x'è ben!

It's been such a long hiatus that I really don't know where to start. I could begin by stating the fact that I am, indeed alive, but this should by now be self-evident to all but the most dense of readers (whom I've already contacted to give him a headstart). I could apologise for not writing anything, but anyone genuinely upset by my lack of posts needs to take a long, hard look at where they're going in life. Besides, I have good, solid, personal reasons for not writing anything since October, but this isn't the time or the place. I could start with some pictures of the amazing Alhambra in Spain, the breathtaking Basilica San Marco in Venice, or anything else I've seen in the past seven weeks, but alas and alack, my girlfriend has my USB cable. I could make like an essay-by-numbers Cliffnote monkey and Google in a couple of quotations, but I don't have the time today. So, I reckon the best policy is just to ignore everyhting and pick up where I left off...

Here I am in a small internet shop virtually next door to the school where I'm now working, in a small town called Mirandola near Bologna. I've been here for a week now (Mirandola, not the internet shop, doofus), and have grown surprisingly fond of the place. It's typically, charmingly Italian - bikes clank along cobbled boulevards, and a silly number of ice-cream parlours and pasta shops vie for the custom of about 30,000 inhabitants, most of whom seem warm, chatty and open. The food is great and the vita is dolce. It may be out of the way, but it's easy to get to Bologna, and on Sunday I went to see Fede in Venice - on the train, travelling across the lovely countryside, I was struck very suddenly by the realisation that I was extremely lucky to be on a train in the Italian countryside on my way to see Fede in Venice. It's a feeling which, as any TEFL teacher knows, comes and goes.

On the whole, it tends to come in the evenings and weekends, and goes away again on Monday morning. That I'm sat on a stool in an internet shop is testament to the fact that my school is woefully under-resourced. No computers, broken tape-recorders, a tiny blackboard... Last week I caused a crisis by borrowing the (not a) red pen. Computer access, something I usually associate with educational environments, is at least five steps away... Despite all this, the hours are easy, and the students are great. After a year of "the dog is in/on/under/behind the box", with kids too young and too culturally removed from me to understand anything but basic slapstick humour, I relish every single joke made and every single minute of meaningful conversation in the classroom, so teaching adults has, for me, so far proved to be everything it's cracked up to be.

Well that's the background, for starters. Secondi piatti when I have the appetite for it...