England

England now.  I was supposed to come back to England on the 6th June, but after Easter it all got a bit good.  It was at that point, kind of April-time, that I actually felt pretty settled in to the little life I’d carved out for myself out there.  It wasn’t bad before, apart from some boring spells in the winter, but it took that amount of months to get properly into the swing of it and think, hey, I like this, this is really good.

So I changed my flight to come back on the 19th August and I had myself a lovely summer.    I wrote the previous post when my students had finished their exams.  After that, work didn’t actually stop completely, it just went down to a steady and pleasant trickle of individual lessons, which I kept in the mornings so I had afternoons free to lye down on the beach and other important activities.  I never got used to the holiday-life-on-the-doorstep thing, so the fact that I could go and have a mini-seaside holiday made me delighted every day that I did it.  Apart from that, general life was just as easy as it is when you’ve been living there on your own for a full calendar year.  I just didn’t have day-to-day issues at all.

The thing with going to a place like Modica is that it’s a normal-life type place, not an Erasmus-placement type place.  This was a disadvantage sometimes - it would have certainly been easier to have some friends who were doing the same thing as me.  However, the end result is that I didn’t feel like I was on some kind of process/programme/scheme thing; by the time I got used to it, I felt like I was just living my normal life.  In the build-up to leaving, it was just difficult to get my head round it.  I liked my house, I was enjoying the challenge of a new job and I had a nice network of people around me - I didn’t really feel like I should be leaving, and it seemed very far removed from my situation that there should be a degree programme telling me it was time to come back to England.

My brother and sister came out right at the end of my stay, and my sister got my flight back with me so I could have her baggage allowance.  Big kudos for a huge amount of help packing up, cleaning up and getting going.  Having guests was just the right motivation to not sulk for the last couple of weeks too.

Since I’ve come back, I’ve had a fair amount of out-and-out sadness, but much more just foggy head syndrome.  It has been such a big change that I just haven’t properly come down to earth yet.

I am sure that I’ll be in Sicily again.  The jury’s out on whether it’s a good place to actually live - the thing is that the placement gave me something different and a bit out there that I wouldn’t have done on my own, so I always sort of thought that, apart from a holiday or two, that’d be it for me and the little island.  I don’t know, I’m not drawing any conclusions at all.  I miss it already and I liked my little life there.  What an incredible year.

I still have some stuff I would like to record - little anecdotes and things that I haven’t written yet, so keep on checking if you’re interested.  Thank you for reading.

Work summer work summer work summer work summer

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last wrote.  In those weeks I have started and finished another job.  I have been working at the private English language school since the beginning of June.  My lovely students have their exams tomorrow and Friday, so the lessons finished today.  It has been an intense part of the academic year to be there - just the two months before the exams, and these last two weeks in particular, I have really been pushed to my limits.  I’m. So. Tired.  But it has been amazing.  I have been incredibly unbelievably lucky to be able to build on my assistantship - it was just co-incidence of what I was doing and what this school was doing that allowed this amazing opportunity to happen.

It has made me more sure that this year isn’t going to be the extent of my teaching ‘career’.  I just like it too much.  It was great to teach in quite a different environment, with small groups and individuals in a custom-created environment with an interactive whiteboard and everything.  I said goodbye to my favourite students a few hours ago.  I’m not meant to have favourites, fine, whatever, then sue me.  But I had this class on my first day, and I messed up the lesson completely, but I love them as people, so ever since then they’ve been my little project.  Giving them my final advice for tomorrow’s exam, I felt really sad that I won’t get to teach them again.

In the rest of my life, I have been having a fully lovely time.  It has been proper beach weather for maybe six weeks.  I live about half an hour’s bus ride from the beach, and I have been there nearly every week.  The weather is great, and I’m very happy.  The only niggling thing is that my time is running out much faster than I am comfortable with.

Bye bye school

Wrote this yesterday, once more... no internet at home

I’ve done it.  This has been one of the strangest weeks that I remember, it has been simply impossible to get my head around the idea that the biggest part of my life this year is coming to an end.

The last lessons started on Monday - I only have each class once a week, so every lesson was a set of goodbyes.  Three lessons on Monday morning with my little ones (that’s what I call them, they’re actually year 9 and 10) started the theme of cake in every lesson.  They were a bit excited about the whole cake situation, and obviously being the younger ones they don’t know as much English as the others, but nice things were said by me and by them, and it was really very lovely.

