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.

When it's all worthwhile

What with the whole ‘gap yah’ mocking, it’s actually quite difficult to talk about experiences like the one I’m doing at the moment without falling into mockable cliches, so it is with a certain amount of self-consciousness that I launch into this post about the ups and the downs of this whole year abroad of mine.

It is a very socially challenging thing being out here - I’m far far away from lots of things and people that I would really like to be near, and in this particular town there really isn’t that much social life to be had.  I have found my English friends, without whom I would be fairly lost, and luckily my colleagues and students are wonderful, but the pivotal part of my life here is undoubtedly work.  That is, after all, the reason I was sent to this particular place.

As I’ve said before, I’ve been very lucky to a) be placed in a lovely school and b) to actively enjoy my job.  However, my overall happiness sort of depends on how things are going there - a bad week leads to me wondering what I’m doing all the way out here.  I’ve never lost faith in what I’m doing, but sometimes have doubted my ability to do it.  This week is turning out to be a cracker work-wise.  Through equal measures of fluke and hard work, my classes have gone better than ever.  I have felt, more than at any point of this year so far, that I’m really getting the hang of this job that I’m not trained to do and have intermittedly felt very out of my depth doing.

I’ve now been out here for nearly six months, so I’m starting to allow myself to see the big picture, with the odd fleeting thought about how I’ll look back at this year.  I can’t say precisely how I’ll be thinking back on it, but I certainly want to remember the great times at work.  This week has included: singing ‘Lemon Tree’ with (or maybe just at) my class of 14-year-olds, drilling the difference between ‘beach’ and ‘bitch’, asking my students if Modica was bigger or smaller than New York, and solving a murder mystery.  For all of the low moments of the experience, weeks like this when I feel like I’m doing a good job and having fun doing it, actually do make me feel like this is the right thing to be doing in my life.

The reluctant students

I barely ever hold my classes uninterrupted for a week - there are so many assemblies, presentations, bank holidays, special events, elections for class representatives, consultations with the higher up members staff... the list goes on.  Every now and then would still be a bit surprising, but understandable.  The fact is that it’s just all the time that a class is cancelled or rescheduled.

The other day my timetable was changed at the last minute, which made a big clash, and so that meant I missed three hours of lessons.  I was stressed and apologised adequately, and everyone was just like ‘look, this is what it’s like over here, it’s not your fault, you need to get used to the mentality we have here’.  The teacher I was chatting to today, who is the colleague I should have been with on Tuesday, explained that the class I was most looking forward to seeing, the 5B, was almost completely absent.  I was understandably confused.  She explained.  In Italian schools, as I knew, they do continuous assessment throughout the year.  At the end of the year, they average out the marks and they only advance to the next year if they average at least 6 out of 10.  There is no public moderation though, there are no external examiners, it’s just the teacher.  So it turns out that the 5B had a test that day.  A common way to cope with the sudden stress of an exam you haven’t studied for is to get the whole class on board and not turn up.  The 4A, another of my classes, also did the same that day: out of a class of 28, only 2 were there.

There is no contingency plan for a class who is absent on a test day.  For as long as the test is on the cards, the students aren’t gonna come, the teacher can’t fail them all because they’d have a year group with no students in (or maybe just two, those two that turned up), so they’re at a stalemate.  The teacher gives out low marks, the kids come to class again.  It’s absurd.

It’s important not to generalise too much.  I have had so many experiences in these schools that I’ve found interesting and noteworthy, but the above only happens in one of my two schools, and they definitely do do their tests some of the time.  However, just the fact that a whole class can just not come is difficult to get your head round.

Life eh?

I love Miranda Hart, fully and entirely, I feel that her and Bridget Jones together give me instruction, direction and reassurance in a life that, at times, feels so totally bizarre that I just wonder how on earth this is all happening to me.  I know that I am experiencing the very same word as everyone else, I am under no illusion of being special in my bizarre experiences of the world, but Miranda Hart’s audiobook (finished this afternoon, highly recommended), provided me with the wonderful above phrase, 'life eh?' to express the sentiment succinctly.  When you look around you and have an almost out of body WHAT IS GOING ON moment.  It's a fun, almost unnerving thing, that you can allow to just rock your mind for a moment before you need to get on with it.

