(upbeat music)
(speaking in foreign language)
- My name is Fallon, and I am an English teacher
here in Colima, Mexico.
You guys can see I'm an online English teacher
with VIPKid, I'm in my classroom.
And I also give classes at a local English academy.
So I'm super excited to be doing this takeover.
I'm going to teach for a little bit,
and then I'll give you guys a tour of my house,
and then later I'll show off my city, so hope you enjoy.
So I finished up my online teaching and here I am
and I thought I'd tell you a bit about myself.
So I am Canadian, from Prince Edward Island,
which is Canada's smallest province,
and now I live in Colima,
which is one of Mexico's smallest states.
So I feel really at home here.
I came to Colima in January 2019
as an exchange student at the University of Colima,
and it was the last semester of my degree.
I loved it here so I decided to stay.
So I did online TOEFL course, which was awesome,
super portable, I actually went home
halfway through to Canada, kept doing my course.
While I was there, I searched for a job
and came back in August.
So I've been teaching here since August.
The school where I was teaching didn't work out
as well as I thought for me, it wasn't a great fit.
So I actually have been teaching online
for the past almost a month, I think.
I've been teaching online and giving conversation classes
at another local school.
So it's turned out really well.
I'm gonna put a little box with my personal account.
If you guys have any questions,
feel free to message me there.
And I'm also gonna put a question box,
so you guys can ask me some questions.
So while I'm at it, I thought I would do our house tour.
So this is our house, it's really beautiful,
we call it Casa Azul which we stole from Frida Kahlo.
But anyway, we love her.
And when you come in, I have two roommates in there
bedrooms are all the way upstairs,
and my bedroom is in here.
So I have a little desk,
got a really nice, big window, little bed.
And over here is our closet,
well my closet.
And then I have our living room, with my roomies,
who are my friends from exchange semester.
So they're not teachers, they're still students.
And I have my own bathroom which is really, really nice.
It's just a little basic bathroom.
We have a dining room, our kitchen with,
we have three pineapples on the go.
And we have a kitchen, my roommate's making cookies.
It's a good day, and then out back,
we have little jardin, which is really typical
for Mexican houses because most people don't use dryers
so you always hang your clothes,
and then barbecues are little popular,
so we have a little space for a barbecue out here.
So that's about it.
It's a beautiful spot,
and I'll post how much it costs in the next video.
I wanted to take a video while we were on the bus in Colima
because it's really something what they look like.
Each one is a little different,
sometimes they have different decorations,
and they're all super old.
And the route really, there's routes, but there's no timing
so you just kind of have to go and wait
and hope it comes, 'cause sometimes it doesn't come.
And it used to frustrate me a lot,
but now I really enjoy it, actually it's very relaxing.
You just have to really get into the Mexican spirit
and realize you're probably
not gonna get anywhere on time.
So, ooh, that's something you get used to.
Okay, so here we are in the center,
we're in the downtown of Colima.
This is a really cool community center,
there's a lot of concerts here,
and sometimes farmer's markets and I love the art.
If we're going on a tour of Mexico downtown.
We have to go into an Oxxo because Oxxo is,
well everything happens at the Oxxo.
So it's a convenience store, but you can also
make all kinds of payments, you can recharge phones,
they sell beer, they sell everything.
So it's really an important part of life here.
I know it sounds silly, but it's true.
This is one of my favorite places in all of Colima.
It's kind of the heart of downtown.
It's called Jardin Libertad and it's amazing.
Really nice place to relax.
Up here in the top, there's some great rooftop bars
to have a drink and see the city.
There's lots of views of mountains around the city too.
You can see from.
So this is another jardin,
this is more in my neighborhood of the city.
But it's really beautiful, super peaceful.
And then this cafe over here is delicious,
my friend owns it, so I come sometimes here for breakfast
or to walk, it's really nice.
Okay, question time.
So my advice would be practice for the mock class
with someone in front of you pretending to be a student.
I didn't do that, and it ended up they had to cut me off,
which is pretty normal, but still better
if you practice with someone in front of you.
My previous position wasn't a good fit
because of the management.
They weren't used to having foreign teachers,
and so some of the things
I expected to be there were not there.
So it's important to know that can happen
when you go abroad, and I had a backup plan
of teaching online, so it worked out.
My degree is in English lit, baby
so that helps me a lot in the classroom,
it also helps me get jobs
because it does look good on my resume.
However, I would say it's not necessary for VIPKid
nor to find jobs in Mexico,
you can have a degree in anything.
The biggest learning curve I had was
having to slow down for my students.
They were more basic than I thought.
So I really had to slow down, learn a lot of TPR
and activities that were for more basic,
both with my online students and my in person students.
Yes, absolutely there's a high demand.
I think that it's probably easier to find jobs
if you don't really have a specific location.
Most jobs end up being in big cities,
in Guadalajara, Monterrey, or Ciudad de Mexico.
But you can find job in smaller towns if you look hard.
Okay, so I thought this question would come up
and I think a lot of people hope for the short answer
to be like, "Oh, I feel safe all the time."
It's not really the truth.
There's been a few times since I got here
that I have been thinking, hm, I think I'm in trouble.
But, my answer would be I feel safe most of the time,
mostly because I'm very, very careful.
I think in a year of being here, I haven't gone out
walking alone after dark,
not once, I don't think, unless it's to catch an Uber,
which comes to my door here.
So I'm also pretty liberal, if I see something
that looks suspicious, I am calling the police,
I'm calling my friends immediately.
And that hasn't happened that many times,
maybe a couple times.
But long story short, one of my favorite things about Mexico
is that in the midst of all of this problems
with security and safety, the people are so
passionate and loving and kind and welcoming.
And I just think for me, if I had grown up
with these problems of security in my backyard,
I would be tough and suspicious about the world
but that's not how I see Mexicans be,
in fact, it's the opposite.
So I absolutely love that about Mexico,
it's one of my favorite things.
That's my Ted talk.
I'm so glad you asked because one of my favorite places
is the (foreign language) or Colima Brewery
and I am going there later tonight to an event
and I'm going to take some videos and show you guys
as a little goodbye to Colima.
(crowd murmuring) (upbeat music)
- [All] (speaking in foreign language) Bye!
(upbeat music)