Home and back

"Right, so, I'm off," I say, extracting what is meant to be my boarding pass from the World's Slowest Printer, of which we are proud owners here at Local Language School.

My colleague looks up from the computer (World's Most Finicky Laptop) and glances pointedly at the clock. It is 8:30pm and I have just returned from my lesson in Nearby Village.

"What, to America?"

"Yeah." I glance at the papers in my hand. Impossible to print boarding pass, they read. Super. Whatever. Will worry about that later.

"Well... good luck with that," he offers.

"Thanks!"

I rattle my little wheel-y carry-on down the Via Emilia, trying to remember if I've brought both passports. Sometimes having two passports is nice, because it allows you to choose the quickest lines. At other times it is even nicer because it allows you to not be deported. This is, I think, one of those latter type situations and so I kind of really hope that I do have them.

I jump onto the 9:47 train to Bologna, suddenly feeling all 7 of those teaching hours in my knees. (Sore knees? Really? What am I, seventy?) I am happy to note that it is not the train that stops in every station ever, meaning that we will whiz past Samoggia and Anzola and whatever else. Ciao ciao, Samoggia.

"Could I possibly print something?" I ask the clerk of the cheap-ass hotel at which I am spending the night in order to be at the airport at 5am tomorrow morning.

"Certo, vieni pure," the man ushers me behind the reception desk and explains that I can use the computer as soon as his colleague is done. I look over at said colleague, a man with graying hair who seems to be engaged in a struggle to log into his facebook page. I am nice and do not laugh. After his fourth attempt, I wonder whether I should offer to help. Before I can, he opens up notepad and begins to bang out a message. Ten minutes later, he has a nice, solid three lines. He re-opens facebook. It still does not let him log in.

"Cazzo!" he mutters. I don't remember how to say caps lock in Italian, or I would suggest checking that. He prints his message and shoves it in his pocket. Interesting.

His co-worker pokes her head around the partition with the lobby.

"Tutto okay, Mario?" she spots me. "Ma, c'è una fanciulla qua, Mario - watch your mouth." (There's a little girl here.) Mario mumbles something in my direction and leaves. I am not sure how to take the "little girl" comment. I elect to go with "flattered".

I sleep for about five minutes and find myself once again in the parking lot.

"15 euro," the hotel employee tells me, standing in front of a van with "navetta gratuita" written in big green letters on the side. It is too early in the morning to appreciate the irony (or take issue).

In the plane, they have plastic cups and you pull a tab and pour hot water in and coffee happens. Amazing.

In the second plane, there is a vegetarian curry option for the meal. Hands down the best airplane meal ever, and I don't even feel sick afterwards.

I attend my medical school interview in the middle of a late-February blizzard, and we are snowed in the day after. I consume some Thai food and some Mexican food. (Italy, the one thing you are missing: food from other countries. You should try it some time. Really. Much like Italian food, it's delicious.)

"You came all the way back from Italy for an interview?" says my interviewer, a kindly old-ish lady with whom I chat amiably about books (I recommend Se una notte d'inverno un viaggatore to her - and I recommend it to you, too - and she recommends The spirit catches you and you fall down to me). Yes I did, and you damn well better accept me after all that, I think to myself.

Whenever I'm away from home for a while and then go back, I forget how quiet it is, sleeping in my bed in my parents' house out in the middle of nowhere. It's good to be home, I think blurrily just before falling asleep.

I fly back to Italy two days later, passing through Paris's biggest windstorm in decades. ("I think we'll just skip Paris and go right on ahead to Brussels because I don't think we can land safely here," says the pilot at one point. Minutes later, "actually, you know what? I'm going to give it a try." The most precarious landing I have ever experienced ensues. I am actually frightened on a plane for the first time in years... possibly ever. The teenaged boy next to me has his iPod on and idly drums his fingers on the armrest.)

After twenty hours of straight travelling, I plop myself back into my bed in Reggio and gaze blearily at the light squeezing in through the slats in the shutters. Every once in a while you can hear a motorino go up the Via Emilia, or a group of people pass by on their way to San Prospero below. Familiar sounds, ormai.

It's good to be home, my brain mumbles silently to itself.

See why things are confusing?

Day in the life...

"There are three rules you can use to decide between the present perfect and the past simple," I begin. I am in my element - I taught this lesson twice yesterday.

My fancypants important person student takes out a fancypants pen and begins to take notes. I must confess, it still kind of cracks me up that someone might want to take notes on what I have to say.