Strange things that have happened to me since I’ve been back in Sicily since Christmas:

1. I have taken an increasing amount of lessons entirely on my own.  Now, in Italian schools, the bidello (caretaker guy, called Roberto), often breezes in with some kind of notice or announcement that the teacher needs to read to the class.  In this particular class, I was on my own, so instead of giving the notice to the teacher, he gave it to me.  In the spirit of teaching my classes entirely in English, I have not corrected the students’ assumption that I do not speak or understand Italian, but I do chat to Roberto between lessons so he did not see the issue in coming in and talking to me.  To the students, it was absurd that he should ask me to read out a notice in Italian, and they all shouted at him that I didn’t understand.  Roberto enjoyed the attention, so smiled and joked back a little bit, which amused the students greatly.  Within about 60 seconds it had descended into absolute hysteria, Roberto was playing to the audience, saying ‘I’m Sicilian!  I’m from Ispica!  You can’t expect me to speak English!’.  The students were literally weeping with laughter from the hilarity of it all, still trying to shout to Roberto between gasps that he really wasn’t going to manage to communicate with me.  I sat on the desk and had a drink of water, and let them all calm down.  One of my most wonderful and responsible students took control of the situation, took the notice from Roberto and did the necessary short administration task.  Roberto left, and I asked my students to calm down and carry on with the activity.  They obeyed, which gave me a great rush of gratitude and affection for my lovely students, and felt secretly pretty amused by the whole thing.

2. Last weekend I spent a wonderful weekend in Palermo with the other language assistants who have been placed in Sicily.  I can't emphasise how great it is to chill for a few days with people who are having the same experience as me.  Amongst other activities, we discussed our mutual puzzlement of bdays, so in order to clear up the confusion, Rebecca read us the Wikihow of ‘How to use a bday’ out loud in the cafe.  I felt very happy to have found people with whom such activities are acceptable.

3. On Monday, I arrived at school impressively early.  I was feeling refreshed from an amazing few days, but also tired from a late night journey back, so I felt a little on the back foot.  Lessons start at 08.10am, and at 08.05am there was a phone call.  Turns out my colleague Sabrina wouldn’t be in school this week.  The teachers in the staff room set about sorting who could cover which lessons, but the first thing they said was ‘well, today is okay because there’s Laura’.  I do always plan and deliver my own lessons, but Sabrina is there with me in class to give me back up if I need it, and I’ve not done an entire school day on my own before.  I got a bit nervous, but went up to class, explained to them that it was just me so please could they be nice, and they were.  I did a lesson on William and Kate (a request from one of the students - ‘Miss, as Laura’s English, can she talk to us about William and Kate?’), and then two lessons on body parts.  In the first lesson, one of my students added a penis to his labelled diagram of the body, and in the second lesson I treated the class to a rendition, or actually two renditions, of ‘heads shoulders knees and toes'

Me: If I teach you a song, will you sing it?

Them: no

Me: but it’s a really good song, come on, you’ll like it

Them: we don’t want to sing

Me: I’ll sing it the first time, and then the second time you can sing it with me.  Stand up and copy my actions

They stand up.  They’re my youngest class, so I always refer to them as ‘my little ones’ (not to their face).  Turns out that they’re actually much bigger than I thought.  Well, they are 14/15 years old.  I realise I’m about to perform ‘heads shoulders knees and toes’ to a group of year 9s and I really can’t back out of it

Me: ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes....’

They laugh a lot.  They don’t join in with the second rendition, so it is just me singing it twice.

4. I had a group skype session with my wonderful university friends.  I don’t have internet in my house, so I need to skype from the cafe.  This was a golden opportunity for them, who waved at everyone else in the bar, put a bra up for show on the screen and had a lovely dance along session.  As if I wasn’t conspicuous enough for speaking a foreign language to my laptop in public, I had a screenful of fun for anyone who happened to be looking around the cafe.

