15 February 2010

reading is fundamental

so there has been an incredible amount of fail since i last posted, much of it having to do with the president and his state of the nation address, but a few other things related to the franco-german axis's complete lack of desire to prop up the euro by saving greece. 

they will end up saving greece, because letting it go down the tubes will mean that the euro will take a nasty knock, which would be great for me, money-wise, as the rand will take a knock right along with it. bah.

so, back to mzansi. last thursday -- the 20th anniversary of mandela's release from prison -- the president made his state of the nation address.  while his wives were there, his girlfriends and babymamas were not. 

the speech he made was typical campaign-speech and had nothing really to write home about. if he tries to enact half of these things, i should really have no trouble getting a teaching gig here once i get my certs in order. if i were still to have this house, i would have no problem teaching in du noon informal settlement [it would be an easy commute]. from almost anywhere in cape town that i'm willing to live, there are no schools in easy commuting distance with large EFL populations. 

oh, wait. there's langa. i suppose i could make that happen. reverse commute, too, if i lived in town [which i would]. langa is also doable from here, in a stretch. hm. 

anyway, the president really struggled reading in english. i nearly mentioned this on crackbook but chose not to. my thought: okay, it's not his first or second language, i should give him a break. and then he read a bit in sotho. same thing. and then he was reading in zulu. oh, god, this man is really illiterate. when he gives extemporaneous speeches in zulu, he's actually quite inspiring. but actually reading from prepared text? i was actually embarrassed for him. eish. 

it makes me want to make sure that people here read and write well that much more.

but we'll see. after earnings season is done, i should have some downtime, even though i'm working on getting more clients now in an attempt to have less downtime. but i definitely need to crank out this TEFL cert so i can get in the classroom. 





1 comment:

Jacoba said...

Wow! Love this post, more especially because you had the guts to hit the nail on the head. Way to go!
Regards
White South African