All the same, I'm now temporarily back in Italy with a few spare minutes to share my latest thoughts and experiences with you, all the while being grateful that my Italian hasn't left me since being away and that the city and the people (and the food) are just as great as I remember them. I was finally able to enjoy a truly good coffee after two months of the frenchies' failed attempts to prove that they can rival their neighbours and you can never go wrong with an italian cooking you a decent plate of pasta. Moving out of my house to move into a new apartment in a couple weeks time I found all my old italian notes from when I just arrived to Bologna with things such as "Che ore sono?" (What time is it?) and laughed at the fact I felt I had to write something down which now comes so naturally to me. It's encouraging to see improvement that's for sure - I really used to be so horrendously useless at Italian.
The other day I came across another blog post titled 'The Things We Learn From Strangers' and it reminded me of a flight I took from Texas to London a couple years ago in which I spent six hours chatting to the guy next to me who came from such a completely different background - a young dad of five home-schooled kids who had never left the US. Always (arguably unfairly) skeptical of americans from Texas and having had these views confirmed while waiting to board the plane at the gate I wasn't very enthusiastic when he struck up conversation and started asking question after question about life in Europe but six hours later my mind had been changed and I was left reflecting on his way of life back in the States. As this blog post says, you really can learn something from everyone you meet. Though I have met so many great people during Erasmus (and even before), how many people have I actually kept in touch with after our hour, day, week, or month of being best friends? Honestly, very few... but that doesn't mean I haven't remembered stories they've shared with me, things I've learnt from them or experiences we've enjoyed together.
Last week, my boss invited me to go with her and her husband to a private concert in Toulouse. Never one to say no to a free concert, especially when there's a piano concerto involved, I came along and found myself in the centre of the upper-class, bourgeois bubble of toulousain society. Turns out the concert was sponsored by big companies in Toulouse and so was essentially a lovely example of industry and culture in Toulouse coming together but I questioned whether the majority of the people there really had an interest in classical music or whether they were just there by obligation. Sat opposite the head of Toulouse airport, nearby one of the bosses at airbus and finding myself a few metres away from the new elected mayor of Toulouse during the interval I felt slightly out of place as a student wearing my denim jacket and trainers but certainly enjoyed observing the beautiful manicured wifes that they all had on their arms and realising that all the really important men seem to have incredibly big noses. Is that just a coincidence? My boss not really being one for cosying up to people and engaging in small talk about the weather and how Fabienne* and Jacques* from a dinner party months ago are doing, we greatly enjoyed people-watching from a distance while making the move to secure prime central seats during the interval.
A couple days later I was brought back to earth when I went to another concert of my own accord and was met with crowds of people outside and a completely locked concert hall. Ten minutes of waiting and listening to surrounding frenchies getting angrier and angrier about the lack of information, a window on the second floor opens and a woman pops her head out to explain that protestors somehow got into the hall during the day, haven't let the orchestra rehearse and are unwilling to move or even negotiate in order to facilitate the running of the concert. How bizarre. The french really do just strike or protest whenever and wherever they feel like it.
I recently realised how ridiculously easy it is to make a bit of pocket money teaching english. It's a language that an incredible amount of people want to learn and being a native english speaker means that people will jump at the chance to rack your brains for an hour trying to extract and take in as much of the language as they can. To this end, I decided to complete an online TEFL course so I do feel somewhat qualified to actually teach english even just for a couple hours a week. Some parts of the course involved considering different ways to teach the language in terms of whether to start with grammar, vocabulary, or to get people speaking from day one even without any exposure to the language. It made me think about teaching grammar - or even using grammar that I've learnt for my languages but then receiving the reaction "yeah but no one says that!" Well, why are we learning it then?! So it's 'technically' correct but the majority of the people speaking that language don't say it like that and don't really tend to use it in written language either. Who is this person who has decided that the most common form is the 'incorrect' one or the 'correct' one is the one that no one uses. Surely, the 'correct' way of speaking would be the way to most effectively express yourself in line with the current use and development of the language of the people you are talking to. Rant over.
I'm being summoned to make lunch and I haven't even got round to sharing my excitement for month of fun round 2 which is starting in no less than 29 days....
A la prochaine,
xxx
*insert any typically french names
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| A private tour of the Toulouse Observatory |
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| Toulouse at it's finest on the first warm evening of the year |
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| The perks of teaching english to children |
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| Easter Sunday brunch in line with typical french traditions |
