Photies from Italia

I have no idea why this is way down here.
I'm currently completely mingin from last night. Han and her housemate came over to stay and we went out to both, yes that's the TWO pubs in my village, The Black Bull and St. Patricks (typical traditional Italian places, as you can tell from the names) and I got aaaaaaaaaaabsolutely bladdered. I really do hope that none of my students saw me, that's the trouble with living in a tiny village - how bad would that be??
"Hey teacher, saw you chatting up all those men last saturday. You were hammered weren't you?? Must have been that rum you were knocking back like a sailor on shore leave"
"Er, no that wasn't me, you must have seen my sister, we look practically the same you know, she's a right'un, can't take her anywhere, likes a bit too much of the old birra, I've tried telling her. Anyway, so the second conditional, anyone know what is is??".

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I got to school on the Monday after that, opened up cos I was the only one in, got ready for my lesson, and sat there. And sat there. Bearing in mind these 3 students are NEVER late I start wondering, 'Hmmmm, where are they??'. 5 minutes goes past and I'm getting impatient. 10 minutes goes past and I'm getting worried. After 20 minutes I'm bricking it, completely convinced that one of their parents saw me out on saturday night completely plastered and drinking til 5 with a group of Italian blokes and has complained to the school about the lush of an english teacher and withdrawn their kids in disgust and now i'm gonna get the sack and have to go home with my head hanging in in shame. Then I remember the clocks went back an hour, breath a sigh of relief, and vow to myself never shall I get drunk in my village again (I'll get the train to the next village and stay at Han's an get drunk). So then my students turn up an hour later, but one's late, and she comes in after 10 minutes and scares the shit out of me by going:
"Hey teacher! My brother say he out drinking with you Saturday night at Black Bull??" (with a conspiratiorial wink) so I'm like,
"Noooooooooo! What?? Me? Yeah but, no but, I totally don't think so, I don't go out me, must have been some other English female, I was in Milan on Saturday, never heard of that pub anyway, The Black what?? But no, yeah, definitely probably not me, um, have you done the homework? Well, anyway, sit down, we're on question 3".

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I'm now a bit hungover from last night, went out in Rome, only meant to have 2 apperitifs but ended up staying out all night and doing shots of some strange clear liquid. Did get a bit of the old culture in the day tho, went to see the Pantheon which is just GORJUS, and has the tomb of Raphael in it, which is wierd thinking of him being inside it. I was filming it on me camera, then looked at it today, and there's only some silly cow in the background going "it's a bit rubbish innit?" to her husband. For the love of god, there's no pleasing some folks is there? It's free to get in, the dome is mildly breathtaking, there's a dead famous artist buried in there, lots of old art work, and she's calling it "a bit rubish".
Also visited an old cat city at Torre Argentina which is an ancient monument that's now been overrun by ferral cats cos the old ladies called gattare's feed them, so the whole area stinks of cats piss, nice. This is also where Julius Cesar was stabbed tho, which is quite cool.




The Collosseum.

Personally I think they should do a make-over and re-make it exactly as it was, I think man-eating lions would also improve the entertainment factor, but not bears.









3 Scantily Clad Men (There are lots of them absolutely everywhere, and I have to say it must have been very, very cold in the olden days)



















Mountains and Garden.


The sublime back yard mmmmmmm....mooountaiiiiiiiins.









Mountain and Street.





Can't get enough of My Mountains at the moment.








Cloud and river.

Tivoli, a gorjus village.


















Nun Posing.

(This is the actual pose she wanted. She doggedly sat like this for ages as her mate took the photo: "Hmmm, Audrey, I want me looking reflective in this one, ok? Make sure you catch my inner contemplative side with the back of my head" oooh, look at Agnes, she's so deep and contemplative, contemplating the waterfall)











When in Rome...












Below are the girls we were out drinkin with on Saturday night, the second from the right was a COMPLETE Hedonist!































Say n'more.

(No I gotta say it... Look! Water nozzles coming out of her nipples!!What the....???)














Door handle from the Labyrinth's brother.



















Gorjus fountain.












Scarey statue.

This was in Villa D'Este. Scared the bejesus out of me it did, it's the chick from The Ring innit?

Sublime Stress Busters In The Back Garden

Not much has happened recently in my mountain village, so I may ramble a little here. And also, I completely forgot about the most important stuff which every female I know has asked me about repeatedly in all incoming recent e-mails:

Da Da Daaaaaaaaa: "The Italian Men"