"I have a good summary of these rules - do you want me to email it to you?"

I take the opportunity to make him dictate his email. We spend ten minutes sorting out our vowels.

"Chiocciola?" he asks sheepishly.

I love it when they ask you something they think they should already know and look all sheepish about it. Even important-people 50-year-olds will do it. Adorable.

"Ancora!" chorus the three-year-olds.

"Again?!" I feign incredulity for their amusement. Well, actually, not feign. More exaggerate. Because why would anyone want to subject themselves voluntarily to the ultra-inane "snowflake song" is indeed beyond me. If that's the standard for amusement, daily life must be hilarious when you're three.

"Si, again!" they shout, beside themselves.

Bingo! Taught them a new word. Feel that the hour of singing at the top of my lungs and making ridiculous faces has been worth it, and launch into another round of the snowflake song with gusto.

"Should we sing fast-fast-fast or sloooowly?" I ask.

"Fast!" they shriek. Wow. We're on a roll here. Good day. One litte guy in the front row can't quite contain himself and jumps onto my lap, clinging like a little barnacle. See the joy you bring to people's lives when you're an English teacher?

"If I saw him, I would tell him..." my 3 o'clock drones on. Apparently my purpose is to sit at his kitchen table and ensure that his homework gets done correctly. A small beam of sunlight falls across the top of his head. (Sun! In Reggio! Alert the press!) He's a good boy, but ye gods, is his homework ever boring. I wonder if I am a horrible lazy teacher for not thinking of a way to make this fascinating and hilarious. Probably. Sigh. Am momentarily depressed.

"If I will go..." I'm jolted out of my stupor by probably one of the top 5 most common Italian-learner mistakes. I launch into my canned explanation about that.

All new English teachers should develop two things (well, probably a lot of things, but these are the two that come to mind at the moment). One, canned explanations for the most common mistakes people make wherever you are (it varies depending on their native language). These should be based on examples that have been proven to work on your other students - seriously, there are some examples that, for whatever reason, make everyone go click! like little lightbulbs. It's great. And two, a sort of automatic alert for mistakes. This allows you to be completely not paying attention and still catch and correct their mistakes. Key. Because I, for one, find it near impossible to keep my full attention focused on "put these twenty inane sentences into the passive voice".

I pour some yogurt with crunchy bits down my throat, standing over the heater in the office. Yogurt with crunchy bits: best thing ever. Can be sucked down in under three minutes if you're focused, and kind of resembles a balanced meal.

"And then he wants to know if he can move up a whole level in a week's time if we do two hours a day, and I'm like 'no'." We all dissolve into laughter. (Yeah, okay, you maybe start to find kind of random things funny after teaching for a while.

"It's when you can see the clouds that the spring, it starts," says my four-thirty. "Because now it's all grey. You cannot see the clouds - just grey sky of winter. When you can see each cloud, round, you know then it is beginning spring. Maybe next week..." he smiles. "I'm live in Reggio 46 years." Huh.

I jump into the car, restored by a ridiculously sugar-laden coffee. I'm not sure which is the more important component - the caffeine, or the 1/2 cup of sugar. (I exaggerate, but not by much.) Either way, purchase of coffee machine for the office? Best idea ever.

"E poi, sai cos'ha detto?" one of the three kids in my last group of the day. I'm supposed to pretend not to understand them, but what unfeeling robot would decline the invitation into their world? This is prime gossip from the seconda media over here.

I yawn driving home, listening to the radio. Apparently there's an accident on the autostrada near Napoli. Must remember to photocopy more exercises about the conditional for that high school kid for next week and maybe make a question-formation activity for that guy tomorrow... I wonder if anyone has confirmed the Modena lesson for tomorrow... really should laminate those photos of Boston for Saturday...

I boil some veggies, call it dinner, and crawl into bed after checking my email. One of my students has sent me a wikipedia article about Disney characters in the '50s. I can't quite recall why. (Did we talk about Disney characters this morning?)

I probably fall asleep kind of smiling.

Womanizer

It's nice that American music makes it over to Europe and is super popular. (Or, anglophone music, I should say.) Really, it is: my students listen to it and hum the tunes and sometimes wander in vaguely singing a line from something or other. It's good practice for them.

Why is it always the stuff that you really don't feel like explaining is the stuff that's the most often repeated, though?

Because there they are, all humming and whatever, and the next thing you know, an earnest-looking twelve-year-old wants to know what "womanizer" means.

Thanks, pop culture.