Qualifications and Experience

There are many language schools or frontistiria in Athens and all over Greece, to which you could apply for work. In order to get a job in one of these schools, it is still not strictly necessary to have a formal teaching qualification such as TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). Often all that is required is a university degree (in any subject) from a UK or US university. That said, if you are uncertain about your ability to teach English and want to ensure that you start off in this line of work with necessary skills, a course would be useful. It would provide you with some teaching theory, knowledge of English grammar (let’s face it, many of us have never formally studied English grammar in any great depth, even though we speak and write English everyday) and give you some valuable experience of teaching in a classroom, since this is included in most courses. When applying for jobs, you will find vacancies that specify that previous teaching experience is required and others for which no experience is necessary.

It does not matter if you do not speak a lot of Greek. Native English speakers are often valued for other reasons such as having what is seen as a “proper” accent. Many people also swear by approach of not speaking your students’ language, so that they hear only English being spoken for duration of lesson. You will find ways to make yourself understood. In my experience of language teaching, it can even be counter-productive if your students know that you speak their language well, because they may be too easily tempted to speak to you in Greek when they find it hard going.

Finding work

Teaching English as a foreign language jobs are widely advertised in newspapers and on Internet all year round and most often from August to October. As well as applying before in Greece, you can also go to door-to-door around frontistiria with your CV, again in August to October period. If you are visiting them in person, it is not recommended that you spend time doing this any earlier than August because schools often do not consider their recruitment needs much before beginning of academic year.

Pay and working conditions

The next 'hotdog stand' does have a grill, placed over a large bin of charcoal, with flattened chicken quarters sizzling on sticks that you eat like a Popsicle; next door to that is yet another steel cart heaped with fresh, ripe pineapple, mango and papaya, and sporting a huge mortar and pestle for transforming greener papayas into a crunchy, sweet-sour-spicy salad with morsels of shrimp or squid, chiles, garlic and sugar.

What makes Thai food so delicious and distinctive among other Southeast Asian food is this unique blending of fresh herbs, spices and other ingredients that combine for a perfect balance of sweet, sour, salt and heat that leaves your mouth feeling clean and your tastebuds popping in afterglow.

Fresh fruit, salads and even soups and noodles are ladled into plastic bags with a skewer, fork, spoon or straw for eating on go or perched on a folding chair at a nearby metal card table in market.

Thai buses and trains become moving picnic grounds, with everyone chatting, eating and sharing fare hawked through vehicles' windows at roadside stops and terminals: Gai Yang, flattened barbecue chicken on a stick, skewered meat and fish balls and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves.

Carnivals and markets feature huge woks at knee-height, bubbling with deep-fried critters of all sorts, many unidentifiable. Are they grasshoppers? crickets? spiders? baby birds? small frogs? -- my mouth and eyes were constantly wide open in wonder and amazement!

I spent an inordinate amount of time in fresh produce and night food markets -- exuberantly fascinated and often visibly discombobulated, to great amusement of vendors and shoppers.

After traversing every aisle of food carts and woks on my mission to find freshest, most interesting and tasty-looking dishes, I was often met with earnestly shaking heads or "No, you don't want that - that's Thai food!" by English speaking cooks or bystanders when I pointed and gestured and tried to ask for a meal I knew I truly wanted. On my first such adventure, I did not know that custom was for cook to show ladle with amount of garlic and chili for you to indicate how much you wanted: thinking she was simply asking if I wanted those Thai ingredients, I nodded vigorously at heaped display, and in it all went! Yes, it was Thai food, and I enjoyed every sizzling touch to my lips under watchful, laughing eyes of vendors and bystanders who had gathered.