On Tuesday I finished working with two of my colleagues, and my students went a bit further with the lessons - they shouted ‘surprise’ as I walked in, and they did a thank you speech, and we got through another massive tray of biscuits.  Another class gave me a cuddly cat (they’d asked me the lesson before what my favourite animal was).

On Wednesday I had the last lesson with an amazing class, who I’ve always got on well with.  In those lessons I spend a lot of time laughing.  We had a fun lesson, and we’re all going out for pizza tonight, together with my wonderful colleague, the real English teacher at school.  I was glad that I didn’t have to say bye to them then.

Then today I woke up, after not a great deal of sleep.  When I saw my colleague we said we’d have to just brush over the whole last day thing for now because we didn’t want to be sad.  I walked into my first class and there was another big tray of biscuits.  We made a toast (as in like a cheers toast, when you lift your cup up) with some Coca Cola.  I didn’t say goodbye well enough - when it got to the vital moment near the end of the lesson when I should have said stuff, I forgot everything and so we just took a photo.  

The next lesson (in which one of the girls had made a chocolate cake), I remembered all I wanted to say, be good, learn English etc.  The final lesson, they had brought in the most amazing cake.  It was big, covered in chocolate and pistachio, with a marzipan bit on the top, with writing that said ‘See You Soon’.  There were the tops of some white roses on the cake, and then a red rose on the desk, which I’ve brought home.  It was the most beautiful cake I’ve ever had anything to do with.  After we’d eaten for a bit, they did a bit of a discussion in groups about language learning (an attempt to choose an appropriate final-lesson theme).  Then we had a discussion all together for the last five minutes, talking about why it’s important to learn languages and what you can do with them.  At various points I wasn’t totally sure I’d manage to say everything at the end, but we concluded nicely actually.  My students were the epitome of all that was good - they were absolutely lovely to me all week, but particularly in that last hour when I think they understood a bit of what this has all been for me as well.

For some reason, ever since I finished at school at midday, I’ve been in a pretty normal mood.  I think it’ll take a few days to sink in that the thing that I’ve thought about most for the last year has actually finished, it’s just so strange.  

At the worst points in the last nine months, a good lesson was the thing that cheered me up, and the thing that motivated me to keep slogging away at this whole Sicilian thing.  Apart from the fact that the job was the reason I was put here, it was also the reason I stayed.  I mean, it took a while for life here to get as amazing as it is now, and if I hadn’t loved my job, I’m not 100% sure I would have seen it through the winter.  I don’t know what else I can say about it now.  It’s just been amazing.

So now, the summer.  Still teaching, but at the English language school up the hill.  Just a few weeks of normal lessons and then a summer camp by the seaside.

I’m so glad I’m not leaving Modica, and I’m very excited about my summer plans.  I’m so glad I’ll still be teaching, because I love it.  Roll on the next stage of the Modican life.

Nearly there...

I wrote this on Monday, but this is the first time since then I've been at the internet with my computer...

It is getting hard to think that I’m only going to get to see my kids once or twice more.  I am putting a massive effort into planning my lessons now that all the time seems so precious and scarce.

My last week of lessons, after a useful suggestion from my friend Sally, is going to be focused on the usefulness of language learning, English in particular, in the world at the moment.  I am planning those lessons at the moment, and I just got a big wave of a feeling that’s something like sadness, maybe with a bit of worry, about these kids.  I have tried the best I can to show them that the world outside of this small Sicilian town is big and multilingual, and I really hope that this is something that they’ll take away with them.  These kids are every bit as sharp and intelligent as kids in a good, high-ability school in any other part of the world, but in this corner of Europe they don’t have as much exposure to travelling or other cultures as in my own part of the continent.  This was my reason for doing this job - the idealistic aspiration to bring a subject to life a little bit for a small amount of people, because they really do need English for a lot of things.

It’s difficult to feel motivated to fulfill the ideology in every waking moment, and now I’m so close to the end of my job, I’m worrying about the times I did my lesson planning so begrudgingly, and when I was looking forward to going home, or when they haven’t liked the activity I’ve given them.

I think in real world terms, that’s taking into account that sometimes you’re tired or have a headache or the students are naughty and it’s disheartening, I’ve tried as hard as I can.  It’s not over yet, I have another seven days of teaching, but it’s getting so eerily soon.

