I'm going to be a teacher!

That's right! A real teacher teaching real students. Well, kids actually, which is probably even worse. Remembering the good old days of my own childhood I know what a cunning horror children may be to a teacher. That being said, poachers make the best forest keepers, so to speak, meaning that my own experience as an inpertinent little brat will certainly have me prepared for a situation in which the tables are turned.

Now, what is this all about? This morning I received a phonecall from the head master of one of the local schools. She's a very friendly lady (well, she sounded very friendly over the phone anyway) and she's very much concerned about the level of English that Italian children are being taught. I already told you the story about that little lad who's had five years of English in primary school and who can't even say something basic and simple like "How are you?". The head master wants to do something about it and heard about me as an "English mothertongue" teacher. Even though the word "mothertongue" is a big exaggeration, I was honoured to receive her request for help and I assured her that it would be a real pleasure to become a part-time teacher at the two schools for which she is responsible. She offered me a contract for 16 hours a week, 8 at each school, and for a very interesting salary too. The details still have to be finalised of course; for the moment she only had to be certain that I was interested. In any case it would be just perfect for me because a part-time job will allow me to make myself useful to the community without (hopefully) overstressing myself. It'd give me enough time to recover and to remain my "normal" self. She'll contact me later this week in order to sit together and discuss all of this a bit better and to share some ideas about a better approach at teaching English. Since I completed this TEFL course I have quite a lot of them, such as games and other fun exercises which will let the children assimilate with the language in a much more pleasant and above all effective way than simply learning words and grammar rules by heart. Oh yes, I'll be very well prepared and motivated! :-)

The lessons should start in March so I'll keep you informed about how well it goes! Oh... I'm so excited! Finally things really seem to be going our way now. I think that we deserved it after all the hard times and I'm sure that you'd agree with me on that. So... on with OUR NEW LIFE IN ITALY!!!