping most of the day and
need someone to talk to.”
After the apartment caretaker departs, we take inventory of the barren and
untidy apartment. Spider webs line the cupboards and piles of dust are
collecting in the corners of the living room. The previous occupants, who
I deduce are from the States (from an address label found on an abandoned
cardboard box), in addition to never cleaning the place, were probably
diabetics or hard-core drug users based on the stash of unopened syringes
we find on top of a kitchen cupboard. The apartment has an electric tea
kettle, toaster, and refrigerator but no stove, oven, or hot plate for
cooking. There are three plates, three laughably tiny tea cups, a couple
of rusty forks and spoons and two cloudy, water-stained glasses.
Victoria and I make a quick list of essentials—towels, a shower curtain,
toilet paper, knives, bowls—and stroll over to Big Bazaar, a massive,
multi-floored shopping mall, to see what we can find. In my sleep-deprived
stupor, I hesitate at the entrance, take one look into the noisy, crowded
supermarket and confess to Victoria: “I’m not sure if I can do this.” But
we forge ahead anyway through the narrow aisles, jostled like sheep in a
pen, a plastic basket in my hands. The supermarket feels like one giant
chaotic auction house, amplified voices competing for our attention with
screeching offers of: “Fifty percent off” and “Buy one get one free!”
despite clearly marked signs advertising identical offers. My
claustrophobia flares as I struggle through the crowd, most of whom are
wearing traditional orange-colored India saris, basket raised over my
head, realizing in a panic that it’ll take us at least five minutes to
reach the market on the second floor. Victoria is standing less than three
feet in front of me yelling things like: “Do you need any soap?” and
finally I burst out laughing at the complete futility of trying to speak
over the din, which makes it easier to maintain my composure while we try
to locate what we’re looking for.
Day 2: April 8, 2007
At 4 pm, Victoria and I descend from our 12th-floor apartment and walk
past a forest of 30-story apartment buildings (that constitute the Hiland
Park apartment complex) over to Glen Tower for our initial orientation
meeting on the 8th floor. Erin, from Vancouver, Emma from Oxford, and
Christina, from Detroit are already waiting in the lobby. The air
conditioner isn’t functioning—or the power’s been cut again—so sweat
begins to crawl across our bodies. We introduce ourselves while we wait
for Aradhna, our teacher trainer, to arrive. The most amusing aspect of
our discussion: Erin’s refusal to work in any Middle Eastern country whose
government she doesn’t support. “Is there any government in the Middle
East you do support?” I ask her. “Maybe Jordan,” she replies. I’m
surprised at her naivete but I don’t want to spar over politics just yet.
So offer this: “But they’re a US ally in the Iraq war and are also part of
the US rendition program of torturing suspects” and then silently reflect:
“Is there a government anywhere that deserves our support?” Even in
so-called democracies, you’ll almost always find an oligarchy of
government officials out of step with the will of the people. The US is
perhaps the best example.
Aradhna is dressed in an ornate Indian dress and scarf that she keeps
tossing over her right shoulder like a long-haired blond rearranging her
hair behind her ear. She has shoulder-length black hair cut in a bob and
wise, entrancing eyes. She is kind and welcoming but I find her obvious
disorganization one part endearing and one part unsettling. She’s been
part of the Kolkata program for only 13 months and it shows. But is she
nervous on her first day of a new session or is TEFL International—the
umbrella organization—supplying her with partial or incorrect information?
Time will tell. But first impressions are everything to a student. An
important part of any teacher’s job is to convince her students,
especially on the first day of class, that she: 1) is organized 2) knows
her subject matter and 3) will be able to assist them in their language
learning. Aradhna fails on two of the three counts and I, like the most
skeptical student, begin to question her value as an instructor.
Initially, she is unsure of the meeting location and knocks on a random
tenant’s door. He answers and is surprised to see 10 people waiting
outside as though early arrivals at a party. Realizing her mistake, she
returns to the door of two fellow TEFL participants: a Bostonian named
Victor and Kendra, who’s from Kingston a small town in New Hampshire less
than five minutes from Victoria’s hometown of Hampstead. Aradhna rings the
bell and we’re greeted with a demented, off-key doorbell tone—like an ice
cream seller peddling his wares in hell—but no response. Aradhna appears
flustered so I rap loudly on the thin, wooden door and Victor opens it 20
seconds later. They’ve both been sleeping off jetlag and are surprised to
discover the meeting is at 4 pm and even more surprised to learn that it’s
in their apartment.
