You'll remember that half-December I received a phonecall from an English teacher of a local secondary school, offering me a part-time job? Well, from thereon I hadn't heard a peep anymore. Slowly I began to wonder whether it had all been merely a dream and I was getting a bit disappointed. I had been looking forward to this opportunity so much... Anyway, I wasn't going to give up that easily and last week I drove to that school in person in order to find out if the offer was real and if it was still standing.
The school is situated in the lovely little town of Busana. In direct it's only a couple of miles from our house. But unfortunately there isn't any direct road and in all it took me over half an hour in order to get there. That's because I have to cross the Secchia valley and there are only two bridges nearby, both of which take me to a totally different direction. But the sun was shining brilliantly again (actually, today we've got 25° in the sun!) and the road is just stunningly beautiful. When you're used to the nice, straight roads of the Flemish countryside, these winding mountain trails may come as a little shock. At first they seem tedious and nerve-wrecking. But as soon as you discover the beauty of the landscape you're cruising through, it becomes a totally different story and half an hour seems to go by in a whizz. The school is a reasonably modern building in red brick and all seemed perfectly quiet. I parked the car and walked to the entrance, where a man kindly greeted me. I explained who I was and asked if the job offer was still standing. The man turned out to be the head master and he told me that only Mara, the English teacher who had phoned me, would be able to tell me. He confirmed that there was indeed a project going on where they would ask a native English speaker to assist in class for a 16-hour contract, divided between this school and their subsidiary in Ramiseto. He gave me Mara's phone number and urged me to give her a call the following day, as she wasn't present at school at the time.
And so I did. Mara turned out to be the same enthusiastic person I spoke to over a month ago and I stressed how much I would love to take the job. But... there had been an unfortunate coincidence. Her Ramiseto colleague had already offered the job to another English speaker, without having informed her. But on the bright side, she would try to divide the offer between the two, so I'd get 8 hours in Busana and the other person 8 hours in Ramiseto. It only seemed fair that way. She also asked me to drop by at her house to discuss the matter in greater detail.
When I arrived, Mara was already waving at me from the door. She greeted me like if I was a king and kindly invited me in. She asked me about my past and about our decision to come and live in Italy. From her side, she told me that she had graduated from University twenty years ago and confessed that her English had suffered a lot since then because she hadn't had any serious conversations in this language anymore. As a student she still regularly visited London. But after that she had always remained in Italy. She also confessed that with the children in class you could still easily get away with an error but she realised that this was not the proper thing to do. I was very impressed about that because at least she admitted that she had a problem and was prepared to do something about it. Much unlike the teacher of the boy I'm still giving private courses to who insists that you have to pronounce "key" as "kay" and when asked "How are you?" you should just reply "Fine" and that "I'm fine, thank you" is actually wrong! Mara also told me that since my visit to the school the teachers are constantly talking about me and they would be so happy if I were to take the job! :-) So the first impression I made must have been quite positive. I also explained some of the ideas I had about teaching the children, with the aid of games such as trivia, "who am I?", snakes and ladders, role-playing games etc. and Mara was thrilled about this idea. In the end, she asked if I wouldn't be interested in giving a small refresher course to her and anoter colleague of her, which I gladly accepted.
So now the contract is signed. I officially have a job! :-) Oh... there was just one minor misunderstanding... It's not 8 hours a week. It's 8 hours for the rest of the school year, so only one hour a week from the beginning of March onwards. But that's allright. It's a start, isn't it? And most probably I'll get the Ramiseto class as from the next school year as well.
Mara urged me to go and talk to other schools as well, which I did. I already went to Carpineti's secondary school and also there I received a very warm welcome. Especially when I heard the primary school children practise the English alphabet out loud and commented to one of the secretaries how good they were at it. The secretary immediately went upstairs to the children and came back down with a little, black girl by her hand. The girl was obviously shy and held a big plastic bag full of sweets firmly against her chest. Oh... she was so adorable, with her hair tied in all these little tails. I asked her how she was (in English) and she replied with a frail voice: "I'm fine, thank you". Then I asked her about her name and she said, so faintly I could hardly hear it, that her name was Deborah. Then, she offered me the bag. I said (in total amazement) "Oh... is this for me???". She nodded. So when at the same moment the head master asked me to step into her office for a chat, I was still holding the entire bag of sweets. That should've gone down well as a first impression also. :-D In the end, I returned the bag because I wouldn't want to rob these little children of their sweets of course.
One thing's for sure: I'm definitely going to find my way in my new home country. Not that I intend to work full-time again because I've learnt the hard way that this will be impossible for me. But I'm still going to contribute to society as much as I can.
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