A Funny Thing about Teaching

Well, a funny thing about teaching Italians, specifically.

First, I need to tell you something about the Italian language.  First, look at this, it’s a random article in Italian.  Look at the endings of the vast majority of words.  What do they have in common?  Almost all Italian words end in vowels (with the exception of a few small words like con (with) and some words taken from other languages like computer (same in Italian)).

Now, knowing that, imagine a tiny classroom.  It’s me and one Italian who has been speaking this language where words only end with vowels.  And they are just beginning to learn the English language.  What do you think that sounds like?

The most recent BSG

Oh…my…God…

Okay, this show has never been light and fluffy.  I started watching the new version of Galactica, loved it, and tried to watch some of the old show.  It was unbearable.  I tried again about a year ago and when I saw the crew of Galactica head to a casino planet mere hours after their entire civilization had been destroyed, I turned it off and will never look back.  It’s dishonest about its characters and situations and so cheesy it gives Cheet-O’s a bad name, plus it’s so obviously a cheap Star Wars knock off that I can’t excuse it for anything.

Awesome. Or not.

Well, this new version of Battlestar comes along and feeds on our post 9.11 fears.  People are scared all the time.  The bad guys are complex and terrifying in their monstrosities.  Characters have flaws and will never become the perfect beacons of light that have blighted Star Trek for the last thirty years.  It’s also been dark and willing to talk about subjects that are unpleasant (abortion, euthenasia, and alcohol abuse come to mind) while taking its characters through Hell (the occupation on New Caprica was just brutal).

But now, there is a new level of wow.

Forever

and a day. That’s how long it’s been since I last posted.

I could make excuses (my internet was out, I wasn’t doing anything, and giant bees attacked are all valid reasons), but the solid fact of the matter is that I haven’t written anything here.

What have I been doing?

Well, there was the Christmas potluck at Sara and Jen’s apartment where we had a healthy mixture of dogs in a blanket, chili, mashed potatoes, and pasta on Christmas Eve.  There was New Years where Allison and I were almost destroyed by Italians and their fireworks.  Stuff was exploding mere feet above my head.  Twas a good time.  The locals also seemed to be trying to light a tree on fire through fireworks explosions.  My guess is that they got pretty close but couldn’t quite pull it off, cause that tree is still standing.  This was all in front of the Coliseum where over a million people gathered to usher in the new year.  It was like a giant block party filled with people from every corner of the globe.  We were there for about twenty minutes and left about five minutes after midnight.  Good times.  Good times.

I’ve been writing a good bit, but not nearly as much as I should have been.  I’ve reached Chapter 6 of my rewrite (the second draft is now 124 pages long with another 320 to go in the original draft).  I’m not sure if I’m going to reach my goal of finishing the rewrite by my birthday.  Well, looks like I should hunker down and work, right?

I’m back to work teaching on one side of the city and then on the other about three seconds later.  It’s good, except when I sub for a teacher who quit because she couldn’t deal with the screaming 9 year olds.  I played cop for an hour and ten minutes out of the hour and a half class.  I had to hold the smallest kid up at one point so the others would stop hitting him.  It was chaos and I just feel bad for those who have to do it all the time.  I’m just hoping that I don’t end up having to, although when my normal class does end (the one that I normally have at that time) I have a strong feeling that I’m gonna be right back there.  I can’t wait!

Overall, I love it here.  Rome is a beautiful city (I go to a church every Sunday that has been standing in one form or another for over seventeen hundred years).  I enjoy my job most of the time, and I have enough free time to both enjoy the city and get lost in my own little worlds that I try to put down on paper.

I promise that I will begin writing here more.  It’s a failing on my part, and I will do my best to keep it up.  Shoot me a line if you feel like I haven’t posted enough.  I throw something up.  Maybe about a movie, or about some slice of life here.  I’ll do something.

