(upbeat music)
(speaks in foreign language)
- My name is Freya.
I'm from England, and I'm working and living
as an English teacher in the South of Italy in Bari.
So, hello, good morning, hi.
Some information about me,
I've been living in Italy now for almost three years.
I've lived in Bari for almost two.
And the first year I lived in Turin.
I've been an English teacher the whole time I've been here.
And before I moved to Turin,
I did a TEFL course at one of ITA's partnering schools
in Florence.
It was a four week long intensive course.
It was very important for me to do my course in person
because I had no teaching experience,
and I needed that in-person experience.
I'm really glad that I did the course in person
because I also met some amazing people,
and I'm still in touch with them today.
And yeah, so I highly recommend it.
Another question, well,
a question people might ask is why Bari
of all places in Italy.
So, honestly, before I was offered a job here,
I had no idea what Bari was, where Bari was.
I hadn't heard of Puglia even.
When you think of Italy,
you think of Rome, Florence, Venice.
So yeah, I came to Bari for a teaching job,
one different to my current one.
And yeah, I'm so glad I came
because I never would have discovered Puglia.
It's such a beautiful region.
It's got a massive sea front.
So if you love the sea, it's a perfect place for you.
Things do work a little slower in Bari,
but it's very relaxing.
It's a relaxing place to live.
So another thing that's quite important I think is,
I mentioned that I'm a British national.
so I moved to Italy before Brexit was finalized.
So now I think if you are British national and you have to
live in Italy, work in Italy, you do need,
a Visa of some kind, which I'm not,
I'm not really sure about that.
As a British citizen before Brexit was finalized,
I basically became an Italian resident.
So that means that I have similar,
if not the same rights as European citizens.
But I'm currently in the process of applying for
a card to visit Giordano,
which is more bureaucracy for rights in Italy.
But it's part of how things are, unfortunately,
because of the Brexit bill and, dododo.
For breakfast, I always have an English cup of tea,
of course. (laughs)
I would love to say I'm one of these people that
has a cornetti and a coffee
at a coffee shop somewhere here,
but that would be a lie, to be honest, so.
Yeah, tea is a must. (laughs)
I'm about to do three hours of teaching.
So I would love to give you guys a tour of my school
and dododo, but this (laughs)
is my current teaching set up.
Yeah, so my school is still closed at the moment
due to the pandemic.
So we're doing our lessons online,
which is fine by me,
but nothing beats teaching in person.
Anyway, after my lessons,
I will do some stories about my teaching, situation, career.
Yeah, so see you in three hours.
Hello, I'm back from teaching
for the first three hours of the day.
Normally I start at 9 or 10:00 AM in the mornings,
and I finish at 7:00 PM in the evening.
Also I do on average between five and seven hours a day,
and about 30 hours a week.
Sometimes 25 but,
of course at things like Christmas, summer time,
it's much quieter.
All online at the moment.
Also, time to talk about the money.
So with my school here, I earn 11 euros an hour,
which is, thank you Google,
which is $13.34 cents an hour.
So say I do,
I don't know, 30 hours a week,
3, 6, 9, 12.
Oh my goodness, my math.
1,200 euros a month,
which is a $1,455.08 a month.
But then, like I said before, it does depend on
the season, Christmas time, all these things.
But yeah, I will do another little calculation
in a moment with pounds as well,
for any British people watching, yeah.
Hello, I'm back.
I just finished four hours of lessons.
So I'm now officially done for the day.
I didn't get a chance earlier,
but I thought now would be a good chance to talk about
the most important reason why I'm here this week,
is that it's gay Pride month,
well, LGBTQUIAP month, Pride month.
Oh my God, sorry.
And it's the ITA pride week this week.
So for me,
it was very important for me to live in an inclusive place
that was open-minded. as a gay girl.
It was important to me to live somewhere that I felt safe.
So before living in Bari,
I did my research to find out what kind of associations
there were here, what the community was like.
And Bari, despite being a less,
oh my gosh, sorry, Instagram cut me off.
Anyway, so it was important for me to find a place that was
inclusive, and I find Bari to be very open-minded city,
despite being small.
I will do some links here to some associations in Bari
that are really good and very inclusive
for the LGBT community.
And they do lots of,
also, two years ago, Bari held the Pride event.
And last year there was a static Pride
because of the pandemic,
it wasn't possible to move about the way we normally
would during a parade, but it was still a really nice day,
and there was a massive turnout.
And I believe this year,
the Polia Pride is in Brindisi, yeah.
So that'll be fun.
So I thought I'd do an apartment tour because a few people
requested it.
So here is the lounge area in my apartment.
I share with six international students at the moment.
So it's a six room apartment.
It's quite big actually, to be honest. (laughs)
Okay, so.
Going into the kitchen, we have a shared kitchen.
Yeah, this is it.
Dodododo.
And that was my idea.
And there's a balcony out from the kitchen
that has all of our laundry thingies.
It's quite common to have laundry on the balcony
I noticed in Italy, yeah.
We also have a couple of shared bathrooms.
Got number one.
Number two, yeah.
Also this is my room.
Tada!
So my room came fully furnished apart from all the
pink stuff, which was mine, obviously.
( laughs) So.
Also my room has a lovely balcony, which I absolutely love.
There we go. (chuckles)
So I mentioned before,
my room is 330 euros a month.
And I found this apartment through
an Italian agency website.
I can link some agencies.
So I'm just responding to some of your
ask me anything questions.
So, do a lot of people speaking English in Polia?
Not really, to be honest, it's primarily Italian speaking.
So you would definitely need to learn Italian,
or be in the process of learning if you're here.
But a lot of schools are,
they do not expect you to speak it.
Worry about that from a professional point of view.
But yeah, I definitely recommend learning
just the basics of Italian.
You know, how to ask for directions, how to buy things.
There is a language school in Bari that I did attend,
but currently I'm just, I'm learning online and self.
People asked what age range I teach.
So I teach a range of ages from 10 to 18,
levels A1 to C1, people doing their IELTS,
a bit of everything really.
I got my teaching job, my current teaching job,
through a friend.
So I would say it's so important to keep those connections
with people through previous jobs, with ITA alumni, so.
But I also recommend tefl.com,
the search engine for TEFL jobs.
And also lots of Instagram pages, Facebook pages,
to find other alumni too.
Okay that's it for today.
Thank you so much to everyone who watched my
TEFL takeover today.
If anyone has any more questions,
they can send me a message on my private Instagram,
and apart from that, happy Pride month and take care.
(upbeat music)