Back to School

Monday 7 July

So, the beginning of another week.  I follow my usual morning routine of getting up early, banging my head on low ceilings, doing my homework and then walking to the school, about a mile away, through the residential areas of Milazzo.  About two hundred yards from the school is a great little cafe where I stop for my morning cappuccino and maybe a cake and then get to school for the 9am lesson.  

This week we have a new teacher who we both agreed might be a bit of taskmaster.  Elvera is the teacher that leads a lot of the optional external visits and insists that everything spoken is in Italian. This is great except, when you don't understand and you try and explain in Italian what your problem is, there are times when it becomes clear from the answer you get that you really did not say what you thought you had said about the thing you didn't understand.  Or alternatively you end up saying that you did not understand the explanation of the thing you did not understand previously and the chances are you won't understand the explanation of the explanation of the thing you did not understand, and so it goes on until your head explodes......

After our mid morning break, where Joel and I wander to the local coffee bar - where we are now considered regulars - and have a proper coffee (but not a cappuccino as by the laws of Italian coffee drinking it is forbidden by this time).   We might even have a grenita if we feel a bit peckish.  

On Monday we came back after our break to be introduced to a new class mate.  After a week of just the two of us it was bad news that we now had another student joining us.  The good news though is that Anastasia is a young and very attractive Russian from Moscow.  I reckon that maybe our Italian will not improve so much this week owing to the new distraction.....

That aside, things require a lot of concentration but I reckon I am learning a lot.  I seem to understand more of what is being said, although that does not necessarily extend to what you hear from people in the street; that remains a mystery at times with only the occasional word being recognised, although we were told last week that the Sicilian accent is hard to understand at times and they also use of lot of different words and phrases to the rest of Italy. 

I managed to book myself a hotel in Naples for the coming weekend, somewhere in the old part of town.  One of the teachers here waved his hand generally over the map of Naples I presented to him when I asked where the good and bad parts to stay were as I don't know the city.  So with that clear advice I went ahead and booked something at random.

I wandered home and spent a short time with Enrico and Melissa before heading out again as tonight, being a Monday, is the regular night for those that want to go and have a pizza as a sort of 'meet and greet' between old and new students. Of course everything has to be in Italian and last week was a bit painful; it was my first day and of the four students there, most had done four weeks or so of Italian and so were relatively good.  However, with a week under my belt and some new students I reckoned that the level of Italian might be lower and more in keeping with my abilities.

I was surprised just how many students there were, a total of about 10 of us of which all were new other than Joel and myself.  I only managed to speak to a German woman and Anastasia opposite me and two polish girls next to me as well as Joel and our new teacher, who seems to be the person earmarked for these evenings.  I have to say though that if these ladies are representative of Eastern Europeans and the Berlin Wall were still up I would probably be trying to get over it.....

After the group dispersed we were left with our class group - Joel, me, Anastasia and our teacher.  We toddled off to grab a late night gelato and I asked Elvera if she wanted a drink and she suggested that we should try some dodgy local liquor, or at least that's what I thought.  So off I went to get the drinks and we went outside and took a table. In the Italian way, before we left I went to pay, as you tend not to pay when you order, and when I came back was told in no uncertain terms that Elvira had already paid.  It seems that she had offered to buy me a drink rather than I buy her one.  So we were forced to have another round, given that I had just parted with good money for one.  Such are the dangers when learning a foreign language......