In my life I often think of the freeze frame moment about five minutes into Bridget Jones, when she walks past Mark Darcy at the turkey curry buffet with her dignity in tatters, and it is at precisely that point in her life that she realises how much of a state everything is.  I’ve actually had a really great few days, but I also think just how did anyone think of putting me all the way abroad, and not only that, but in charge of large groups of teenagers and expecting me to educate them?!  I think it’s because I slotted in so easily when I was back in England for the holidays that I’ve felt a bit disorientated back here.  There was a bit of the negative January blues stuff, but recently there’s been a lot more of the positive but surreal ‘how is this happening to me’ stuff.

I’m pretty precisely half way through my job now, and I wonder if it will stop being strange that I walk into this Italian state school and they seem to think ‘oh yeah, this seems like a reasonable person to put at the front of the class’.  

Back to it

It was a bit over a year ago that I was discussing with my university friends whether to apply for this assistantship or not.  My worries were that I would arrive in a dead-end town in the middle of nowhere and be very bored and lonely.  I remember the conversation, my wonderful flatmates told me that it wouldn’t be the easiest experience I could choose, but it would be what I made of it and I could learn a lot from it.  I thought about it for a bit, and then chose to apply.

It has been in that vain that I’ve been carrying out this year.  My job has been above anything else a wonderful highlight of the year so far, but it’s also been more challenging than I was expecting, having been given a comparable amount of responsibility as an average teacher, albeit untrained and only a 21-year-old student.  The town is beautiful, and I feel privileged to be in such a pretty, safe and welcoming place, though I can’t deny that I wish the social side was more substantial.

I am mindful of all of this in the last few days coming back after the Christmas holidays.  It is reassuring that everyone I know seems to regard the first day back with an impending sense of doom and struggle with the readjustment at first.  It felt funny that I was coming back here after the nourishing comfort and familiarity of being with my family and friends over Christmas, and it took a little bit of self-coaching to get back to the positive mindset that I’ve held onto so far.  It seemed strange that the time in my own country was actually a holiday, and for the moment my life is out here.  

Yesterday I had a good day at work.  I had all of my favourite classes and they were happy to see me, and I them, and they were for the most part happy and receptive to follow the lesson, and we had a laugh too.  Basically it was my job on a good day, which was what I needed.  I think that the end of the visit in your own country is bound to be a low point of living abroad, but it’s okay really.  Remembering why I’m here and the lovely positive aspects of my life here, along with how that fits in with my expectations before getting here, makes a huge difference.  

Caos, confusione, bordello, casino

The above words all refer to a very Italian range of situations.  The rough translation is chaos, but that doesn't quite capture it.  It is not a very complex linguistic theory that a language has words that correspond to aspects of its culture, so in this case Italian has at least four words to refer to something that English can't properly capture.  The words can refer to general disorganisation of a person or group, or to a big traffic jam, or to an argument, or other things.  Well, literally 'bordello' and 'casino' actually mean 'brothel', so literally speaking they're going round saying 'what brothel!'.  Looking at the colloquial use, though, there seems to be a kind of essence in all of these situations that is so quintessentially Italian, at least to my foreign and stereotypical eyes.

People seem to take some pleasure in it, and I must admit that I'm thinking and writing about it with some fondness: much as I don't particularly think it's the way to live your life it is kind of endearing when it's a feature of your host culture.  A good example was when I was in the car in Catania.  My friend was driving, and despite moaning about 'what bordello, what confusione', he sounded his horn at every, and i mean every opportunity.  When I asked why, he said 'because we're in Catania'.  He explained that in theory you're not meant to sound your horn in the centre, but in practice people often actually break their horns from overuse.

Another example was my students talking excitedly about a school trip, again to Catania, that we went on this Tuesday.  They were trying to say that they're going to go and 'make confusione… Laura how do we say that in English?'.  They meant they were going to hang out and mess about and be silly… maybe I'm not that articulate, or maybe I'm right that it's difficult to quite capture.  They were right though - we went to the theatre, and I've never known such a participative audience.  It was only 'Waiting for Godot', hardly a lively and participative play, but they were shouting out and clapping along absolutely whenever they could.

