Tempus fugit

Ciao tutti,

How time flies! I've just realised that I haven't posted anything for two weeks, even though it feels like yesterday I wrote my last post. Time does fly when you're having fun - or at least when you've got a lot to do! Last weekend, we got up extremely early on Saturday (7:30 am) to go to Mantova with Belinda and Enrico. We went by car and arrived around 11 am because we had somehow managed to dodge all major freeways- well, that's what you get when you ask a woman to navigate...

Anyway, Mantova is a lovely city. It's really small and has only about 50,000 inhabitants, which means it's not much bigger than it was in the Middle Ages. The cool thing about this city is that it used to be surrounded by three artificial lakes for defense purposes. Two of these lakes still exist, so the medieval town centre is perched on this man-made island directly adjoining them and this has preserved much of its historical appearance. Here are some pictures.

The castle courtyard

Palazzo del Té

The three of us in front of the cathedral

Me and Belinda on a bridge over the pond in the Palazzo del Té's courtyard

Belinda is from South Africa and Enrico is Italian. They're getting married in about two months and, unfortunately, they're going to move away shortly after that. Enrico has found a job in Belgium, so they're moving to Kortrijk. I am really happy for him that he has got this opportunity and for the both of them that they will be earning significantly more than they do in Italy so they will actually be able to find a house bigger than a shoebox - as housing and food are much cheaper in Belgium. This is also really good for Belinda, because she's been having some trouble learning Italian and it will be easier for her to find an English-speaking job in Belgium - and people speak English in Belgium, whereas communicating with Italians can still be very difficult since they absolutely refuse to speak any language but Italian. However, I'm a bit sad that she's leaving. She is the best friend I have made since moving to this country and I'll miss her when she leaves. Talking about Belinda, here's a nice picture of her.

After returning from Mantova, we quickly went home for a change of clothes and were off again to Caroline's (my boss at Corporate English) birthday party. We didn't think we were going to be there for very long because we were really tired from getting up early that morning and the preceding week, but you know how good parties can change your mind. We had a lovely time. I didn't really know what to get her so I gave her a book which was meant as a joke. It was The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I hope you catch the irony. A lot of my colleagues were there and Mike showed up as well. We had some lovely drinks, some interesting talks, met some nice new people - and unfortunately some boring ones as well - and enjoyed Caroline's doorman's lovely Indian curry. Although it is never a good idea to get really drunk at your boss' birthday party, I got quite close - mainly because I was very tired - and I suppose it's a good thing I didn't find out there were people doing tequila shots until the bottle had already been finished (but I was quite upset about it at the time, "those filthy thieves, they stoles it from us").

We just stayed in bed for the rest of that weekend and from Monday on it was business as usual. This weekend, Lars and Rachel (Olaf's brother and his wife) graced us with a visit, which was lovely. We walked around town, did some shopping, played loads of trivial pursuit and café international, had the usual gorgeously enormous pizzas at La Padellaccia and enjoyed some Más specials (gigantic cocktails filled with alcohol - they don't really know what to do with their alcohol at Más so they always just seem to put in some extra), enjoyed lunch at Corso Como and visited the Cimitero Monumentale and looked at all the fabulous new things at High-Tech. Lars and Rachel left us early this morning and after going back to bed and sleeping some more we got up and cleaned our apartment. So now, we've got our Sunday evening all to ourselves!

I haven't mentioned my work much the last few posts, but that's just because it is going really well. I've got loads of hours and teaching keeps me busy for the largest part of the week. I've become confident enough to know which lessons I really need to prepare and which are quite standard or easy and therefore don't need much preparation. There are some lessons I don't prepare at all anymore, because I know we're just going to have a conversation about how the students' week has been, to read the newspaper or to check a letter or email they've written. I'm working long days though, which can be annoying from time to time. When I was starting out as a teacher, I needed as many hours as I could get as fast as I could get them and this meant I accepted whatever they offered me. Now that I've got enough hours, I've got the luxury of being able to be more selective in the new courses they're offering me. Fortunately, some of my early morning courses are ending which will give me the opportunity to reorganise my schedule and maximise my efficiency and work enjoyment. And it will give some more time to do my own things at night. And then there's always Alleva to make me happy. Studio Alleva is a law firm I work for on Fridays and they cancel 3 out of 4 of their lessons. They have now reached the point where they're not allowed to cancel anymore and as of this week I just get paid whether or not they have their lessons. Now THAT is a good way to start each weekend!

