News from our grads
Andrew in Argentina
Where do I start? I arrived in Buenos Aires after 5 months backpacking
in SE Asia and Central America. A bit of a (good) culture shock to suddenly
have a lot of things that had been lacking in my life (being able to
put toilet paper down the toilet, good coffee...) The first 2 weeks here
Michelle (my friend) and I did an intensive Spanish course which definitely
cleaned up the atrocious traveller’s Spanish that I had put
together in Central America.
With our now slightly-improved Spanish, it was time to start finding a place to live (a guesthouse, while cheap at AU$10 per room per night, wasn’t really the ideal place for me to lesson plan and Michelle to do her PhD). Nonetheless, there are some teachers living in hostels/guesthouses as it’s the easiest and cheapest place to live. After looking at only three places we found a great, big, 2-bedroom, furnished, 70s apartment for AR$1350 (AU$572) per month. Expensive? Yes, but for Buenos Aires it’s pretty much on par with what foreigners can usually get.
Our apartment is a lot better than what we’d get for the same
price in Sydney/Melbourne/London etc, with floorboards, an old record
player, a balcony (complete with a lady
across from us who spends her Sundays learning tango and drinking
mate, ¡Qué Argentino!), 2 bathrooms (complete
with a bidet!), laundry, rooftop balcony (think ‘Secret Life Of
Us’... we just need to get some Parilla-Argentine steak-cooking
up there!).
San Telmo is also a great area: we are walking distance from the subway, hundreds
of buses, the centre of town is only a 20-minute walk away, and of course, the
Ecological Reserve (for those fitness fanaticos)
Work…It didn’t take long to find work at all. Armed with a list of all the language schools in Buenos Aires (6 pages long), I walked around and handed out my resume to whoever I could. March was the perfect time to arrive as it’s exactly when all the schools open up after the summer break (from mid December). Within 2 weeks I had work with four different institutes and was still receiving offers for more.
With all four institutes, I’m teaching businesspeople in small
classes of 1-4 people. Most of the classes are
taken in the students’ offices (usually
in or near the city), although I have a couple
of classes in one of the institutes (much better
as there’s a guaranteed
whiteboard, tape player, TV). Classes are usually
slipped in whenever businesspeople can fit them;
either just before work, lunchtime, after work,
and sometimes at other random times of the day.
The pay is between AR$15-$25 per hour (average
is $15 but for private lessons one can earn $30-$45
per hour). I
am working about 20 hours a week which is enough
to live off (but obviously not worth much once
I get back home).
I guess I cannot tell you enough that, at the moment, there is "un montón de trabajo" (a heap of work) here for people who decide to come. I am still receiving more and more work offers (as are the other 2 I’m living with) and my bosses constantly ask if I know anyone else here that is interested in teaching. So, the message is that even though it is pretty much impossible to find even one ad for teaching work in Argentina, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any!
Andrew Dwyer - Teach International Graduate
