Back from Denver

I've been in Denver all August studying for my CELTA certification. It's been 4 straight weeks of teaching practice, teaching observation, reading, researching, writing papers, and general hard work. I'm worn out but happy. Things went well. I made it through the program--not without some cuts and bruises along the way, however!

Now I'm qualified to seek employment as a teacher of English to adults who want to learn English as a second language. I'll look around here in America for positions before I look around for position in foreign countries.

For various reasons, I am not especially keen on living abroad even though life in these United States is becoming more obnoxious and hassle ridden by the day. Today, for example, while on my way home from CELTA training, I was subjected to a full body X-ray at the security screening station in the Denver airport. If you haven't heard, the TSA has a new doodad to inflict on air travellers: an X-ray that examines your body and sees beneath your clothes. It isn't enough that we have to take off our shoes and belts, empty our pockets, and pass through a metal detector; it isn't enough that our carry-on baggage is X-rayed and even arbitrarily examined by TSA agents; it isn't enough that all these affronts to our person, property, and privacy defy the Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Now the TSA goons want to X-ray every inch of you on the pretext of keeping the skies safe from terrorists. This high-tech version of a strip search is just the living end of governmental arrogance and stupidity. But if you're in a distant city and want to get home, what can you do other than submit to this egregious tyranny?

And to top it off, when I pulled my bag off the baggage carousel I noticed that it had been opened. I always move the pouch zippers to the ends and never let them meet in the middle. But the zippers were in the middle. Somebody had moved my zippers! Sure enough, when I opened my bag there was a note from the TSA notifying me that they had opened my bag and had run their fingers over all my private things. This has happened to me five times in the last two years! I have really had my fill of the TSA. It makes you almost want to plant a bomb just to spite them.