“It’s a little warm in here,” Victor motions us into the room, his voice
drowned out by the roar of two overhead fans blowing hot air around the
barren, white-walled room. We arrange ourselves in a semi-circle while
Aradhna opens two windows, turns off the fans, and positions her chair in
front of a TV—the only object in the room besides a floor-level mattress/bedframe
and a table. Her soft, rapid-fire Indian-accented syllables are lost in
the echoes of the room but we eventually adjust to her accent and the
apartment’s terrible acoustics.
The meeting has two principal objectives: familiarize us with the rules of
our apartment complex and TEFL program and respond to our initial
questions. No real surprises among the page-long list except that there is
a strict no drinking policy and no guests are allowed in our rooms without
prior permission of the administration. While explaining the rules,
Aradhna spices up the meeting with anecdotal tales of previous occupants:
one who acquired a horrible skin disease with hatched larvae swimming
freely underneath his skin, another who didn’t show up for class and was
found huddled in the center of his room, white as a ghost and shivering
from an advanced fever. “Maybe you shouldn’t tell us this,” I interrupt as
Aradhna pauses in the middle of a tale and a few of the others laugh.
As expected, previous classes have been peppered (seasoned?) with a fair
share of lost souls with drug habits or a potentially promiscuous woman
from Kazakhstan who would return at odd hours of the night with men she’d
just met during her frequent excursions on the town. Aradhna confesses
that she’s concerned about our safety: thus, we should avoid: 1) street
food for the first few weeks, 2) anything that is not cooked on site while
we watch, and 3) returning to the apartment late at night when our
conspicuous presence makes us ripe for street crime. “You’re completely
safe as long as you don’t go past Big Bazaar,” Aradhna assures us,
referring to a shopping mall that’s about 400 yards from our apartment. I
know that India is not particularly unsafe, but Aradhna’s opinions are
merely based on the frequent infractions of the rules that have occurred
during her short tenure here.
As she speaks, I turn to look at the faces of the trainees. Most of them
are inscrutable. That is, it’s difficult to discern whether their absent
looks are caused by jetlag, fear, a burgeoning sense of alienation or all
of the above. But most of these potential teachers are brand new, except
for Erin who completed a year contract in Taiwan before enrolling in the
program, and none of us are completely sure what lies ahead. Fear of the
unknown is natural. Nevertheless, I want to put my arm around each of them
and assure them they’ll all be fine even if being a teacher turns into
something more intricate and challenging than they expected. It always
does.
The meeting breaks up—or breaks down—with a series of personal questions
and whispering among the trainees. Once Aradhna dismisses us, I take a
moment to ask her about subjects as diverse as the price of fruit and
directions to the city. Autos (or tuk tuks as they’re called in Thailand)
are the cheapest way to go. It costs 10 rupees for two separate rides
(about 25 cents) Aradhna explains as she draws a map that describes
another small portion of Calcutta proper, the world outside our apartment
complex which I’m increasingly curious about but won’t be able to explore
until next Friday’s class lets out at 4:45 pm. Then, Aradhna confesses
that there’s a single metro line running through the center of the city
and a stop that’s reachable by taxi. But without a detailed map of the
city, which shows me where we’re located, these are just abstractions to
me. We’ll meet tomorrow at 9 am in front of Glen Tower for a short taxi
ride to our first training class.
From my bathroom window 12 floors above the city, I hear the sounds of
suburban Calcutta and think of Camus’ The Stranger, a book I finally read
in French with a Moroccan friend’s patient assistance. At the end of the
book, Mersault is saddened by the distant sounds of the world outside his
prison window, a painful reminder of his unalterable imprisonment. I
listen to car horns, the shouts of people, a bewitching tune of tablas and
Indian vocals—a city alive with activity—and feel an innocuous but similar
feeling of confinement, of potential pleasure deferred. Then, I’m reminded
of the apartment’s large, rectangular pool beckoning from 12 floors below
that we’re not allowed to use. For the next three and a half weeks, I will
live in a gated community isolated from the most enticing aspects of the
city—the startling poverty and beauty of its gritty street life—with a
time-consuming schedule the only obstacle preventing me from venturing out
into it. My camera rests impatiently in my backpack for the upcoming
weekend.