For a Brit, every sense of these words is counter-intuitive, but although I do on occasion want them to shush (in lessons would be nice), it is quite fun.

The Sweetest Students

I shouldn’t have favourite classes, but there are definitely ones that I look forward to.  5A on a Tuesday morning is very firmly in that category, they are a bright, conscientious and enthusiastic class who I love teaching.  Today I was around 3 minutes late to their lesson because I’d been disorganised photocopying worksheets, and the other teacher had gone ahead of me to the classroom.  In her presence and my absence the students had got antsy, and when I came in they actually cheered a bit, and laughed and smiled.  It was one of the nicest welcomes into a room I’ve had in my life.

I have a bit of a sniffly cold at the moment and my voice was cracking a little through the lesson and I was feeling a bit grotty and sorry for myself, so I asked them to not make me raise my voice, and they were absolutely wonderful to me.  I just stood at the front and looked at them when I wanted them to stop their activity, and they shushed each other and listened to me.

Though this is a particularly extreme example, I realise more than ever that I am incredibly lucky to have polite and kind students.  It’s a two-way process of course, and they would have none of this respect for me if I didn’t think they were fairly wonderful in return, but I came out of that lesson feeling like I’ve been landed, through no merit of my own, into the best school ever.

Normality

It’s amazing how quickly things become routine.  I’ve been here nearly 7 weeks now, but this is only the fourth week at school, and it all feels so much like normal life.  I know most of my classes now, though some of them I haven’t taught that much yet.  I teach in two schools.  In the Liceo Classico I teach every class but one, so when I walk around the small school everybody knows me.  The Liceo Artistico is quite a lot bigger and I teach only 5 classes.  I say ‘only’ with reluctance because it brings my running total up 14, so that’s about 350 students.  That means that most people aged 14-18 around Modica town centre recognise me, but remembering all of them is absolutely impossible.  

So it’s normal life.  That means the honeymoon period is over, the kids are pretty used to me now and generally aren’t totally astounded to see me, which to be honest is a massive relief.  Though standing at the front and running the lesson doesn’t faze me, I was keen for the incessant centre-of-attention/fascination phase to pass as quickly as possible.

Normal life also means I can generally get by in Modica.  I’m moderately used to adapting to new cities, and for me success is 

1. being able to go to the supermarket and to your workplace/studyplace effortlessly (e.g. not to get lost every day, difficult when you’re me), 
2. having a minimum of two favourite cafes where the staff recognise you
3. encountering a fairly low frequency of problems you don’t know how to solve

I’m not completely lost here, I know my way round and it’s very much the place where I live now, not just a place where I’ve landed or am just passing through.

Normal life unfortunately means the odd bad morning.  Nothing that won’t be mostly better by the evening and totally forgotten by the next day, but something like a bad lesson with unparticipative teenagers who can’t understand English, rainy weather and running out of cooking gas, all on inadequate sleep.  Just ordinary everyday things.  If you’re in a really nice town doing a really nice job in a country you’re completely in love with, most days are good days, but the point is that this isn’t a holiday; it’s actually my actual life at the moment.

Anyway, as it happens, my landlord has just this second come to check the cooking gas and headed out to get a new ‘bombola’ - what’s that called?  A big metal can/bottle/thing of gas.  And tomorrow I have just one lesson, and it’s one of my really good classes, and it’s not till midday, so it looks like I’ll have a nice lie-in and tomorrow will be a good day.

Ps. I’m not writing this blog for praise, but thank you so very much for the kind complements you people have given me, each one has made my day.

The day off

It’s my long-awaited day off.  As I only have 12 hours a week contact time, I really should get at least one, probably two days off, but organising my timetable is an uphill struggle so what with one thing and another I didn’t have one last week.  Italians don’t even have a proper weekend - they make up for every day being a half day (8am-1.30pm) by having school and work on a Saturday.

