Sounds like hard work - can you give the child back to it's parents at the end of the day? Maybe you need a target - like must finish before all the wild flowers come out so you can go for lovely walks with all that spare time?

Oop - realised I just left that comment as i-to-i, rather than me - how confusing! Same person behind it :)

The language barrier wasn't actually too much of a problem - all the co-ordinators etc spoke English and schools generally like it if you don't speak Chinese as it means students don't have a get out clause from speaking English. In terms of life in general (ie. not teaching) a few words of mandarin were useful, but nothing too drastic - plus most stuff can be done with hand signals and gestures (they have different hand signals for numbers - makes it easy to haggle).

I'd definitely recommend China though as everyone's so friendly and all students are really eager to learn. You might want to check out i-to-i's Teach in China internships if you're interested in heading that way - all the interns get loads of support while they're out in China (mentor at their school, trips laid on for them etc - makes me jealous!) so it's a good first TEFL job to take on. All the info's here if you want to take a look: http://www.onlinetefl.com/teaching-internships/china/

That's serious business - looking after a 2 year old, then getting your head around a TEFL course! Stick with it though as I'm sure when you're teaching somewhere amazing it'll pay off!

Are you thinking of staying in Corsica to teach or are you going to be heading off somewhere else?

Good luck with the rest of your course!