Day 3: April 9, 2007
Victoria and I meet the rest of the TEFL trainees at 9 am in front of Glen
Tower. The company minivan, which seats nine, must take the 12 of us in
two separate shifts. Victoria and I take the first ride, bobbing up and
down in the back seat like sacks of groceries as our driver weaves his way
through India’s legendarily chaotic traffic. The narrow, predominantly
unmarked roads were never designed for this volume of traffic so most
drivers create their own lanes while bicyclists and motor scooters weave
in between cars, rickshaws, and buses. But why is everyone in such a
hurry? Is it a sense of genuine urgency or claustrophobia from the crowded
roads that governs their decision-making? Bald-headed Rohit, who is from
Australia but living in Bangalore, carefully observes the traffic from the
front passenger seat and announces: “It took me six months to unlearn all
the driving laws I learned in Australia.” And after a pause: “But if you
can drive in India, you can drive anywhere.” Arandha, sitting next to him
offers more practical advice, “Try to pay attention so you’ll know the way
if you ever miss the bus and have to take a taxi.” But the driver makes
endless twists and turns, as though negotiating a giant labyrinth, and I
can only see clearly out the back window. For a large part of the
15-minute ride, the view is blocked by tuk tuks and small cars tailgating
dangerously behind us and blaring their horns, waiting for their chance to
venture out into oncoming traffic just to advance one car-length ahead of
their present position.
We stop short of a blue gate and a fading painted sign on concrete that
reads: TEFL International. We remove our shoes and place them on a metal
rack next to the front door, which prompts Rohit to joke: “The best place
to look for new shoes is outside a Japanese restaurant.” The
yellow-walled, blue-floored center is small but immaculate, except for
some water on the bathroom floor left over from a recent cleaning. We walk
past the bathroom and settle ourselves in the training room: a small area
with three long tables arranged in a C shape, a blackboard, four white
cube-like cupboards, a new air conditioner and spinning overhead fans.
Before class begins, we meet the program director Sanjib, who welcomes us
and then delivers some unexpected news about our future job prospects.
Instead of immediate and guaranteed job placement in India—the most
enticing aspect of the 21-week Cultural Extremes program I paid for,
Sanjib informs us of some short-term employment opportunities in
neighboring Thailand and then asks us what we intend to do after we finish
our training. He also informs us that beyond a simple four-week extension,
we cannot renew our tourist visa except by leaving the country, buying
another visa and returning to the country even though we were assured in a
recent email that it would be easy to extend our existing visas. Sanjib is
therefore surprised to learn that most of our visas expire in mid-August,
negating the opportunity to take the guaranteed four-month position in
India guaranteed in the program description. The existing positions in
Thailand begin 10 days after the TEFL class ends so we’ll have to make
decisions quickly, update our resumes and hand them off to Sanjib to
forward on our behalf when we should be devoting our energies to the
rigorous four-week course ahead of us. He then hands us over to our
trainer, Sangeeta, and spends part of the morning trying to locate
Victoria’s luggage which was lost somewhere between Philadelphia and
Frankfurt.
Sangeeta’s delivery is a little more severe than her co-worker Aradhna,
even when she’s cracking a joke. She clearly seeks to assure us of her
competence and demands our immediate respect. She acquires both within the
first 20-minute icebreaker lesson. We stand in a semi-circle and do a
memorization exercise that entails repeating the name, a word or two
associated with the name, and hometown of all 12 trainees (e.g. Kendra,
all-knowing, Boston). As we learn, an 18-year-old boy enters the classroom
with steaming cups of Indian tea, which he sets down in front of our desks
and then retreats to the teacher’s office. “You will receive two cups each
day,” Sangeeta explains. “But don’t ask for a third.” Is that a joke? None
of us can tell. Fortunately, the day’s lesson, which outlines some useful
communicative activities, are 90 percent familiar to me so I have time
left over to think about my suddenly uncertain job future in India. The
problem, as I see it, stems from one central area: miscommunication. I
signed up for the TEFL class and placement program through a company
called Cultural Extremes and communicated exclusively with a woman named
Nancy while others dealt exclusively with TEFL International and Sanjib.
