Oh, those halcyon days when . . .

… I hadn’t had any doubts about the efficacy of language learning games and I thought my job was just to find something else fun for us all to do in class.

… I still thought smiling faces meant happy students.

… I could rely on my teaching to improve with just time in the classroom.

… the surprise I showed in things students told me about their country was actually genuine.

… cultural relativism still seemed to be enough.

… I still thought I could learn to live without builder’s tea and Marmite.

… I knew nothing about the political rot that lies beneath the clean Japanese streets and behind the Baroque Roman exteriors.

… a running dictation was something new and exciting.

… I could impress my students just by being the only teacher in school who shaved more than once a week and didn’t usually drink at lunchtime.

… I assumed I’d think of another plan for my life after a couple of years of TEFL.

… being hot and sweaty was a nice change from home.

… I thought that the corporate machine would welcome me with open arms if I ever decided to sell out for a bit.

… haggling in street markets was an exotic thrill rather than a pain in the arse.

… thinking something was exotic didn’t make me feel guilty and/ or horribly naive.

…. making new friends in a new country was a cause of excited anticipation rather than “here we go again”.

… I never thought to find out how long someone would be around before making friends with them.

… blogging was done with a vague feeling that it might lead onto something rather than a way of avoiding those things it led onto.

… management jobs were something that I aspired to rather than something I was desperate to avoid.

… I dreamed about writing TEFL books because I hadn’t realised the extent of my wandering attention span.

… there seemed to be just two or three TEFL books that I really had to read.

… knowing the phonemic chart felt like really knowing my stuff.

… I didn’t have enough knowledge to know when I was teaching badly.

… things distracted me from student learning and so stopped lack of student learning getting me down.

… I could blame bad teaching on a lack of experience.

… I hadn’t counted the number of likely years until retirement.

… I thought all my doubts would disappear by the time I finished the DELTA.

… I felt one book away from knowing how to do my job.

… living in poverty seemed glamorously bohemian.

… breaking cultural taboos was due to ignorance rather than laziness.

… I didn’t know that the appeal of dating me was just for free English lessons.

Anyone else old and grumpy enough to want to do your own list or add to mine?

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