Ciao, Fe

Bad music & British guests

Ciao tutti,

This weekend we had a visit from Matt and Antony, two friends of ours from Coventry. After we had both finished work on Friday, we quickly went to do groceries, cleaned our apartment, got a take-away pizza which we ate standing up and rushed out to get to Mike's birthday party. Mike is my coordinator at CTL and he had been nice enough to invite us his birthday and even though I don't know him that well (all our contact so far has been work-related and he's leaving Italy in a few months anyway), I thought it would be a good idea to pay a little visit from a networking point of view (After all, the boss might have been there, but he wasn't). Even though we really didn't have time to. We stayed there for about an hour and, since Mike was busy greeting his friends and on his way to getting really drunk, we had a good time drinking and laughing with Stefano (CTL secretary) and his girlfriend Elke. We even got a little glimpse of poor, sick Caroline (my boss at Corporate English and one of Mike's friends) who had dragged herself out of bed to congratulate Mike and his friends and who arrived just as we were leaving.

And then we left in a hurry to get to Centrale to pick Matt and Ant up from the bus from Bergamo. That night we went to the birreria and got quite drunk. We had a great weekend with them sleeping late, playing 'Celebrity Identity' (or something, the English version of the Dutch 'Wie Ben ik?'), shopping (or well, window-shopping anyway) in the golden triangle and drinking wine at a hip bar which was unfortunately infested with chavs watching a football game. On Saturday night, we went for pizza at La Padellaccia and afterwards to the already infamous Johann Sebastian Bar with Marta and her boyfriend whom we had never met before. We obviously got completely hammered and I don't remember much from that moment on, except for kissing the crack-head barbie DJ who didn't know what was going on anymore goodbye and Ant falling on top of a woman on the way back. We spent Sunday relaxing and getting a tan in the park, as the weather was incredibly lovely. After a very early dinner at Más we took Matt and Ant back to Centrale and put them on the bus. We were knackered because of their visit and we very happy to be able to go home and watch 'The Queen' - which is really good by the way, I recommend it to you all.

During this weekend, someone at some point mentioned Whigfield and this triggered a trip down memory lane. We listened to her album and started wondering what ever happened to her, as you do (Why, what do you mean? Do you never wonder what's happened to those one day flies from the nineties?). As it turns out she's 37, still in the music business as a singer and a producer and has been releasing songs nearly every year for the past fifteen years. Who would have thought... Her songs are still infinitely childish and nonsensical of which her latest hits 'Boom Boom' and 'Who's your Daddy?' are ample evidence. She's said to be pretty famous in hip countries such as Colombia and Venezuela. Moreover, she has apparently also composed and recorded Panama's new national anthem (we are sure she was paid by the Panamanian government - or at least by the tourism industry - for writing and singing a song of which the lyrics consist of solely one line, the repetitive 'Welcome to Panama'). Isn't that interesting? Who ever knew what happened to her??

To round this post up, I received a really weird call from Elisa, a receptionist from the Corriere della Sera who was really lovely and occasionally used to have a chat with while waiting for my students. Apparently she didn't work for Corriere della Sera anymore, but wanted to send me her mother's love (I have once had a conversation with her mother who was waiting for her to finish work while I was waiting for my student. Se also mumbled something about an incorrect number in their computer system, which I found extremely strange since she didn't work for that company anymore. She hardly spoke any English but didn't want Veronica, the school's secretary to translate but just wanted to speak to me. She kept going on and either she didn't say what she was calling about or my Italian is just still too shitty. The call really freaked me out. It seemed like she had been going through a lot of trouble to get a hold of me and Vero seems to thinks she's in love with me... Anyway, I still don't understand the call.

Oh, and by the way, it wasn't my student who died, fortunately. Although I am genuinely sorry for whoever it was, I'm just really glad my student is all right. That's all for today. Tootles!

Fe