These programs offer different packages and obviously don’t communicate
very well with each other.
As we leave the class, a bag dropped off by Lufthansa is waiting for
Victoria. Unfortunately, it bears no resemblance to her well-marked
suitcase the airline lost five days earlier. She gives Sanjib as much
flight information as she can remember and he promises to continue
assisting her. But it’s obvious that dealing with the stress of taking a
new course in a new country while fighting with an indifferent airline
over her missing essentials is tearing at her affable, even-keeled
demeanor. When I finally have a chance to speak to Sanjib, he listens to
my complaints but offers no apology, assuming that I’ve somehow
misunderstood the program offerings. So in the course of five minutes, I
abandon my initial expectations and listen carefully as he gives me three
immediate options: 1) take a 45-day summer camp job in Thailand teaching
5-12 year olds and then return to India at the end of June for a longer
position somewhere in the country, 2) take a five-month position in
Thailand that also begins on May 14, or 3) take a three-month position in
India ending in mid-August that he hasn’t found for me yet. I want to
remain in India, where the salary is generally poor, but my funds are
getting low so I may have to accept one of the jobs in Thailand, where the
pay is considerably higher, but then pay for a flight and another visa
should I choose to return to India. I’ll have to make a decision about one
of them in the next 48 hours.
Emma, Erin, and Pamela help Victoria call the airline and search for new
clothes in Big Bazaar while I return to my apartment to begin the night’s
homework. Victoria finally returns with a few plastic bags of clothes and
a sour look on her face. She then bursts into tears while explaining her
concerns about money and her uncertain future in India. Beyond a clichéd
but true platitude that things will eventually work themselves out, I
can’t think of anything to say. “Do you need a hug?” I finally ask and she
accepts. I do my best to calm her down and she retreats to the kitchen to
make tea. I assure her that we’ll all in similar positions of uncertainty.
But how can she concentrate on class when her irreplaceable belongings
remain lost in the airline ether? Below are my responses to the first
night’s homework, written in our TEFL International training portfolio.
Language Learner’s Autobiography
1) What language learning experience have you had and how successful
have they been? What are your criteria for judging success?
Over
the past 15-20 years, I’ve made sporadic efforts to acquire and master
French, first in high school and college courses and then by taking a
class at the Institute Francais in Casablanca a few years ago. The
classes were many years apart, but the methods were disappointingly the
same: the teacher typically dominated the language production process
and the students primarily listened and took notes. A majority of the
question/answer process was teacher to student instead of student to
student. While learning was often contextual (e.g. this is what you say
when you’re at the post office and need to mail a letter) I never felt I
was given the proper tools to learn the language (i.e. question and
answer making through interactive classroom activities) nor materials to
self-teach when out of the classroom (i.e. surveys, flashcards,
information gaps, etc). Increased ability to spontaneously produce the
language and increased confidence are my criteria of a successful class.
2)
What can be learned about effective and ineffective teaching from your
autobiography?
I
wasn’t able to differentiate between effective and ineffective teaching
methods until taking the IF course in 2004 while teaching classes of my
own at the nearby American Language Center. I just felt frustrated by my
slow progress in French. Then, I discovered the communicative approach
to teaching and began to realize what I’d been missing. No student wants
to pay money to listen to a native—or fluent—speaker lecture us or tell
amusing anecdotes in the language we’re trying to learn. We want to
develop skills and confidence ourselves through a variety of activities
that keep us creatively and emotionally interested and leave us excited
to practice the language outside of class.
3)
How does your experience as a language learner influence you as a
language teacher?
Essentially, I teach the way that I learn best which is primarily to
emphasize in-class speaking and listening through pair work and group
work activities. My philosophy is that students should learn their
second language in a similar manner to how they learned their first: by
listening, practicing, and performing in an enjoyable and safe
environment. When a lesson goes poorly, my first reaction is to look
inward and self-evaluate. I try to assess what I might have done
differently or seek out other veteran teachers for advice and input. And
sometimes, the things I’ve vowed to avoid—too much teacher talk,
inadequate modeling—are responsible. Thus, I’ve derived some value from
my dissatisfying experiences as a language learner because I feel
they’ve made me a more effective instructor.