Lets start with a B, then an E, then an A, then a U, then a Tiful! Seeeeeeeeeeeeriously. I saw one lad in Rome right, that was actually better looking than the bloke who plays Ernesto Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. I really wish I'd run up and taken a photo of him to prove this amazing fact.
When we were in Rome recently, after a lot of walking and sightseeing and reducing this ancient beautiful Roman city full of breathtaking buildings and gravity-defying statues to "Ooooh, do you reckon this is the fountain where that bloke tried to drown him and he breathed through the rubber pipe??" me, Han Na and Soph were sat having dinner, and me and Han were facing a Piazza full of Italian people, and every, lets round it down to... 3 minutes, what we were saying would stop dead, and we'd sigh, completely transfixed at something just beyond Sophie or Na's head, and we'd drift off for a good minute as we contemplated another complete Adonis walking past. I don't understand how a country can produce such consistently beautiful people, cos the women are all stunners aswell and they're all so cool. What happened at some point in history, that all beautiful cool people settled here? There must be a rational historical explanation, like they were all exiled from other countries for being too gorjus, and they settled here and just multiplied. And the men are blatantly sexual, well, being that good looking I don't blame them, but even with a girlfriend on their arm they'll look you up and down, to the point of being a bit slimy actually. And there's a really stupid phenomenon with the young lads. For some reason, you'll get the fittest bloke in the world... and he only plucks his fecking eyebrows to an arch higher than Lily Savage! Nooooooo! You feel like running up to them, shaking them, and going ;
'What ARE you doing?? Stop it! Stop it now! You were beautiful but now you look like a big gay bear!'.
Apparently vanity is symptomatic of Italian men (not to make a sweeping generalisation or owt, I am, by the way, completely aware that all generalisations are dangerous, even this one). Even ugly, fat old men (yes there are some here, they mostly drive taxi's) check themselves out in the reflection every time they pass a car door / window / pane of glass / mirror / slightly shiny surface. So anyway, the even more important stuff: I got 2, yes TWO Italian blokes phone numbers on recent train journeys. On the train on the way to Hannahs I was chatted up by a Robert DeNiro look- alike ..... ok, maybe I wasn't chatted up, maybe I was chatted to...... and maybe he was more like Robert DeNiro's grandad ....... and maybe he only wanted me for my English speaking skills to teach his 5 year old grandaughter English...... but it's still a phone number and that counts in my book. And the other number on the way back from Hannah's could have turned into something beautiful if only I spoke Italian or he spoke English, or both of us spoke French, or German, or any common language at all, as it was we couldn't, and the conversation was, accordingly, very stilted. So he's sat opposite me and looking at me like he wants to say something for 40 minutes, then:
"blinglio blonglio corleonio blahlio" (Italian type stuff)
"uh, I'm sorry I don't speak Italian" (I actually managed that phrase IN Italian)
"oh! blerbylio lerbylio da vinchio webylio gerbylio " (more Italian, I don't think I made it clear enough that the thing I just said in Italian yeah, that was ALL I can say in Italian, so I repeated the above phrase)
"Oh. Blingo blongo blaholio Sulmona wingo proloifico malofico waholio?"
"Yes! Sulmona! Me. Sulmona!" (I don't even know what "I live in - " is)
"aaahhh, blingo proscuttio blongo blaholio labuttio blaholio mafusio?"
(more italian, but with a rising intonation which i took to be a question)
"Errr. Me. teacher. English . Sulmona" (In shattered Italian. Aaaaaabsolutely pa-the-tic)
"ah! blaholio raphaelo blingio michaelangelo blongio donatello bleurio"
(I presume he told me what he did, and what he thought of it. Have no idea what that is or whether that is what he said, so smile at him and then look out of window hoping he'll not talk any more Italian to me with rising intonation, tho he can carry on talking Italian in general cos that just sounds luuuush). Then when we got off he gave me his number and I think he said he'd show me round Sulmona but, of course, I could be wrong, he could have given me the number of a hairdressers called Giovanni and told me to sort it out. Whatever, the valuable lesson that I came away with is that I seriously need to learn Italian, if only to pick up fit Italian men. To this end I've been having lessons with my Italian receptionist. She speaks no English at ALL during the lessons which is hilarious sometimes as I sit there like one of my beginner students that I find so amusing and have taken the piss out of on numerous occasions for the amusement of others. Oh my god, I bet Lucia does that with me, I bet she goes home and is like "oh my god, you'll never guess what the english girl couldn't say today in the lesson, she couldn't even pronounce 'my name is'... AND she couldn't even hear the difference at all when I said 'fishing' and 'peaches'!! he he!"! I'm also intrigued by what English people must sound like when they attempt to speak another language. Like, French and Italians speaking English sound dead cool, but Germans sound awful, so as English isn't the most gorjus language in the world, like Spanish, Italian and French, do we sound like Germans when we talk these beautiful languages? Actually , I think I must at least, when I tried to practice my french in Biarritz, they were having none of it-
Me: "Er, C'est combien d'argent?"
Surly French Monsieur in shop : "Zat...iz...fifty francs" (...in other words "Do not taint ma beautiful french language wiz yeur filthy english pig-dog tongue you ingrate. Now go away from ma beautiful french shop, I am eating an onion.")

