Orvieto, Cinecittà and Liam Gallagher's accent

Since I last updated I took a quick daytrip to Orvieto in Umbria to visit my brother John and his friends, who were staying in an amazing villa up there. We hadn't planned the trip in advance, but when I realised it was only an hour on the train to Orvieto I seized the day. It was really good to see John and his friends, including Tim and Becky who got married the weekend before I left the UK. We looked at the wedding photos and agreed that I was probably the drunkest person at the wedding, and I finally got to see the swimming pool where the boys play tortuous games of kick-the-ball-as-you-dive-in which I'd seen several videos of. Though it was a bit cold and rainy. Autumn has finally arrived here, which manages to be a relief - the sunshine was actually getting annoying.

In general things are going ok. I feel exhausted at the moment as I'm working 6 days a week for 3 different language schools and trying to get my head round teaching. However, things will calm down eventually - I've told the school I've worked for since June that I'm leaving, and next week's my last week. Hooray! I've had ENOUGH of travelling all over the city to teach, of last minute cancellations for which I am not paid, of my constantly fluctuating timetable and lack of support/colleagues/friends.



From mid-Octoberish I will be working full-time at the British School in Cinecittà, a school where my friend Lucy also works. I'll be teaching classes, some adults, some children/teenagers, and so will altogether feel like more of a "proper" teacher.

On the other hand I will miss some of my current students. Yesterday I went to a lesson with a music journalist who works for the company Repubblica, which runs newspapers and a couple of radio stations. His english is pretty good, and after we sat down I asked him "What do you want to look at in this lesson?" to which he replied "Well, I'm interviewing Oasis on friday, but I find Liam Gallagher's accent really difficult to understand"!!! I couldn't believe it. Then he asked me if I could imitate Liam's accent for him. Ha - I laughed alot - and refused.



This excellent graffiti stencil was spotted somewhere near Campo di Fiori.

Back in Roma

Ciao tutti, I am back in Rome so I guess it's time to resume the blog action. Just to give you a quick idea of what's been going on, I vacated Rome for August in grand Italian tradition and headed back to London to catch up with people. Then my family whisked me away to Barbados for 2 weeks of tropical paradise, including a trip to Antigua, following which I had another week in London and attended Tim and Becky's fantastic wedding.


So that's where I've been, and now I'm back in Rome, living in a new flat in Rebibbia and working at not one, but TWO language schools. Argh, reality check!! Tomorrow I have a brand new class of complete beginners which I am not a little stressed about...plus three new individual students to meet first.

Rebibbia, my new area, is not quite as leafy and affluent as Monteverde where I lived for the summer, so I initially approached it with some trepidation. We're very near some huge A roads, the motorway, and Italy's biggest high-security prison, packed with mafiosi. However, on the other hand, I'm living with my brilliant friend Erika from the CELTA course, our apartment is very nice and newly renovated, and we have a great high street with lots of useful local shops where everyone is very friendly. In fact, the owner of the internet cafe I'm currently typing in is so friendly that he sometimes lets us use the internet for free...in exchange for us watching educational videos about Islam on Youtube. Yep, I'm afraid he's trying to convert us...we're not sure how to handle it so are thinking of starting to turn up in full purdah to convince him it's no longer necessary.

Erika and I are sharing our apartment with a lovely Italian from near Napoli called Lorenzo. He's a fantastic housemate in that he refuses to speak English (he claims he can't, but he wrote a grammatically perfect note the other day so I think he's just feigning ignorance). This is good practice though it leads to some hilarious misunderstandings. Yesterday he told me I was "una monella". We looked this up and the dictionary defines it as "a street urchin". He says that that's not what it means, it actually means someone who is "molto vivace" - lively - and is affectionate. Hmm, I still haven't figured out how to take that one. Anyway, tonight he is supposed to be cooking us dinner, which I imagine will be amazing, although me being vegetarian is throwing a spanner in the works. I hate putting people out and messing up their lovely cooking plans, but I don't know how far I'm prepared to relax...I already eat fish!

It's STILL ridiculously hot here, circa 35 degrees, and our apartment is like an oven at night. It's doing my head in - I was expecting to come back to Autumn (because the UK was getting there when I left London) and instead it's still the middle of summer. I understand there's floods in the UK...must be global warming.

Aside from getting things organised re work and the apartment (I had my first EVER trip to Ikea last week!! it was cool though a tad stressful. Plus I bought a bedside table, and am now terrified of becoming Ed Norton in Fight Club...especially as I live in a "condominio": am I going to be slaving away for no other purpose than to fill my condo with neutral and inoffensive Swedish furniture??) I've been catching up with my friends here, and have already had pizza at Formula One, hung out in various piazzas, had lots of Italian misunderstandings, drunk lemon soda in Lucy and Dave's beautiful flat, drunk way too much wine and Peroni with Rob and Erika, provided a translation service for Jacopo, tried to convince Antonio to marry me, taught Luca random english swear words, been called "bella ragazza" by a variety of italian men, spent hours of my life sitting in un-airconditioned discomfort on Metro B, and been poo'ed on TWICE by a pigeon outside the Vatican - so basically everything is carrying on as normal. A presto...