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Washing dishes in a cafe wasn’t what William Foley had in mind when he signed up to study Arts at Trinity College Dublin, but that seemed to be the best job the Kilkenny man could get after graduation. Rather than wait around for something better to turn up, the 23-year-old decided to take his chance to travel, and applied for a job as a teacher in St Petersburg.
What made you want to leave Ireland?
I wanted to teach English abroad because I thought it was my best chance to see the world, especially the more faraway parts of it. It would be more difficult to take a year out later on in life with potential work and family commitments tying me down. It’s not like there’s that much work in Ireland for graduates anyway. Despite all the Government and media chatter about recovery, most people seem to be struggling to find work, or are going into very poor jobs or internships and the like.
I’m not interested in teaching English as a career, it’s just a means to facilitate my travels.
What made you choose Russia?
Going to Russia was a pretty arbitrary decision. Initially I wanted to go to Istanbul, but my parents weren’t too keen on that, especially after the attempted coup. So I thought St Petersburg would also be a beautiful, historic, relatively exotic city that’s also not too far from home. Its location would give me a chance to do some exploring in Asia or around the Baltic. But I would have been satisfied with most places, as long as they were far enough away from Ireland.
Was there much paperwork involved in getting the job?
They don’t make it easy to get the visa. You have to negotiate a lot of bureaucracy and jump through a lot of hoops. I had to get an HIV test as well. On the other hand, the painful system is probably why I got the job in the first place. The supply of English teachers in Russia has dried up since the economic slump began. I only have a minor qualification for teaching English as a foreign language and would probably have found it difficult to get work in other places.
What is it like being an English teacher there?
Compared to other places, the salary for English teachers is not great in Russia. The economic situation and the fall of the rouble have also made many items, such as clothes, cheese and other imports, quite expensive, and the cost of accommodation in St Petersburg is high relative to local wages. Basically, you have to choose between working long hours or making a relatively meagre living.
Regardless of that, I have still had a lot of fun here so far.
Did you find it difficult to make friends?
Russians are very friendly and welcoming when you get to know them, and the cost of socialising is quite cheap – in other words, alcohol prices are low. They are different from the Irish however. I find the Russians are quite exaggerated in their attitudes towards you. On the street they can be quite rude. Conversational niceties are usually dispensed with and it is not uncommon to be shoved out of the way, especially on the metro. On the other hand, as soon as you get to know them, even superficially, they are very friendly and easy to get on with.
They are also surprisingly open about their personal lives. Some of my teenage students, for example, have shared things that would result in social exile back home.
I think the Irish are more even-tempered but less friendly. We are polite on the street because we don’t want to cause a scene or get a bad reputation, but we don’t really want to invite other people into our lives. There’s less of a focus on enjoying other people. We’d tend to ignore a foreign person at a house party after throwing them a few polite words perhaps. Over here it’s the opposite.
Will you stay there much longer?
In the short term I intend to do some travelling across Siberia, and to work somewhere else this summer. In September I intend to go back to Ireland, perhaps to return to higher education. I don’t think that the nomadic life of the career English language teacher is for me.
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