Foreign Language Journal
Sangeeta attempted to teach us some basic introductory conversation in
Setswana. She modeled a two-person dialog by 1) showing us visual aids
for each part of the conversation 2) performing both roles several times
3) then turning to the trainees to respond to her questions or supply
the correct question. She then wrote the dialog on the board (with
trainee assistance), put us into two lines (one stationary and the other
moving one partner to the right at her command) and gave us time to
practice with 4-5 different partners.
I was able to respond to short question and answer repetition but failed
to remember and use the entire conversation. I found it a bit stressful
because I needed to hear the conversational model repeated a few more
times and I also wanted to alter the approach (see The Process). I
participated actively but had trouble reading the board, remembering the
proper pronunciation, and hearing my partner. Other students coped by
moving closer together and trying to get as much practice in before
moving to the next partner.
Direct Teaching: The Process
What are your reactions to the direct-teaching style? Was the language
appropriate and learnable in the time available? How did you try to
acquire/learn the language modeled? Were you successful? How might you
try to improve your “learning strategies”?
The direct-teaching style is an effective method of language
acquisition. But our particular lesson of learning basic introductory
questions in Setswana seemed more geared toward complete beginners and
might need some modification if applied to higher levels.
I didn’t feel the language was learnable in the allotted time but feel
certain that Sangeeta partially intended for us to experience the
anxiety students feel when they first encounter a new language. In order
to complete the task, I eventually concentrated on memorizing a couple
lines of dialog before moving on to additional lines. Having used this
method in my own classes, I would have given each student a copy of the
dialog (so we didn’t have to rely on the blackboard, which was difficult
to read), assigned each row one role only and limited each student’s
lines to 3-4, instead of 6-8. I also would have instructed the students
to read each line silently, make eye contact with h/her partner before
delivering it. This greatly increases the memorization process and
encourages a more natural use of the language.
The Language
What difficult sounds are there [in Setswana], which do not appear in
your own first language? Is there any difference in the rhythm, stress
or intonation? What grammatical features have you noticed? What is the
writing system like?
R sounds following S sounds are difficult for an native English speaker
to pronounce. Questions changed based on whether one was addressing a
male or female. The grammar seems to rely on one simple present tense to
convey both present and future tenses in English. Sentence structure is
the exact opposite of English grammar. For example, the question word
always comes at the end of the sentence instead of the beginning (e.g.
“You go where?” instead of “Where are you going?” I found that sentence
intonation was more musical than English intonation. The writing we saw
on the board, although using the same English alphabet, is pronounced
differently—which also made the acquisition process more difficult.
Day
4: April 10, 2007
Twenty-four hours later, my job crisis has been solved with an employment
offer that fell into my lap while talking to a fellow trainee named
Alminar. As of May 14, I will be a teacher trainer for TEFL
International—like Arandha and Sangeeta—in the seaside town of Cochin,
located on the southwestern coast of India, the next natural step in my
evolving teaching career. All that’s left to do is negotiate my salary and
living conditions.
After three days as roommates, Victoria and I feel like old friends. But
our obvious ease with one another has been misconstrued by a couple of the
other trainees as signs of a budding romance. And, as Victoria pointed
out, I’ve inadvertently fueled the rumors with a few random responses to
in-class activities. During the first, Victoria and I were paired up and
had to write a commercial jingle with one of two objects in front of us: a
toy car or a plastic box of thumbtacks. We opted for the second. V’s job
was to sing the line “Thumbtacks” while I supplied a rhyme like: “they’ll
hurt you, that’s a fact, Jack.” Time was limited so we wrote down whatever
we could think and, for some reason, “Thumbtacks: a great way to get your
wife back,” popped into my head. When it came time to sing the line, I got
down on one knee if front of Victoria as though offering her thumbtacks
and relationship reconciliation in the same gesture.