I’ve been so looking forward to this.  I went to a bar and drank wine with Laura last night, slept till midday, and had a granita with cream and a croissant with cream for a late breakfast in the bar where I am now - effectively two desserts for breakfast, but it's okay because I'm on holiday in Sicily.  I work really hard at my job, but the amazing thing is that when I get some time off it’s like a real holiday.  Yes, the sun is shining too.  Wonderous.

The fun of being new

It’s a weird thing being new.  This is the third time I’ve arrived on my own in a place I didn’t know, and the only real way to move forward from it is to say yes to every social event that’s offered to you.  I only reflected on it today, when I nearly went to a wedding, that this policy can leave you with an unusual set of anecdotes.

I met my friend Laura on the street two weeks after arriving in Modica.  She’s working as an au pair for a lovely family, and was with the au pair mum and two children.  I heard her English accent and we very excitedly exchanged numbers, and the mum invited me to a dinner at theirs later that week.  Cue amazing Italian dinner, celebrating the father’s birthday, in a garden that overlooks the whole town.  Turns out they like sailing.  I’m actually quite scared of boats, even more sailing, and have never really felt it was the pastime for me.  However, they were going on a sailing boat that weekend, would I like to come?  Yes I would.  Incidentally, I discovered that it was actually how I’d like to spend all of the Sundays for the rest of my life please, it was absolutely stunning.

I went into school, and of course the English mother tongue speaker is an exciting and useful novelty.  Can I come look after someone’s two little girls sometime?  Can I speak English to someone’s little boy?  Can I give private lessons to someone’s 17-year-old son?  Yes, I guess so.  None of these have come to anything yet, but I think they will.  Today was a new one - would I possibly run an English conversation class in the afternoons for the other teachers at the school?  This seems a bit of a responsibility: I, as an untrained teacher, am proving my abilities to a roomful of my colleagues and employers.  It’s fine though, I think it’ll be fun.  I also got invited to have a pizza sometime with some of my older students.  They’ve just come back from the trip of a lifetime in London, where they were specially selected to do a course, and they’re feeling very England-sick.

The terrible thing is that I’ve agreed to go to the gym with one of my fellow English teachers.  I probably will follow it through if she mentions it again because you never know what turns out to be good, but... a gym.  It doesn’t fill me with joy.

Yesterday I got a message from Laura, ‘I just got us invited to a wedding’.  RIght, what?  Her au-pair family runs a B&B and Laura had got chatting to a guest, who turns out was getting married the next day.  Would she like to come?  Oh wow, erm... well yes!  She checked it was okay to bring a friend, and we were ready to go at 4.30pm today.  Turns out that the groom didn’t seem to have communicated to anyone else that we were invited, and had already disappeared off to the church.  After being stared at a bit (read: a lot) by the guests (and the bride), we ducked out in order to avoid further embarrassment.  On a sidenote, this surely isn’t a promising sign of a communicative marriage.  It was when we were standing in our nice dresses in the small streets of a small town in Southern Sicily, being gawked at by anyone who passed, that I realised it was a fairly bizarre situation.  We both thought it was quite funny really, and went to get a consolatory gelato instead, where an old man (like 75 or so, no teeth) asked me for my number.

I walked Laura to her language school and ended up signing up and learning kitchen vocabulary, very handy.  Met a really nice Polish girl and promised that we should go out for drinks sometime, maybe tomorrow.

Yesterday I went for a drink with that lovely school secretary I mentioned in a previous post.  She enthusiastically chatted on about some day trips she can take me on, and I nodded along.  She is sweet.

I know that not all of these things will come to anything, but it’s fun to open your mind to anything at all and just look for every opportunity you can find.  Laura and I are trying to decide whether to go to tennis school or not... the adverts say they do a free trial.

The first day

*I wrote this blog on the 4th October, but couldn't post it because I had no internet*

Nobody seemed to know when I was starting work.  I went into school so many times before I went away for the training course in Rome.  I wasn’t asking that much of them, just basic things like ‘what day do i start’ and ‘do i have a timetable’, but this is Sicily and these things don’t come that simply.

