David Attenborough- TEFL teacher trainer
No, David Attenborough has not had a change of career plan and joined the list of famous TEFL teachers (a teacher I worked with had worked with JK Rowling in Portugal and had been a trainer when the ex-singer from the Christians failed his Via Lingua CTEFLA). Instead, little to his knowledge, he was presenting the best metaphor of trying to accept and alien culture I have yet seen. Well, I say he didn’t know, but this is ATTENBOROUGH! (as the Japanese version of the DVD had it) we are talking about here…
Anyhows, my moment of ATTENBOROUGH! inspiration came in “The private life of plants” when he was explaining why the world’s biggest flower stinks like rotten fish. And when I understood why it looked like a giant private part, or maybe both combined, and smelt like Newhaven docks on a bad day it made me feel a little bit better about it. And then I thought- much as I understand, still never want to see that again…
And so it is with cultural differences: a bit of explanation of why people roast lambs’ heads in shop windows or fire their guns straight into the air does help you accept and understand- about 5%. The other 95% of acceptance comes with time or not at all, and in the meantime you can just practice your best Japanese gaman (putting-up-with-it-ness) or move out of Borneo to somewhere the flowers smell more to your cultural liking.
Tags: Living abroad