Thursday, November 19, 2009

Moving On

There aren't that many similarities between the lives of an English teacher abroad and a Premier League superstar. There's the huge gulf in salary for starters (when my Latvian business class found out what I was earning in Riga one laughed and another offered to pay for my dinner), and even the consolation of mild celebrity is, in Europe at least, nowadays confined to grim, one-school-town Wearside-on-the-Volgas.

In fact, about the only thing European TEFLers do have in common with the likes of Craig Bellamy - aside from a proclivity for faking illness to get out of extra work - is the excitement of summer and winter transfer windows (almost all jobs on the continent run from early autumn to the middle of the year, with a smaller intake of teachers straight after Christmas). Hard on the heels of this year's last-minute Bosman move to the Baltics, it's beginning to look like my next stop will be Odessa, Black Sea beaches, Potemkin Stairs and all.

UPDATE: There aren't that many similarities between the lives of an English teacher abroad and a Premier League superstar? Obafemi Martins's bank manager might just disagree.

3 comments:

girlx said...

Odessa tourist maps ad: 'Escort services for marriage minded men'. Seriously.

Michael said...

That's me in one!

Myeral said...

Ey! Don't you dare have a go at the lovely Craig.

Odessa is a very evocative destination - sure to be a shithole. Good luck.