My course (which was excellent) was on the 1st and 2nd October.  I explained this over and over to all concerned at the school, and explained that I would come to work on the 3rd (yesterday).  

‘No, the 3rd is a Sunday’ she said

‘No it’s not, it’s a Wednesday’

She first thought it was a language problem, after all days of the week are a bit tricky, but I insisted and she looked at the calendar.

‘Okay, pop in some time on the 3rd’

So that’s what I did yesterday, but the secretary concerned wasn’t there.  I asked in a nearby office, they didn’t know and suggested I come back today.  I turned up first thing and stood in the corridor for about a quarter of an hour because the secretary wasn’t there.  I knew that most of the English teachers are on a trip to England at the moment, so I really didn’t know whether I was starting work today or else when they come back in 10 days.

A lovely administrative lady found me and took me to her office to fix up my contract.  She’s one of these people with a heart of gold who is worried all the time that she might be doing something marginally wrong - if I’d told her I’d been expecting her to jump out the window, she would probably have apologised and thrown herself out.  She gave me a lot of help, and timidly asked me if I’d give her son English lessons.  I said yes, of course.  We had to send a few documents back to Leeds, and she was so worried that ‘UK’ wouldn’t be an adequate indication of the country it had to go to that in the end I let her write ‘Inghilterra’ on the envelope too, which calmed her fragile nerves.  What a nice lady.

At a certain point, a member of staff came to find me and said that the English teacher was waiting for me.  I said I had to finish the contract, but would be along in 5 minutes.

‘Okay, well they’re in classroom four’.  What?!  A classroom?  Today?  Right... okay.

We finished the contract, and I asked the lovely lady to walk me to the room.  She knocked, posted me inside and left.  I found myself at the front of a class of Italian teenagers.  I introduced myself to the teacher, who in turn gave the briefest of introductions to the class about who I was before taking a seat and inviting me to ‘go ahead’.  So I had to give an impromtu lesson.  I managed it, I just asked them all their names and then went through some vocab from the text book.  They were quite excited that I was there, so my job was very easy.  The lesson finished, and I walked with the teacher, and found out that we had another two lessons.  I was literally planning it minute-by-minute, I split them into groups to do little tasks, made them repeat things after me, and chatted about England.  They were great students, very welcoming and very easily amused.  I feigned some kind of authority, and they didn’t seem to notice that I had no idea what I was doing.

I went home after the three lessons and a chat with some of the staff, got changed and went out for a few errands.  I kept on seeing the students about.  The centre is small, and the vast majority of my time is spent on this same street so it’s inevitable that they’ll see me around a lot.  I’m not anonymous in this town anyway, so I guess it doesn’t make a whole load of difference.

It was a great first day, an enormous contrast to how uncertain everything was yesterday.  I’m likely to get a timetable in a couple of weeks when the other teachers come back and they can split my hours between them, but in the meantime I’m just keeping the two remaining English teachers company a lot of the time.  They both have a day off tomorrow so I do too, and then I’m doing four hours on Saturday.  She says that with two of the classes we’re doing ‘feelings’, so I am precisely one word more knowledgable than I was before about what I’ll be doing.  It’s a relief to have the ball rolling though, I’m not just waiting for it to start any more.

Familiarity

*I wrote this blog on the 2nd and 3rd October, but couldn't post it because I didn't have internet*

At around 16.00 on the 27th September 2009, my train pulled into Perugia.  I exited the station and stood there confused.  A taxi driver saw his opportunity and took me to my new address for an extremely high price.  I called my new flatmate and asked him to let me in but he was out playing football.  I sat on my suitcase and waited for him to come back.  When we went up to the flat, my room wasn’t ready.

