Back again

It hasn't seemed worth blogging until now about being back in the UK, but here I am again. It's been 6 weeks and the things I miss most are the coffee, sunshine and Jo. And nice looking ragazzi. And some of my students. And the food. But at the moment, mostly the sunshine and coffee, it being cold and rainy here. A day of ceaseless rain on Friday is enough to make anyone head to the easyjet website.

However, I don't think that is the answer right now. A recent birthday was my annual time for reflection (maybe I should have these more often) and perhaps I should think about what I want from life a bit more and actually take action to get nearer that. Running back to Italy is tempting (especially when Jo has been talking about returning to exotic locations), but there are things here that I could be focussing on. We will see.

I've been in touch with some of my students and occasionally heard from the nice floppy haired Back to the Future fan, so I have some sort of connection with the land of lovely Etna. (I failed to say I miss her but I do, very much). It is currently pushing 37 degrees there, which is too hot even for them, what a shame, but I dare say they prefer it to what we have at the moment.

Here I am experiencing a new part time summer job at a small international school which prepares students for UK boarding schools. They are mostly from China, Russia and Japan, with a sole Italian boy who I make read in class so I can hear the lovely accent. It is different to what I was doing in Italy and I hope to learn a few things about teaching while I am there. The teachers are all nice and supportive and the kids are pleasant enough, very polite and really just typical teenagers, who'd rather be sleeping sometimes than working. But what's new. I have enjoyed working with one smaller child and encouraging him with his spelling and reading. Another bonus is having tea breaks and a hot lunch all together. But boarding school life with its regulations and so on is quite a different thing but I think I've got used to it now and the children seem happy there. It's nice that everyone knows each other by name and they all look after each other.

Aside from that, it will be back to the job hunting again and also thinking of long term plans; where do I want to be, who do I want to be there with, etc etc. Meanwhile work and feeling generally knackered seem to get in the way of more exciting things like Fonting and writing and finding a way out of having to work.  But some fonts have been visited (yey!) which was a great relief and helped establish equilibrium again. More on those to come. And if it is all too much here, then I know Etna is only a 3 hour plane trip away, even for a quick burst of sunshine and a much-needed caffè.

Catching up

I can't believe it is 4 weeks since I last posted something, as I can't think what I have been doing since then. Just work, work, work mostly with lots of preparation for the students' exams, which are next week.  Luckily we are not involved in running those, so now we can only cross our fingers and hope that at least some of them pass. Some will do well, I am sure. We have been involved in running extra listening practices and extra speaking practices; it has been quite nice to meet other students during the speaking. Some of them are very good. It's also meant a little extra money, which is good.

Right now I am trying to find summer work and it has sent me into a depression. (That, and it's raining today, for some reason). Seemingly all TEFL work in the UK over summer is for summer schools for teenagers, and most of the roles include supervising activities and day trips as well, some even include living on site and helping with day to day things like mealtimes. It means a long working week, whereas I would prefer to find something which is mostly teaching like I have been doing here. It is typical that the one job I have found which I actually like doing is not a job you can do easily in the UK. It's not just me saying this, I was looking on a EFL forum and people all say the same. Pay is also not very high, which makes living in nice places like Bath or Oxford (where they have the schools) quite difficult. I had forgotten how much it costs even to rent a room there. Rent here has been reasonable.  If I wanted to go back abroad to teach then of course there are many opportunities. I'm just not sure that's what I want to do.

Etna spitting out cloud

Jo and I have been making the most of the sunshine and visiting the sandy beach which is outside Catania. Sadly it is not within walking distance, being past the port and near the airport, so the roads are too big and busy to walk along. That's ok because there is a bus - it could be a really good shuttle bus route, going there and back in 10 minutes, but no, it's once an hour and so we stand and wait for it at the bus station and then we always have to wait ages for it to take us back. Yesterday after a relaxing day on the sand (despite a really awful dj or perhaps it was someone's uncle playing music and talking over it at the lido), we took 2 hours to get home, even though by car it would take about 15 minutes.

Etna has been spitting out ash so we watched her yesterday as little white clouds appeared over the top, often changing, it was quite entertaining (for me anyway).

We are both now looking forward to returning because it has been a while since we saw family etc, but we will also miss things like the sun, the coffee, granitas etc. I went for a granita with a local lad a couple of weeks ago, which was nice because he was encouraging with my Italian and having to speak in Italian really helped me to practise. He spoke clearly and he understood me so I don't know why some of these people in shops give me such strange looks when I try to speak to them. He had the typical Sicilian hairstyle, longer on top, that Jo doesn't care for, but I don't mind, I've grown used to how they look now and I fear I will find all Englishmen scruffy, pale and unattractive. I have managed to go a little browner (by my standards, not by anyone else's) and have dyed my hair darker, (to fit in?). It's too late to go for a Sicilian romance, not that it's an option, you realise, but it was nice to meet up with this lad a couple of times because it's what I should have been doing for ages, and what I should keep doing, having fun. He loves Back to the Future too, as much as I do, which was fun. In the English version, where Marty's dad is in the coffee shop, he says to Lorraine, "You're my density" when it should be "destiny." I was delighted to find out that in the Italian version, instead of "destino" he says "delfino" which means "you're my dolphin"! I thought this was perhaps even better.

It will be sad to finish teaching some of my students, we've had a nice time in some classes. I have made sure that I have told them the most important things like to pronounce their "s" on the end of third person verbs (they just don't), and many other common mistakes that come from Italian being their first language - our students all say the same things.

some sort of courgette?

I still have to find a job, book a flight and sort out the rest of my life (all without granita and coffee, this is going to be hard. For those of you who think that's all I eat, I deny it - I bought some lovely fresh salad from the market last week, and also a lovely melon (there were a million on sale). The trouble is I've been having to eat salad with things every day since as you just can't buy a little bit of anything there. I saw watermelon bigger than your head. And weird long courgettes. And round ones. You have to be subtle taking photos if you don't want to look like a total tourist.