3 down...

...5 to go!  I'm almost halfway through my teaching practicum for the CELTA certificate.  It's more work than I've had to do in decades, but so far I'm surviving.  And performing sufficiently well.  I will definitely be a better teacher of English to non-native speakers when I'm done with this course.  And I'll have some more good friends, to boot!  Our team of 4 teachers (we're divided into 3 teams for the duration of the practicum) is becoming a support system, catching each other when we begin to fall and cheering us on when we're rising to the challenge.  Even one colleague I couldn't connect with at first moved with me today to a new level of understanding and empathy.  If you give someone (and yourself) long enough, you'll break through the barriers and find common ground.  One of the real strengths of this sort of endeavor is being forced to work with someone you might otherwise never have chosen to know.  And finding out how much you can like each other.

Onward and upward!