3 years and one day later, it was with no small amount of excitement that I got off the train at Perugia.  I went up to the station-centre shuttle, put my 1 euro 50 into the slot, got my ticket, went through the barriers, up the stairs and onto the mini-metro.  After the second stop, I looked up out of the front window as the town came into view, which I knew would make me smile.  Another four minutes, I reached the centre and walked up the escalators.  I was sweaty and groggy from a long journey so was keen to keep my head down and dodge socialising for the time being, but I bumped into two people during the short walk across town, ‘Bentornata!’ - ‘Welcome back!’

My friends were waiting for me in my favourite bar, I freshened up and we headed out for aperitivo in my other favourite bar.  The fun rolled in a way that only Perugia can deliver.  I’ll drop the detail because you’ve got the picture - it was 42 hours of effortless, comfortable happiness.

It had been nearly a month since I’d seen anyone I know.  Now, it would be a gross misrepresentation to see loneliness, nostalgia or homesickness as a notable feature of the early stage of my Sicilian experience.  However, new beginnings, for all the excitement and rewards that they do provide, are strenuous.  In Perugia, though, I could not have felt more at home.  I was surrounded by the easy company of my friends, it was great to catch up, and I laughed until my sides hurt.

After the blind happiness of the anticipation and the arrival, I found I was juggling a strange mixture of feelings.  Familiarity is comforting.  Comfort and familiarity are, I guess, two sides of the same coin.  New starts are exhilarating, challenging, unpredicable, and by their very nature unfamiliar and unsettling.  If I had wanted to, I could have spent 2012-3 back in Perugia, but the unfamiliar reaps rewards; if we get too comfortable, we stop learning.  But when I arrived in Perugia, it was like the part of me that had been working overtime to adapt to my new life breathed a sigh of relief.  I have every belief in what I’m doing in Sicily, but being in Perugia was like balm for my soul.  I relaxed fully for the first time in the month, and it was bliss.

I found leaving Perugia this time a real case of mind vs. heart.  My mind hasn’t for a moment believed I made a wrong choice in my year abroad destination, but these thoughts couldn’t touch the lump in my throat as I felt like I was being thrown out of home.

I guess the balance between comfort and change is an issue that follows us around forever.  This wasn’t a serious crisis of confidence, my craving for familiarity hasn’t been strong enough to contaminate the good thing I’ve got going with Modica, but it’s not always easy to know how much we should put ourselves out of our comfort zone.  Comfort makes us happy, but it’s dangerous: in the end it’s the new experiences that make us learn, and the it’s the learning experiences that make us most happy in the long run.  I remember very well how full of challenges my new Perugia life was three years ago and we all know how well that turned out.  But, you know, it’s really nice to spend your time with your friends and family, doing a job or a course you’re good at and living in a place you know like the back of your hand.  What I mean is that you don’t always feel like doing something really new, and it’s not like I can keep on moving to a new European city hoping it’s the best way for me to grow as a person and learn about the world.  It’s difficult to know when it’s best to stick with the good thing you’ve got going on, and when you’re getting stagnant and it’s time to change.

My plane landed in Catania, Sicily, at 16.35 on the 2nd October 2012, the airline was lucky to have made up a careless delay leaving Rome.  Upon exiting the airport, I found out there was a transport strike, but nobody could tell me whether there would be a bus to Modica or not.  I got back in the end, much later and by a roundabout route.  I felt a weary resignation to the situation rather than stress.  Arriving back to Modica, I felt relief, not just at the journey being over but because I could sleep in my own bed in my little apartment.  I drafted this post in the little bar I live next to, having been welcomed back by the waiter.  I’m writing this up after popping into school and being greeted with a load of confusion, nobody seems to know what I should be doing and everyone who deals with me is somewhere else, my mentor isn’t back till the 12th October.  I’ll explain some other time.  It’s a bit annoying, but it’s not anything I can’t handle.  It’s a fine balance, getting yourself some interesting and rewarding challenges that keep you on the end of the seat but don’t make you fall off.

Trains

Sicily doesn’t have a very well-developed rail network - trains are very slow and stations are generally outside of the centre, which makes getting around by train cumbersome and ill-advised.  However, I was going Couchsurfing to Licata the day before yesterday, and there was a direct train, which won out against four coaches.  Modica’s train station is in an unlikely location, down a small and tatty lane.  It has around four or five trains going through it every day.

