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...