ESL Blogs

So here is the thing: At 62, I want to start a new project – my father always said that “he who doesn’t have a project is already dead” (he was from a time in which we didn’t have to worry about choosing gender in our sentences...)

This is such a new world, isn’t it? So many things are challenged everyday and it feels like we have to literally start over every damn morning. It’s tiresome, I confess. But I’m not ready to give up just yet.

I’m from this generation – the new oldies - caught in the middle of the transition between analog and digital, not quite literate in everything related with artificial intelligence but still managing to stay afloat in a world where everyone in meetings looks like your niece. At this point, I don’t expect to become literate, really, I just want to keep involved, participate, mingle. Learn if possible. Thus the new project.

Because I believe I can collaborate and do some good, I decided to teach English to underprivileged kids – mostly in their teens and early twenties – that are currently employed in the hospitality business in the town I’ve moved to 9 years ago, Gramado, the second most visited destination for Brazilian tourists (Rio de Janeiro being the first). This is the reason I joined the website and I hope it’ll prove to be not only fun but also helpful, given that my primary profession, Journalism, didn’t provide the teaching skills I’d need in this path I’m taking. I also taught English when moved back to Brazil, after a master’s degree in New York City and five years in the New York – Boston area, but don’t consider myself a proper ‘teacher’.

So, there you have it: too young to die, too old to rock and roll.

Don’t be shy if you have suggestions, they’ll be very welcomed.

So long!