Dear reader, I’m writing to you from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. I’m sat at gate E2 waiting for my flight to be called although I’m thinking of camping out at gate E5 where there are better seats. If you are around, come over and say hi!, I’m wearing a blue shirt. Although come to think of it, come and find me in the pub, I have a long wait and I’m after a pint. Now, where’s the nearest inn?

I’m going to China, Beijing to be precise, for work. If anyone has asked, this is what I’ve told them, ‘I’m going to work in China’. Once it’s been established where I’m going, there’s been significant interest in what I might see and do.

This is not my first foray into working abroad, but I’ve never seen such levels of curiosity. In previous situations, when planning to leave for work, I’d be asked, ‘where are you going?’ and I’d reply accordingly. Any follow up questions would be about work before any inquiry as to what there was to see and do; the questions would rarely be the other way round. It’s not that other countries have less, it’s probably due to the ubiquity of key landmarks such as the Great Wall of China, and other treasures from antiquity which hold such fascination. From a European perspective, these are things which you may read about but never get to see in person as they’re so far away.

This is not my first musing from an airport; I’ve got time to kill – 8 hours to be precise – and besides, there’s not much else to do other than wait; I’ve looked in all the shops and squirted myself with too much cologne from the duty-free. I hope I’m not the only one who does that.

I’ve been involved with English language teaching for most of my adult life. It’s more than a job; it’s allowed me to see, experience, and live in places which would have been out of reach had I not been so fortunate to have been born at the right time, in the right country, with the right passport, and speaking the right language, I don’t think this can be stressed enough; I’m exceptionally lucky to have been afforded such opportunities. Had I been born a generation before, work and travel, the kind I know and understand, would have been out of the question.

My first foray into all of this – this being the TEFL game – was in March 2002, 21 years ago. An old friend of mine encouraged me to join him in Italy under the promise of free digs and a job as a plongeur – a wishy-washy, a pan basher – in a restaurant. He spoke Italian and had been elevated to the role of waiter. I was a monoglot and needed to be kept in the kitchen away from the customers. I had just read, Down and Out in Paris and London and imagined my tenure to be like that which Orwell experienced in Hôtel X.

I was working on a building site as a labourer in the weeks prior to my departure to Italy. I had no real responsibilities in life and equally there was no pressure being placed on me by family to join society properly. I should have bragged about what lay ahead but the circumstances were dreary. I shared my work with a well-mannered football hooligan who spoke with fondness and bravado about acts of violence which had seen him banned from most football grounds in the country and the recipient of a few stints in prison for his behaviour. The type of bloke who looked weather-beaten and malicious, except when this rough diamond opened his mouth; he spoke articulately on all manner of subjects even if he was most passionate when waxing lyrical about thumping people.

Tea breaks saw many of us gather together out of the cold and for some to opine on a variety of topics. Without fail, the thread of any conversation eventually lead to an all-out assault on people they described as foreigners, or more specifically, those whose creed and colour were dissimilar to theirs. Had I have been in the same situation a few years later, they would have been lamenting the fall of society at the hands of Polish plumbers.

I never spoke out. I wasn’t empowered or confident enough to try and readdress some of their thinking. My hooligan colleague, the gentleman thug, stayed silent, too. He had no interest in any of these conversations. Instead, he kept himself to himself, pondering into a chipped mug filled with lukewarm milky tea.

Under these circumstances, given the tone and content of the conversations emanating from the portacabin used a canteen space, it was best to keep my plans secret. I told nobody as I just didn’t think they’d understand. I gave my notice a few days before I left the country saying I had found another job.

I left for Italy a few days later for what for I expected to be a cultural experience. What really happened was I discovered an interest in language teaching. I bashed pans and wish-washed dishes for a few months – it was nothing like Hôtel X – until word got out that a native speaker of English was in town.

At that time, I had no idea that being a native speaker of English held any particular significance, let alone that it was, and still is, a marketable commodity. I got a call from an Italian fella with a very particular American brogue. He spoke to me like he had known me all his life and used odd, rather anachronistic phrases like attaboy! and gee whiz! ‘Olly, ma boy, you’re the guy I need to teach at ma school! I hear you’ve got what it takes!‘, he said. He sounded like a spiv, although without the cockney accent and trilby, but there’s nothing like having your ego massaged once in a while even if it was all self-serving. Of course, I accepted his offer.

I got a taste for teaching English in Italy. I was not that good at it, but I saw it as something that I could get better at over time. I was keen and appreciated very quickly that there was a lot to learn.

Over the years, I’ve avoided the trap of repeating my first year as a teacher over and over again; it’s a job which allows you to do this. I’ve lived and worked in 14 countries – China will be the 15th – and I could have just bumbled along using my passport as a means to secure employment while doing a few conversation games in English. Let’s not be in any doubt, my passport and mother tongue have secured a lot of my teaching jobs before qualifications were given any consideration. The fact is though, it’s easy to remain on the bottom rung of the ladder; you get paid enough – if you didn’t, you’d leave – and often there’s little effort from many employers to help you upskill. You may be reading this and think, that’s not completely true and yes, if you are privileged enough to work for a handful of great employers, they might invest in you. However, this is not the case for many who have been in the profession for some time. You are a marketable commodity – the native speaker teacher extraordinaire – the all singing, all dancing, bells and whistles English speaking gob on a stick.

Wanna be that? Fine, and good luck. If I’m engaged in something for work in the long term, I want to learn more stuff about it. I also need to sustain my interest by regularly shaking things up. Believe me, the one thing I’ve learnt is if you stand still for too long, you’ll stagnate, lose interest, and nobody wants to hear you moan. The recipe for success is doing a qualification or two, engaging with other professionals, reading journals, doing action research, attending and delivering INSETT, writing a blog, and generally taking an interest to keep it fresh.

As well as teaching, I’ve also branched out into summer school programme management. I generally do less teaching and the academic product isn’t my main focus, but summer school has been a labour of love for many years and getting to work with the product for most of the year is great for me. There are transferable skills, but I’ve learnt a lot in the process and know there is more to understand, given that I’ve only just scratched the surface.

My flight is about to be called so I’m going to finish this post here.

Thank you for indulging me; there’s something about airports which makes me reflective. The last thing I would like to say is the decisions we make when we are younger pave our future. I have probably always had an itinerant streak; it might just be my nature, but this career path has given an outlet for wandering and discovery. How long this will continue, I’m not entirely sure.

Thank you for reading, I’ve got to catch a flight.

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