Düsseldorf!

Ciao tutti,

Last weekend, we went to Düsseldorf in Germany to visit Stephanie, one of Olaf's uni friends. She and her boyfriend Henning came to visit us last year and we had such a blast that we decided to go and visit them in their new hometown. Unfortunately, Henning had gone off on his trip around the world (and who could blame him, seriously?!?!), so it was just the three of us. It was great! Even though we hadn't seen Stephie for almost a year, we immediately hit it off again, laughed a lot and enjoyed the city immensely. We were supposed to fly around 2 pm last Saturday but RyanAir apparently felt the need to change flight times so we didn't arrive until midnight. It shortened our visit a lot, but hey, at least we got to see Stephie! And I got to practise my German a little bit. Although I'm not too crazy about the Germans language and Germans in general, I realised that I do love their beer culture. They have these amazing breweries in the city, where you can just sit or stand outside on the street and have home-brewed beer, and nobody looks at you like you're a sad, stupid and lower-class alcoholic!!!

Here are some pictures:













I could tell you a lot about our weekend, but - as stated earlier - the pictures speak for themselves. Consequently, I leave you with a cordial 'Guten nacht!'

XXX, 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

The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful

Ciao tutti,
I haven't posted much lately and this is one of my many flaws. I also have to apologise in advance that this isn't going to be a very long post. Hopefully the pictures will make up for the lack of the useless kind of blabber I usually write down here. Let me start by telling you all that I am well and am enjoying myself immensely. Let me then add to that that I have been extremely busy with all the things I'm enjoying and that this is the reason I haven't updated my blog much. I'm just loving my work, my time in Milan and my weekends!

To start at the end of last post, Maartje and Steef's visit was marvellous! We shopped till we dropped as it was the last weekend of sale and I am proud to tell you all that I bought most of the three of us. I ended up with a lovely new sweater, a gorgeous new black bag with the golden imprint of an Afro-American and the phrase 'Funky drummer, funky good time'- which has unfortunately broken last weekend - and the shirt I'd been dying to buy for months and which was now 70% off! We also had a lot of time to see some sights, drink some wines, eat some pizzas and other lovely dishes and catch up on all the more and less serious things that have been going on in our lives lately. Thank you girls, it was a great weekend! Even though we had to wake up in the middle of the night to get you to your airport shuttle...

The weekend after that Bastiaan and Anne visited us. Bastiaan is an old schoolmate of Olaf's and Anne is his girlfriend who we hadn't met before. As Bastiaan is Olaf's friend and I don't know him very well, I was glad to give them some time to catch up on Saturday so I could reply to some emails and get some work done. I joined them for the evening programme, obviously, as we went to La Padellaccia with Nina on Saturday evening (Olaf, Nina and Bastiaan used to go to school together). As Anne had expressed a wish to visit a museum, we went to the Pinacoteca di Brera on Sunday, which is a place I'm always willing to go to. This was Olaf's first time there and I think he quite enjoyed it, although he's definitely fed up with paintings showing a 'Madonna col bambino' for the next few months - a feeling which has been significantly enhanced since our recent trip to Florence (see further down). They went back with the same excruciatingly early EasyJet morning flight Steef and Maartje had taken the week before, but fortunately they were willing to take a taxi to get there so we could go back to bed after a short farewell ceremony.

To give you a little update on what work-related issues have been happening over the past few weeks, Olaf finished the first draft of his first paper (well done, my love!!!) which has surprised all of his professors as people doing his Ph D rarely finish their first paper before the third year. I have been doing quite well in the achieving (well, achieving...) nice things department as well, as I have gotten pay rises from both my employers. When I came into CTL one morning to pick up some tests which I had forgotten the night before, my boss approached me with a serious look on his face. He said they had been doing an internal and external audit and that he really wanted to talk to me. I was a bit scared and I obviously told him with a slightly trembling voice: 'of course I've got a few minutes'. As it turned out he, the students, the didactic coordinator and the course manager were very happy with my work and he told me that 'my courses are among the best they have'. So they decided to give me a pay rise and also hinted at the probability of me getting a contract guaranteeing a certain amount of hours as of September. This is really cool because as a freelancer I don't have any job security right now. I had seriously been considering leaving them to become a full timer at my other school after the summer, but perhaps this changes things... And then I got my January paycheck from Corporate English. I calculated and re-calculated but this always resulted in the same things. Someone had made a mistake, because I was getting more money than I should have. After deliberating whether or not to talk to my boss about this I casually asked her whether she had given me a pay rise without telling me or if she had made a mistake. She valued my honesty and after a little admin-digging we found out that she had actually given me a pay rise without telling me! I'm really happy because they had said they would only do that if I had completed 300 hours of work or them, but apparently they decided three months was enough experience to give me this pay rise. You don't hear me complaining!

But these last few weeks have not merely been filled with joy and positive surprises. A sad thing happened as well. The disagreement between my employers at Corporate English and our intern Silvia resulted in them letting her go. Last Friday was her last day and a new girl started today. I'm really going to miss her in the office because we got on really well and because she was always a very positive influence on the atmosphere in general, even though she was a bit too chatty sometimes. I value her as more than just a colleague and hope we'll stay in contact. Working a lot of hours has also made me realise how exhausting teaching really is. Not physically or mentally exhausting, but socially. I spend the greater part of my day being very nice to people and interested in them in order to stimulate them to talk and practise their English. I also laugh their mistakes away as unimportant and encourage them to try again. I ask them questions about the most nonsensical things they tell me just to get them to practise and praise them and appear very proud when they do things very well - even if these little things seem trivial and extremely simple to me. This is all part of being a teacher, of course, but it makes sure I don't feel like being nice and social anymore when I finish work. Therefore, I tend not to go out that much during the week but generally just go home and spend some time alone or with Olaf. Does this make me sound dull? I sometimes think I'm becoming extremely dull.

Fortunately, I found out this morning that I had already prepared all my classes for this week last week. Several of my classes were cancelled last week and I have used that time wisely. This means I had a very relaxing day today and had a lot of time to answer and write some emails, do some housework (oh yes, I was the regular housewife today!), watch a movie and update my blog. This day was much needed, because we went to Florence last weekend and didn't come back until last night. Florence?


Yes, Florence, Firenze, the birthplace of the Renaissance! This was my present to Olaf for his birthday. I could describe you how much we saw and how beautiful it all was but - once again - pictures speak louder than words...

The Duomo surrounded by a large part of the old city centre, seen from Piazzale Michelangelo

The Loggia on Piazza della Signoria with its many Roman and Renaissance statues

Does this look like the lower part of some vile animal taking a dump to you? No...? Well, then it must be my imagination gone crazy...

The famous Ponte Vecchio

One of the fountains in the wonderful Giardini di Boboli (the garden of Palazzo Pitti, the former residence of the rulers of Florence)

A view of the surroundings from the highest part of the Giardini di Boboli

Aren't we cute? We're on Piazza della Signoria

Okay, so that's it for today. This post turned out to be a lot longer than I'd expected. Oh well... As we're not having any visitors over for the next two weeks, the next update shouldn't take that long. Have a nice week, everybody!

xxx, Fe