to catch up since i last wrote, the holidays came and went. they were bittersweet, as i enjoyed being in italy but would have loved to be home with family and friends. yet i enjoyed my almost month of total relaxation that largely consisted of sleeping in til 11 and 12 and eating. simo and i were alone on christmas after things fell through with other people and others were with family. had we known, we would have planned better and gone down to sicily to his mom's place, but we only found out on the 24th. so we solved our loneliness with a 4 course meal which took all of christmas day to prepare and several hours to consume. we exchanged gifts as well, and were like little kids on christmas morning. simo wanted to open them up right away that morning, but i wanted to preserve the christmas magic and made him wait until after breakfast. i had gotten him a pair of sunglasses, the same sunglasses that had been stolen from his car this fall, and a really nice bottle of rum that he likes, and he got me a really beautiful bracelet watch.
after the holidays it was back to crema and into the new apartment. i spent the first day putting my room in order and assembling my "closet", a sort of hanging apparatus that i got at ikea. i really love my room, a mixture of antiques that were already in the room, and more modern pieces like the bed and the closet which i bought, with my colorful tapestries hung on the walls. i have a balcony which will be fabulous for dinners in the spring. i also have an antique piano which needs to be tuned in my room, and which i can't play and is therefore like torture, but it makes a nice bookshelf in the absence of it's musical capabilities. the apartment is cozy and cute, with a kitchen that's definitely too small, but when we have more than 3 people at dinner, our entry way becomes the dining room and we put my desk and the kitchen table together. our system works well, and we've tried to buy stuff to make the place seem more homey. it is definitely a far cry from my other apartment, where i regularly stayed in my room and didn't get along with my roommates. this place is drama-free and english and italian friendly, with good food and wine flowing freely and where dinners are frequent.
over break, i was contacted by the principal of the liceo artistico, the high school attached to sraffa. one of their english teachers went on maternity leave and they were desperately searching for another english teacher. i agreed to do it, and after a few minor snafus over my not being officially "legal" yet and other things, i had the job, with another 600 beautiful euro a month at my disposal, january's sum of which, i found out later, i will be getting in mid-march because they're having money issues like the rest of the world. the job has been interesting so far on a professional level because the kids, while at a "high school" and not a professional or technical school like sraffa, aren't the more eager students i expected. the english program at the school is an internal add-on, meaning the school has to pay its own money to teach english to the kids because they simply want them to learn a bit of it. the kids know they're not going to have english at their graduation exit exam, so the incentive to study is very low. then again, the grades in a lot of classes are low so i try not to take it personally. however it's extremely difficult not to take it personally when many students don't listen to you during class, you have to reprimand them for not doing homework or bringing their books, when they make disrespectful comments, and when every 10 seconds you find yourself shushing them. there have been several occasions, both at sraffa and the artistico that i've had to go on rants rebuking them for their behavior. that rarely works for more than the moment, so i've started a "3 strikes rule": every time i have to call you out on something bad you're doing, it's an x on the blackboard. at the 3rd x, you get a 'nota', or a write-up in the class register...not a positive thing to get. that actually worked fairly well yesterday in one of the classes, a younger class albeit, and i'll see if i need to apply it in other classes as well.
the adjustment to the new job has been difficult as well because my sraffa schedule had to change to accommodate my new 10-hours a week at the artistico. also, i entered in january, right as the last grades were being reported, the last tests given, and the meetings to decide on final semester grades were being held. the last few weeks so far i've given and graded several tests in a few different classes, organized and figured out final grades and absences that then have to be inserted in a special computer program, and had 3, 1.5 hours meetings deciding on "behavior" grades for individual students and overall issues in classes with the other teachers of the 5 classes i teach. there are still 2 more meetings to go tomorrow, so my days have been long and tiring. i've also been figuring out a lot of stuff on my own in this job, seeing as they don't really have any non-italian teachers in that school, and the other teachers have been in the system since day one so they know how it goes. overall, it's been an interesting learning-curve, and i have a new-found appreciation for hump day, fridays, and the weekend.
in the last few months i have realized why i love being here and why i love surrounding myself with different things, ie my experience in italy, and my often-new surroundings and situations. i have realized that stability is not necessarily something you have to sacrifice in the process of change, and change does not have to be destabilizing. being in italy keeps my brain constantly firing, constantly moving, constantly active. in my own culture i often get into a lull, into a complacency and boredom that i'm not at ease with. and while i constantly slip more and more into a comfortable gait with this culture and language and, my senses are still piqued day after day, my mind constantly working to understand this place, making comparisons, writing notes, filing it all away. right now it's all still an overwhelming mountain of mental post-its, scraps of paper, and ideas, but one of these days it's going on actual paper. i just haven't figured out when and how yet.