For the second activity, I was paired up with Pamela and we were asked to
write three sentences about what we did last weekend. Pamela began with:
“I packed my bags.” I responded with: “I left my wife,” and Pamela,
laughing, finished with: “I met someone new”—all three lines written in my
easily recognizable script. Sangeeta collected the papers, randomly
redistributed them, and handed our sentences to Victoria and Sheila. The
point of the exercise was to give a potential student something to talk
about in the past tense that the teacher would exploit with follow-up
questions. But Sheila was far more interested in the implications of my
sentences: “Did Joel leave his wife?” she asked conspiratorially to
Victoria, who laughed and responded: “Sheila, Joel’s never been married.”
Now Sanjib and Alminar have decided to send Victoria down to Kochi to work
with children in a school near the TEFL International center where I’ll be
training non-native speakers in the fine art of communicative teaching.
Was this decision made in light of Victoria’s obvious talents teaching
children or as a response to the perceived rumors of a relationship
between us? Who cares? We both agree it will be nice to have an old friend
in a new city.
I have tried to be a stabilizing force in this predominantly young group
of friendly but volatile personalities. Due to my extensive teaching
experience, I expected to be assisting fellow trainees with some of the
more difficult aspects of teaching: developing ideas, lesson plans,
improving classroom performance and self-confidence. But I’ve been dealing
far more with the personal problems of teachers adjusting to life in a new
country. Each day a new personal crisis emerges and the other teachers
respond like family to help resolve it.
This time, it’s Erin’s turn. Like me, she also mistakenly thought TEFL
International would guarantee her a four-month position after the program
ended. But unlike me, she is unable to abandon her original expectations
and thus can’t begin to choose between teaching positions that will leave
her unemployed for the month of May or September, depending on where she’s
placed, and begins to lash out at Sanjib for misleading her. I cringe as
she tries to repress her tears, disparages the country and Indian men in
particular for not listening to her, and then she storms out of Sanjib’s
office. I mitigate the impasse by trying to explain to both people how
they might have misunderstood the other. I agree with Sanjib that Erin is
in no condition to decide anything at the moment. But I also gently remind
him that the information on the company’s website is misleading if two of
us have misinterpreted it. “Erin just has to accept her new
circumstances,” I tell him “but none of us should be preoccupied with job
prospects when we should be concentrating on the class.” Sanjib listens to
me with a face that is impassive and non-committal and I wonder: can he
empathize with Erin’s situation or does he think all of us are being
picky, petulant children? But I agree to communicate Sanjib’s message to
Erin which is essentially: he’s not trying to push her into a job or get
rid of her. And he’s sincere in his offer to help her find a job that
suits her needs.
During our ride back to the Hiland Park apartments, Erin’s roommate Emma
offers to treat her to ice cream at the Big Bizaar. As we walk to the food
court area on the second floor, we agree that Sanjib needs to work on his
salesmanship. Erin really needs an apology from him for the
miscommunication but I tell that she’s unlikely to get one. More
importantly, I remind her that she needs to abandon her original
expectations because they’re not going to be fulfilled. But “it’s only the
second day of class,” I say. “Sanjib isn’t trying to force you into
anything and there will be other options in the next three weeks.” She
listens to this and responds: “I don’t believe that and I don’t trust
him.” The only thing I don’t tell her is perhaps the most important
message about how to deal with future adversity: she must change her
negative, confrontational attitude or she’ll continue to suffer needlessly
while continuing to alienate those around her. And, on this point, I do
speak from experience.
As we talk Emma reminds us of something she heard her other roommate
Christina say about her encounters with the higher ups at TEFL
International: “Do you ever get the idea that you’re not being listened to
at all?” I’ve had that feeling, too. But I remain silent, deciding that
it’s unfair to judge based on a couple encounters with Sanjib. Instead I
offer this: “I haven’t been here long enough to know one way or the other.
But my guess is that I’m simply ignorant of the country’s cultural code
surrounding personal interactions.” I’ve learned this much, though: when
Indians don’t want to say no, they bobble their heads ambiguously up and
down and sideways which is usually a polite way of saying that you’ve
asked the wrong question. Part of my Indian assimilation process will
involve learning enough about the people here to know which questions are
indeed permissible.
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