Today I reminded my three Monday classes that next week is my last week.  Of course they hadn’t remembered what I’d told them right at the beginning of the year, and it took them by surprise, and it was quite humbling that they were sorry to hear it.  As a person striving to be a good teacher, I try to think first about what the experience is like for them, blah blah.  This post so far has obviously missed out a large piece of the picture.  I have learnt an immeasurable amount from this job.  Firstly the fact of it being my first proper serious job, kind of professional, with responsibility and all of that, that I need to think about a lot and really apply myself to.  Secondly, the personal nature of it.  I have been lucky to meet very many lovely people who are my students and colleagues.  I am free to do what I want in my hour-long slots, so I’ve found a lot of time for lovely interesting conversations, and much as I go on about them understanding the culture behind the language, it’s very much a two-way process.

And of course, the job was the reason for me coming to live all the way out here instead of just going to a university city like a more conventional year abroad student.

I’m getting my head round that weird feeling of a big impending change, that makes you back-evaluate everything, and think back to how wonderful all the wonderful bits were.  

Bloopers

If anyone reading this is considering working as a tefl teacher, think of the big advantage: you get to listen to amazing English mistakes on a regular basis.  I have tried to remember the best ones as I’ve gone along.  In the majority of cases, I’ve kept my composure in the class itself but had to have a good laugh about it later.  Occasionally it’s just been too funny.  Here are the best ones that I can remember:

‘William and Kate’s baby will probably be a girl or a boy’

‘Tower Bridge opens when the shits go down the river’ (should have been ships)

I point to the word ‘shouted’

Me - ‘How do you pronounce this word’

Student, confidently - ‘shitted’

Back story: in Italian you can say ‘Maria!’ in a similar way to ‘oh God’! or ‘for God’s sake!’ in English.

In one class, there was a lot of chatting going on.

My wonderful colleague - Can you all stop chatting and focus on the English lesson? Maria!

Student (making fun of what we’re always saying to them) - Speak in English!  Not Maria! Mary! Mary!

Student wrote the word ‘coconut’ on her desk, and pointed to it, looked at me and said ‘okay?’

I didn’t understand her question and got the giggles.

Italians have problems with English vowel sounds, which sometimes works out well for me and my entertainment.

Student - ‘I love the bitch’

Me - ‘Where were you?’

Him - ‘In the bitch’  (should have been ‘on the beach’)

Me - ‘What do you think foreigners think of first when they think of Italy?’

Her - ‘Beautiful bitches’

One time a student got a massive fit of giggles when I was talking about their ‘worksheet’, and I did a mini-lesson to him and the student next to him about the difference between ‘shit’ and ‘sheet’, ‘bitch’ and ‘bitch’, ‘fuck’ and ‘fork’.  Bless them, we’ve set out a lot of traps for a very small difference in a vowel sound.

One time I was helping an English teacher friend with some practice oral exams.  This took place in exam conditions.

Me - ‘Do you like listening to English language music?’

Him - ‘Oh yes, you know the new Pink song?  *Sings* ‘just give me a reason just a na na na na na’, that one?’

Me - ‘Erm, yes?’

Him - ‘I like singing along to that one in my car’

Now these aren’t mine, but of other language assistants in Sicily.  We text each other when someone says something really good.

‘The beautiful bitches of Venice’

‘The wild bitches of Florida’

‘English people are forced to have lunch in the pub’

‘If you don’t want cock and you still want something hot’ (should have been ‘to cook...’)

In written work ‘I love the bitch’

Even though real crackers don’t happen every day, I do have a funny quotation or anecdote after the majority of school days, which makes me remember that I love my job.

Springtime

I am aware that the majority of people who read this are British, and I am therefore very hesitant to even hint at not having liked winter, because I have little to complain about temperature-wise or precipitation-wise or sunshine-wise compared to you people in Britain.  However, winter is the worst time of year wherever you are, and the really key difference between there and here is that this is a country designed around a hot climate.  They have such good weather for a decent chunk of the year that during the winter months they stay in and wait for it to finish.  Every cafe and bar has outside seating, which is little used from November to March, making a massive difference to how the town feels.  Nights out are quiet and subdued, and are finished way before dawn.  Italian shops are closed for the pausa, a break in the middle of the day, from 13.00 till about 16.30 - sensible in the summer when the heat is unbearable in the middle of the day, but in the winter is takes away the most useful part of the day.  I work in the mornings, so more often than not I’d have to go to the supermarket in the dark.  They all sound like such little things, but you know how they accumulate, and a few months into winter you just think FOR GOODNESS SAKE ENOUGH!!!

