The pancakes

I glance around the teacher's room, my eyes flicking over the bookshelves with an undercurrent of franticness (is that even a word?). It's the week before Carnavale and I have a lesson in forty minutes' time. And it takes twenty-five to drive there. I flick through one of the children's books on impulse - sometimes there are activities in the back for specific holidays. A page on "pancake day" (evidently a British phenomenon) opens up and it occurs to me that that would go well with the recipe-making/imperatives lesson we concocted a few weeks ago and bingo! That's how lesson plans are made. (Er... in our school, anyway.)

"Siiii, le pancake!" one of the three ten-year-olds screeches as we begin the lesson. She launches into a detailed account of the time she and her family went to New York and ate le pancake. It's pretty cute. The cuteness of Italian kids is one of the reasons for which I sometimes enjoy my job.

"Ma, le facciamo, le pancake?" queries the little boy after laboriously copying out the recipe into the little "recipe books" I crafted in the thirty seconds before getting into the car (yes! creativity!). This is a popular plan.

"Dai, si, le facciamo la settimana prossima!" the third kid expresses her support for this idea. The first one's mother chooses that moment to come in and see how the lesson is going (it takes place in her kitchen) and is quick to inform me that it is 100% okay for us to make pancakes - absolutely no problem and please let her know what she needs to buy.

Sigh. The parental enthusiasm. Sometimes it is heart-warming. And sometimes not. I think quickly.

"You know what? Let's make pancakes during the last English lesson, okay?" We're not allowed to speak Italian to the students and it takes me the better part of ten minutes to illustrate this concept so that everyone has understood. The mother thinks it's a cute idea, and the children are more or less mollified (although they proceed to ask me at the beginning of each of the next ten lessons if today is the day we facciamo the pancakes). I breathe a sigh of relief. Two and a half months seems like a long time. Probably I can learn how to make pancakes in two and a half months, right? I put it out of my mind.

"Allora, mi fai sapere se devo comprare qualcosa, eh?" the mother offers kindly at the end of the second to last English lesson. (You let me know if I need to buy anything.) I stare at her blankly.

"Per le pancake," she clarifies.

"Ah, si, si, no, ci penso io," I say. The mention of the pancakes puts me off-balance and I don't have the energy to explain myself in English. And I can't tell her what to buy because I have no idea what goes into pancakes.

"E mi fai sapere se devo accendere il forno o... non so, dimmi tu," she continues. (Let me know if I need to heat up the oven or... I don't know, you tell me.)

I glance pensively up at the ceiling as if the answers might be written up there. Does one make pancakes in the oven? I'm leaning towards 'no', but it's difficult to be sure. I try valiantly to bring up an image of my mother making pancakes when I was little. I'm about 90% sure it took place on the stovetop. I explain this to the mother.

"Ah, si? Davvero? Maddai!" she expresses her surprise. Her disbelief is not reassuring. I make a mental note to either google this issue or consult with some of my more savvy colleagues.

On the big day, the children await me eagerly in the kitchen and reprise their expressions of delight from the first time I brought it up: "siiii, le pancake!" (If nothing else, I love how they pronounce 'pancake'.)

Two hours later, we have produced an impressive stack of pancakes (and by pancakes, it turns out, I mean British pancakes, which I would actually call crepes). The children are satisfied (and full of sugar), no one has yet been sick, and also no one's fingers have been burnt, despite a few close calls.

The mother informs me that the pancakes are delicious, but different from the ones in New York. I restrain myself from telling her she should be grateful that I managed not to burn down her kitchen or damage the children.