A Dastardly Plan

So I've decided I'm going to solve all my problems by teaching English as a foreign language. I'm just going to do an online TEFL course, which the TEFL website tells me is so easy I can 'even do at home in my pyjamas', and then I'll take down our ancient old globe that still has Yugoslavia marked on the map, spin it around, close my eyes, and go wherever my finger falls (and as it happens I don't want to go to any of the places formerly known as Yugoslavia, so that dodges that particular landmine). I'll teach in an off-handed yet zestful manner for a couple of hours a day, then perhaps wander the cobbled streets of the town I'm in (in my head the town has cobbled streets), chancing upon curious little shops, having encounters with the locals when I go to buy fish at the market (there will also be a market, naturally), communicating through broken tongues and a mutual understanding of good-naturedness in eachother. At home in my quaint, slightly tumbledown accomodation, maybe a bungalow, I'll write stories and blogs and letters home, and sketch little cartoons which will cover the walls. I'll eat well on the local cuisine. I'll cycle to the beach at the weekend and go swimming, or take photos of the coastline which I will later paint at home. I'll strike up unlikely friendships with my garrulous foreign neighbours, who will have me over for dinner regularly, and they will always spill wine on the floor because they're so animated and foreign. I'll fix up the little patch of garden I have, and repaint the cracked outside wall of the house, and I'll get a good tan from working outdoors. My whole life will be a combination of sun and sea, ancient local history, lesiurely unfinished works of art, and simple pleasures of food and drink.

Oh but it's all just a dream really.... For now I'll just go to school in the rain, and learn everything ever, and order dominos, and hang out with the same friends, and be tired all the time, and sit inside watching Friends and Scrubs every single day at the same time.

But I'll be dreaming all the while.