Until next time…whenever that manages to be…

Roma – Cagliari 3-2

So, Tuesday was Nick’s birthday, so to celebrate, the three of us (me, Allison, and the birthday boy) went to a football game on Sunday.

Rome Stadium. Where the Olympics were held millions of years ago...

Rome is flooding

Okay, so some of you might know that the level of the Tiber River is rising.  And it is pretty dramatic.

Here is the Tiber at normal levels:

Not taken by me and at magic hour. But you can see the embankments on the right.

And here is the Tiber now:

Taken by me, not at magic hour, but you can see that there is no longer an embankment on the right.

As you can tell, the embankment is completely underwater.

On reading

There was a time in my life when I hated to read.  It was called college.

You see, I don’t like it when I have to read a lot of something that I don’t want to in a very short amount of time.  I really don’t like Virginia Wolfe, nor do I care about T.S. Eliot.  Just not my thing, but I had to read barrels of the stuff.  In reality, I read about a quarter of what I needed to, and yet I still walked out of the program with a B average.  Whatever.

Anyway, all of that non-reading left me little time for my own, so it stopped.  About a year ago, I started again, by finishing Don Quixote, a book I had started about three years before, got to the halfway point, and just stopped.  I loved it, of course.

On writing

I’ve finally started writing again.

You all remember that I am writing a book?  You see, I was “rewriting” Chapter 4 for about five months.  And by rewriting, I of course mean not even thinking about the book for about two weeks at a time, writing a page, and then proceeding to forget about the book again.

Languages

Alright, I’ve been building these thoughts in my mind for a little while.

Right now, I’m learning two languages:  Italian and French.  I teach a language, so you’d think that I would take the method that I apply to my students every day and use it on myself, right?  Nope.  I hate that method.  It’s not the all English classroom, I think that that’s a great idea.  It’s that the student is forced to begin to activate grammar on the first day, even when he doesn’t know a whole lot of English words to use the grammar with.

Z

It’s a movie.  You must see it.

Angry political filmmaking like this just doesn’t get made anymore.  Which is a giant shame.

Thanksgiving in Rome

So my friend Sarah decided that we would all celebrate Thanksgiving on Sunday instead of Thursday because you know,…the Romans have no idea what Thanksgiving is and refused giving us Thursday off because of it.  Oh well, it worked out beautifully.

First, there were a little over a dozen of us.  Mostly from the TEFL program, and a few people from Sarah’s place of work at the New British Center.  Cora, Nick, Allison, and I showed up together.  We brought three bottles of wine, a big bowl of mashed potatoes, and Cora (that crazy Brit) brought friend eggplant parmeasan (she’ll say it was aubergine, but don’t listen to her, she’s crazy).  When we got there, there were already about a dozen bottles of wine, so our three just added to the insanity.

We started with pasta (we live in Rome) before moving on to the delicious sides from everyone else.  Stuff from bean salad and some kind of delicious sweet potato dish (props to Ellie’s grandma for both) along with two different kinds of stuffing, a couple kinds of cranberry sauce, and some carrots.  All were delicious.  Then came the turkey and gravy.  Devinely cooked by Sarah.

Then came three pies.  One was apple (God bless America).  One was pumpkin (ditto).  And the third was of an indeterminate nature, but was yummy none the less.

Just keep in mind that through all of this, I’m drinking pretty heavily.

Oh, and the girls start singing.  And when these girls get together, they sing Disney songs.  Usually from Pocahontas.  Shudder.

We played sherades (I continued to drink).  We talked.  Ellie passed out on the couch.  Nick went home early.  It was all pretty typical for when you get this group together.

Allison and I had to duck out a bit earlier than we wanted, but it was obvious of two things.  First, we were about to miss the last metro trains.  And second, Sarah has seen too much of her stuff get damaged or covered in gravy/booze.  Good times.  Good times.

I didn’t take any pictures, but if anyone puts some on Facebook, you bet I’ll put them here.

Wish Bryan was here to enjoy this with me.  (Bryan!  You have to come!!!)