TESOL Arabia

Back at work with aching legs thanks to an energetic couple of days at TESOLArabia.

I've been saying for some time that I must get more exercise - well, the Job Fair at the conference supplied me with plenty.

I must say, first, that if you have to dash from side to side of a huge open space in the sun like a mad thing in order to get job interviews at which you appear sweaty and knackered, Zayed University Dubai is the perfect setting for it. It is a beautiful building complex with some stunning architecture, a very handsome atrium, and an open area with fountains in the middle.

Unfortunately, all the administration for the job fair happened in one building and all the actual interviews happened in another. Another building far far away, in fact. In between the two lay the enormous open space with its glittering fountains, its carefully laid-out tables with awnings, and the sun - the Arabian sun that beat down on the increasingly frazzled job hunters as they dashed from the interviews they were having to the place where they could find out whether they had been called for any more interviews, and back again, and back once more.

We also had to pass (rapidly and repeatedly) through the Atrium where the actual conference was going on. It looked quite interesting, to the hurried view, and I wished I'd been able to attend some of the sessions.

As it was I was too busy: queueing, three times for a total of one hour and 20 minutes on the first day to get booked in with the Job Fair, then the rest of the time dashing back and forwards.

I did manage to get in for Andrew Wright's bit on creative writing (and speaking and generally creative play with language) in the EFL classroom. Lovely and cheering and with lots of good ideas, some of which I will use immediately, and quite counter-current in most of our institutional settings.