Winter was tough.  We got some sunny days that I know didn’t reach Britain, and they helped immensely with the sanity.  However, this town is already small, and when it goes into its winter hibernation it’s not a fun place to be.  This culture is lacking the British steadfastness - we don’t stop what we’re doing so intensely as they do, clearly because we Brits don’t have the promise of better weather round the corner.  It is also lacking in the cosyness - the log fires, the cosy cafes with cups of tea.  The strong point of the country is its many good months; the rest are better best forgotten.

However, it is getting better at a very pleasing rate.  We had a whole load of false starts to spring triggered by a combination of a sunny day and desperation for spring to arrive.  The clocks changed while I was away for Easter, and the long days, combined with a noticeable increase in temperature, has really made a difference.  The gelato places are opening up again and people are sitting outside them.  Today I did two loads of washing because the first one dried quickly in the heat of the sun for the first time since October, and I’ve had the window open all day.  At the weekend, we had our first good long night out of 2013.  We’re really within touching distance of beach weather.

It helps, of course, that I am refreshed from my visit home and then my mum’s visit here: seeing all the people I need to see tops up my wellbeing for a while, but Modica also feels better than those long winter months.

My plans are not set yet, but I have been reliably informed that life here continues to get better from now on, so I’m thinking I do need to stay for at least a bit of the summer, which means coming home at the beginning of June has a question mark over it.

It’s strange to be in my last 6 weeks of teaching.  It only feels like a short amount of time when I think I’m actually only going to see each of my classes another 5 or 6 times.  I have been very very lucky with my job.  At the end of the day it’s still a job, with all of its bad days and bad weeks and ‘oh please not today’ early mornings, but I know I couldn’t really have had a much nicer thing to get out of bed for in the morning, and even now the novelty’s worn off, my favourite part of the day is often in my classroom.

So, I was expecting the after-Easter post to be talking about entering my last stage of my year abroad, but as it is I’m not sure.  It’s more of an ‘oh, this is nice!’ post.  The next few months are uncertain, but I’m pretty content as I am at the moment.  

Six months later

Yesterday was the six month point of my stay in Modica, and it was also the day that my friend, also called Laura, who arrived in Modica the same day as me to be an au pair, went back to England.  It’s strange to have lost the person who has lived this experience simultaneously to me from the beginning, and we will miss her so much.  All this, combined with a visit from one of my best friends from home with whom the biggest catch-up was overdue, has left me thinking about my experience so far: how I would even start to go about explaining what I’ve done, seen and learnt so far this year, particularly in context of what I expected to achieve and experience.  I should point out that I did launch into this year like a bit of a leap into the dark, I couldn’t really envisage what my life would be like, but here we go anyway.

I was told before coming that it would be so great for my Italian to come out here, where nobody speaks English and I’ll be thrown into the depths of provincial Southern Sicily.  Well, yes and no.  My previous time abroad has been in Perugia, a cosmopolitan international town in Italy which experiences a constant and large influx of foreign students going there to learn Italian, so the easiest and quickest friends to make are fellow foreigners.  You cling together in your collective foreign-ness, spotting characteristics of your host country and being united in your non-belonging.  However, it being an Italian university town means that there are also Italian students, and other Italian people, to make friends with, and given their constant exposure to foreigners, they are not confused by your presence in Italy or your foreign-ness, and if they chose to be friends with you, they don’t see the different nationality as an insurmountable boundary to a nice friendship.

Here, people are not used to foreigners, and though it would be catastrophically unfair to even imply that I’ve encountered hostility, the Sicilians don’t particularly see me as a potential equal as much as a fascinating novelty, therefore not particularly as a potential friend.  The vast majority of what I encounter is friendly but persistent and shameless curiosity and something bordering on amazement, and a fair deal of downright confusion.  I have had 4 visits from family/friends from home, and each of them has commented on the level of attention I get from people here.  I went out on Saturday with my group of English friends, and although I didn’t keep count, we got approached by around 10 guys, speaking to us in frankly shocking English, asking us why we were in Modica (and probably trying to pursue some other objective too, you couldn’t really understand from their level of English, and if I’m not interested in the conversation, it can be easier not to let on that I know Italian.)

