Bus heading to London street...made me homesick!
It's been an eventful few weeks since I last posted...I had four wonderful friends visiting from the UK, which was fantastic:
Although I was a bit ill with a tonsillitis type virus, I think you can tell in the photo below from my feverish flush
Then last weekend I went to Siena as 8th December is a bank holiday in Rome...the immaculate conception festival, if you can believe it. (It seems Mary had a very speedy pregnancy - just over 2 weeks from conception to birth - but then if you're doing things miraculously why wait 9 months???) Siena is GORGEOUS - tiny, medieval and lovely. This almost made up for the fact that we'd planned to head to Venice, but it's been flooded and tourists were warned to stay away.
This last is the ceiling in our bedroom in our b&b - so fabulous!! it was only 25 euros per night each but was absolutely lovely and right in the city centre.
Teaching is still going well - hard work but I love my job. Highlights this last few weeks have included: me trying to elicit the word "rubbish" and a student responding, all seriously "I know! I know!er...SHIT!!"; one of the kids describing his house as "small...small-issimo!"; and doing a song listening exercise on Kung Fu Fighting, with a class composed of 60% Chinese students (lyrical highlights included "They were funky China men from funky Chinatown"..."There was funky Billy Chin and little Sammy Chung"...I'm now a bit scared that the equal opportunities police will come and get me, but luckily Italians aren't overly fussed about being PC).
In terms of my Italian, this weekend I mixed up the word for porcupine (istrice) with the word for pregnant (incinta) which made for an interesting sentence...I spent alot of time battling with the post office which was definitely educational, and I got drunk at a party and became convinced that I was now fluent, hopped into the front of the taxi and proceeded to "talk" to the driver the whole way home, in my terrible broken Italian..he was laughing alot, apparently.