There’s no bridge or underpass, so you cross the railway lines.  As I was stepping over them, an Italian teenager leant out of the window of the stationary train, and shouted, in a thick Italian accent ‘Do you speak eeeenglish?’, and his friends all laughed.  The unfortunate thing is that every passenger on the (small but packed) train apart from three was his friend - it was an enormous school party.  The train was timed to be in sync with the time that the local school finished, so this was effectively a school bus, but on rails and open to the public.  My heart sank, and I smiled weakly and went and sat on a fold-out seat in the entrance of the train wishing I was invisible when everyone looked at me.

The ticket collector came through 10 minutes later, and told me there was a seat in the carriage if I wanted it.  He guided me to the free seat, and I realised too late that it was right in the middle of the rowdy teenagers (naively expecting a free double seat).  I took my seat, feeling like an awkward 13-year-old again.  I made small talk with the girls I was sitting with whilst everyone else tried to pretend not to be listening and watching.  About half an hour in, one of the high status guys sat across from me and broke the tension by asking me my name, where I was from and why I was there.  Everyone else broke the pretense, gave into their curiosity and came to stand in a crowd around us while I had a bizarre sort of interview.  They were actually really lovely and seemed pleased to chat to me.  It was such a strange situation to find myself in, I felt like a performing monkey in front of this big group of people, but above anything I saw it as a positive sign to how the teenagers I’m going to work with at school might not think I’m a total waste of time.

They got off the train nearly two hours before me, making me the only passenger on the train for the rest of the journey.  It was really eery, we stopped at deserted stations that seemed to be in the middle of the countryside. 

The next day, for my return journey, I arrived at the station about 20 minutes before my train and went to buy my ticket but found the ticket office closed.  We went round the tiny building and found a room with four members of the station staff in.

‘Can I buy a ticket please?’

‘No, the ticket office is closed’

‘Well, I have a train to get soon, what am I meant to do?’

‘Erm... well, I guess I’ll have to say to the train manager that you don’t have a ticket because the ticket office was closed, don’t worry’

So none of these four people at this catastrophically overstaffed station could sell tickets?  What did they even do?  This station never had two trains go through it in the same hour, but as the man who introduced himself as the vice-president of the tiny station explained, there was a workforce of 20 people.  Incredible.  And still no tickets.  There was a self-service ticket machine, but it didn’t work.  Also, it seemed to say simultaneously that you could only pay with a card and that it didn’t accept cards.  My friend murmured ‘well, you can play better card games with a bigger group of people’.

The vice-station-president talked us through the story of his career.  He had once worked in one of Rome’s main stations - ‘much busier than here’, he said, shaking his head, whilst we fought to keep a straight face.  He also talked us through his detailed extended family tree, complete with occupations, heritage and hair colour.  We had to have a little laugh when he went away.

Ten minutes after the train was meant to arrive, one of the guys started ringing a little bell on the platform (maybe this was his entire job?), and ten minutes after that the train pulled into the station at a comically low speed.  The station guy had told us that the rails were capable of dealing with high-speed trains, which strikes me as a confusing and misguided investment.  The train manager came and sat opposite me to sell me a ticket.  He didn’t have adequate change to hand, and was getting stressed.

Me - ‘Well, maybe we can sort it out at Gela?’

Him - ‘No, we’re not going to Gela’

I said nothing, he scrounged two euros off his friend for my change, and an hour later we pulled into Gela, which was where the train terminated.

It took me over three hours to go the 100km to Modica, but I found a cool American travel companion.  It’s nice to travel in company sometimes.  When we changed, we boarded the first single-coach train I’ve ever seen, with a sparse sprinkling of passengers.

I found the entire train experience really quite entertaining, it was just so desperately inefficient.  In Sicily’s defence, it has a comparatively developed coach network, and the train system makes no pretence of being anything it isn’t, but the travel network can’t be said to be a strength of this gem of an island.