I work in two schools, and the further away one is around 50 minutes walk away, in the modern part of town.  People don’t tend to walk to places here, much less out of the historical centre, so the fact to see not just any person, but a tall blonde foreigner, walking over there is stunning for them.  They don’t have our cultural trait of pretending not to notice someone/something, so they shamelessly stare, turning their heads and slowing down in their cars.  I have a deep level of acceptance for the nature of my life here - I realised about 5 months and 25 days ago that this would be a feature of my time there, and I know it’s so strange for them to have me here, and they mean no harm and certainly no offence by this behaviour.  However, I do, if I think about it too much, find it deeply exasperating.  Yes, I know I’m foreign, and I’ve noticed how much of a minority I am here too.  It would be great if you could actually see me as the same species as you, just with a funny accent and a different heritage.  

I should note, though, that I am generalising.  The people at work, be it my fellow English teachers (all Sicilian nationality) or my students, have been so friendly and so curious to hear everything I have to say, and have been the saving grace of my life here.  My job is effectively to be foreign at school - teach them about my language and culture - and it is one that I absolutely believe in, I am delighted to do and I really enjoy doing.  Cliched as it sounds, I have never wavered in my belief that these kids need to learn about languages and countries beyond Sicily and Italy, and my work, which I do with such pleasure, is met with appreciation and enthusiasm.

The expectation that I would be fully immersed in Sicilian culture and Italian language, though, has not been fulfilled.  I am too foreign, too strange.  My hope would be to be a token English person at work, but then go and live a Sicilian life in the rest of my time, but that hasn’t been possible.  The cultural isolation can at times be very lonely.  I thank my lucky stars time and time again for having a lovely group of English friends here, and a friendly and sociable job.

There’s the foreign thing I’ve spoken about so far, and also I so don’t fit into the demographic here.  People my age have generally left Modica to more fruitful study or work opportunities.  Those who stay are with their families.  Life here is so rooted in families, all of whom in Modica seem to know each other or at least know of each other, it feels impossible to break into the social side of life as an outsider.

So, it is with some apprehension that I acknowledge the extent of my non-integration here.  The fact that all of my social life is with English friends is something that that, I’ve been told, should be categorically avoided in one’s year abroad.  But come on, what am I meant to do?  

When I’m feeling like I’ve really bypassed some of the fundamental objectives of the year abroad, though, I give myself a reality check.  Due in equal part to being observant for six months and to listening to what my students chat to me about in their English classes, I feel like I have got a precious and frankly life-changing insight into a culture that is vastly different from my own.  Every day I go into a state school, which is a fundamental part of the infrastructure of a country, and I am so well-versed in the ins and outs of their education system that I will bore any poor victim for hours at a time upon my return to England (n.b. I find it fascinating).  I am also doing a lot of traveling in Sicily - enough to make me feel like I really am understanding this country.  

And really, if we’re honest, an anxiety and longing of ‘what might have been’ vs ‘what is’ is one of the unhappy companions of life.  The fact of being foreign in such a mono-cultural place, and the isolation of that, is such a challenge of being here.  However, it is such a rich and enlightening experience that I am only just becoming able to untangle what I’m doing and thinking into a coherent set of ideas.  When I think about it though, cards on the table, knowing what I know now about the big highs and big lows, the rewards and the real difficulties I encounter, I genuinely do think I would still come to Modica to be a language assistant if I was making my choice again.  For all of the expectations and hopes I probably had before I came out here, the biggest hope must have been to not feel I made a mistake by giving myself too big a challenge, and I don’t.

I booked my flight today - I’m coming back to England on the 6th June, which is precisely 9 months after my arrival in Modica.  The coincidence of when flights were cheap and convenient has given a very pleasing neatness to the year abroad.  My hope is for the spring to be my nicest time in Modica.  I am very settled here in that I really do know the place well, and my job has settled into the nice level of challenge that keeps me occupied and working hard, and gives me a purpose when I wake up in the morning, but rarely seems too difficult to have fun.  In the last few days, walking around town, or on one occasion along the beach, it felt very much like the nice weather is barely round the corner now, and after all of this reflection I feel content: pleased with what I have achieved, and ready and optimistic for how I’ll live my last 12 weeks of the year abroad.