I’m feeling a bit homesick today. I’ve managed to get
through a whole month of my assistantship, and it’s flown by in a blur of textbooks,
timetables, and terrible diagrams of ‘my kitchen’ and ‘my bedroom’ on the
blackboard. While it feels like it’s gone by in a flash, it still seems like a
l-o-n-g way to Christmas, and even though I keep telling myself I’m pretty much
halfway there, I can’t help feeling a bit sad. I keep reminding myself that I
should make the most of it, and enjoy every day, and I know that this time next
year I’ll be in Glasgow, cursing the rain and the sub-zero temperatures,
wishing I was back in Sicily, but right now I just miss my family, and my
friends, and I miss Glasgow, because I know all the Christmas lights will be
going up, and I love the run-up to Christmas. It’s getting cold, but it doesn’t
feel even remotely Christmassy here. I’ve had a good couple of weeks though; I
even tried my hand at making some worksheets for the class, which resulted in a
LOT of second-years sniggering at me and my utter lack of artistic skill. I
told them I didn’t care how bad the drawings were, just to get on filling in
the verbs (oh yes, how teacher-y I have become!) It’s the school holidays now,
just a few days, back on Monday, but it’s nice to have a few lie-ins after
getting up for school 6 days a week for a month.
Last Saturday I finally got out of Cefalù for the afternoon.
One of the teachers I’ve been working with, Rosa Maria, had mentioned that I
could come along some time when she takes her daughter to dance lessons in a
town called Termini Imerese, about 40km up the coast towards Palermo. She told
me there wasn’t a lot to do in the town, but seemed amused at my enthusiasm at
the idea. It turned out that Termini isn’t the most exciting place in the
world, and my hopes for a H&M or Zara were left unsatisfied, but it was
really nice to spend the afternoon with a bit of different scenery. It was pretty
misty and cloudy, so the photos I took look a bit vague, but I think I’ll go
back on a clear day and get some nice shots by the coast.
If there was ever any question of whether I’m being looked
after well here, well I'm definitely being fed properly. I was very kindly given a whole sackful of homemade Sicilian
food by Rosa Maria’s mother last week (4 jars of jam, jars of pasta sauce,
pesto, fish, rice…), in addition to a huge pile of fruit, vegetables and eggs
by Cettina, and this week I’ve been taken out for lunch and for dinner. I’m
going to be the size of a HOUSE by the time I get back to Glasgow! A very happy
house, but still…
It’s probably just as well I’ve got all this food, because
it’s suddenly become very cold this week. By cold, I don’t just mean that I
haven’t been to the beach – on Tuesday night I went out wearing jeans with
leggings underneath. I know that I’m not getting any sympathy – everyone back
in Glasgow just says ‘HA! Well at least it’s not SNOWING!’ – but it really is
something when it’s exactly the same temperature inside as outside (it’s true –
I confirmed it in a very scientific way by sticking my head out the window) and
you have to create a nest of blankets in the middle of your bed just to retain
the feeling in your toes. However, this (nesting) has resulted in most
afternoons this week being lost to long, luxurious naps, and not an awful lot
else being achieved. I realise I probably should, but I struggle to see this as
a bad thing.
I had some lovely visitors on Tuesday. My friend Joel, from
Gibraltar is working for a charity in Palermo, and since his parents are over
to see him for the week, they came through to Cefalù for the afternoon, and it
was great to see some familiar faces! They asked me to recommend somewhere nice
for lunch, explaining that they hadn’t had the best luck with restaurants since
arriving in Sicily, and I told them that I’d heard there's a great pizzeria at the end of the
Città Vecchia, I just wasn’t sure which one (as the street is full of them). I
joked that I knew the name of a girl who worked there, so maybe we could just
walk along calling her name, when the manager standing outside of the
restaurants overheard and told us ‘No, she’s not here right now, she’s working
tonight though…’ And so the decision was made. It was a lovely place, with
views out over the ocean, and the food was great! It was brilliant to catch up
with Joel and his family, and it was fun showing them around Cefalù, I’ve
become quite proud of this little town I’m calling ‘home’ for 8 months.
After being here for nearly 6 weeks, and having been
teaching for a month now, I really feel that my grasp of the Italian language
is coming on quite well. When I first arrived, I struggled to string the most
basic sentences together, and mostly communicated through mime and a lot of
eyebrow-waggling. Now, I can easily ask for things in shops, and hold actual,
fairly sensible conversations with students and other teachers. I suspect they
still think I’m a bit simple, but I’m improving, slowly, and definitely
becoming more confident with it. I’m not worried now if someone corrects me, I
know that they’re trying to be helpful, and I try not to get embarrassed if I
get something wrong. I think it’s probably quite good for my students to see me
making the odd mistake with Italian, because then they don’t worry about making
mistakes in front of me.
I’ve bought an Italian magazine, so over the weekend I’ll
try and pick it up and read through it. Even if it takes 10 times longer than
it would to read an English magazine, I know I’ll feel pretty pleased with
myself if I get to the end of it. I’ve tried to watch a bit of Italian television,
I know it would help with learning the language, but everything I’ve seen so
far has been terrible! Every time I’ve found a programme in the tv guide that I’ve
thought ‘That sounds alright, I could watch that,’ the schedule’s been wrong,
and it’s been ANOTHER episode of The (Italian) Apprentice, or a very rapid,
over-excited sports reporter jabbering away so quickly that the only words I
can catch are the names of the teams. I will persevere, because I really want
to be fluent by the end of my time here. It would be a waste to go back to
Glasgow and still be terrified of Italian grammar.
I’m very excited to be going to Palermo tomorrow. I’d been
warned that it’s quite a dangerous city if you don’t know where you’re going,
and I know I have a tendency to look like a clueless tourist, even when I know
exactly where I am, so I didn’t want to go there alone. I mentioned to one of
my students that I would like to visit, and she very excitedly came up to me at
the beginning of the week, to tell me that she would be going to Palermo at the
weekend, and asking if I’d like to join her. I’m sure that a bit of sightseeing
will cheer me up, and anyway, it’s only 7 weeks today until I fly home for
Christmas (not that I’m counting or anything)! I’ve got my camera ready, and a
shopping list in my head. I hope the weather’s good, so that I can make
everyone jealous with my sunny photos, and I will write all about it this
weekend!!
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