And the teaching, it's a lot less stressful here. I think I've figured out why. The mountains.
It's hard to stay stressed when you're walking home and: "Hello there Mr!" up pops a mountain at the bottom of the street. There I am worrying about next weeks hours and what the hell the second conditional is and wondering whether and how I can best teach it without having a full and complete grasp of what it actually is, and this mountain's just sat there completely belittling my worries just by being there, mocking me with a "Ha! You insignificant pitiful fool of a human! You're worried about the second conditional when I've been sat here for millions of years, since time immemorial? Get over it." Which is always nice, a bit of perspective on the way home. So yeah, having the sublime in yer back garden is a great stress reliever. Actually, Hans housemate doesn't even believe the mountains are real cos they're too much like a film back drop. She believes we are all living in a Truman-style town which is packed up at night and brought out again dead early in the morning. I also think that there's a theatre somewhere in the world with a rather large stage set missing, and it's here, the back streets in Sulmona. The streets are too cobbled, the houses are just too stuccoed and rustic with their shutters and their flowers, the churches are stereotypically gothic, and even the lamposts casting their orange glow over it all are like something from a Stella advert. Well, I'm off to eat some more pasta now, I think I may have actually turned into a piece of cannelloni by the time I get home.

The Pope Watching Me Watching Ashton

So my first day of teaching was a complete BUZZ, better than any drugs. Came out completely high, dunno what i was doing in Malaysia, but I feel like a proper teacher now (sorry for any of my old students... what am I saying? This is English! Like you could read it!). I had two Intermediate 15 year old girls first (they love Blue, and the first thing they said to me was 'salve'... sorry jod!) then four 9 year old girls (cute as, but they speak NO English, and with my Italian that made an interesting lesson,we just ran around a lot shouting English words and pretending to be animals. Not sure how this helped their English tho), and then six 20-30 year old students and professionals - including students of fine art and chemistry. So my language grading for the last class was not all it should have been:
"He-llo! My - name - is - Katy. I - am - from - England. Do - you - like - Britney - Spears?"
"Um, I'm Mariantoinetta, from here, Sulmona. I study Chemistry at University... and, no. I don't"
"Oooohkay then! well done. Um, good English you've got there..."
Mentally shoot myself in head / floor swallows me up. And THEN my Advanced students, 4 of them, all mates from University, were better at English / grammar / general knowledge / everything in the world than me too. I was trying to be all professional and pre-teach some, what I thought were difficult, words before a rather hard reading we were gonna do:
"Does anyone know the word for when everything is confused and no one knows whats going on and ...
"chaos"
"YES! well done! and what kind of word is..."
"Is a noun."
"Um, yes, itàs a noun. Ok, um, bit harder now. What's the word for when you can't get through something, or when something is not see through, if you are in a forest thick with trees..."
"Ah! Impenetrable"
"WHAT?!? How in tarnation did you know that? I mean, yes, well done. Ooookay then. Oh I know, um, when something is very worn and not in good condition."
Silence.
(Me gleefully:) "Anyone? Anyone at all? No one knows? This word means it's a bit old and very used and is not very nice."
Silence.
"Ha ha! So no one knows except ME aye?? Well, it's a new slang word we use a lot in England. 'Manky'.
Ha! didn't know that did ya?!! Oh yes, I rock! You suck! Na na na na na! I speak English youuuuu don't!"

Well, maybe I wasn't quite as bad as that, but I do hate teaching people who are cleverer than me, I really, really do.

And I've found I sound very 'What-ho! I'm from England, jolly good, jolly good, nice cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich, what?' when completely immersed in other accents. My flatmate's from Canada and my boss is Italian, and everyone else in the village is Italian, so just stopping short of actually saying 'Oh spiffing!' one is developing a rather large plum in one's mouth.

Oh and one other small thing about Italy. It's fucking freezing!!! And when I swear for emphasis there, I swear for fucking EMPHASIS. I can't believe it. Soooooo cold.
Why the hell did no one tell me that Italy can be cold. Very cold. Seriously, and it's even colder in the houses and schools than outside cos there's no central bloody heating! Oh man, I can't believe it. That's all of my wardrobe apart from 5 items of clothing completely useless, unless I wear them all at once. And bikini's aren't much insulation. Like, I'm not exaggerating. My housemate also moved to Italy cos she thought it was hot and she's been here a year and she says it just gets colder and colder til November, that's when it will snow, then it'll get colder and colder til December and you think it can't get any colder.... but then Jan and Feb will surprise you cos it actually can get colder and does. Maybe in April I'll be able the leave the house without 5 layers. I - am - gutted. At least I'm not the only one who moved here cos I thought it was hot. Mary Ann did too, but she also has family here, and speaks Italian fluently, and has an Italian boyfriend, so is not quite so despondant about the whole weather situation as I am, being my whole reason for picking Italy.

The flat I'm in is amazingly decorated. It was decorated in roughly the 20's era by a fanatically religious old Italian lady (I presume). If it's not Jesus with a bleeding (literally) heart looking down on me from above (the bathroom door) it's Madonna with child looking all beautific in my bedroom, and the Pope himself looking on from the wall in the living room as I watch MTV (the only channel with any English. Thank the lord for Punk'd is all I can say). Seriously, I'm living like an extremely strict and pious 17th century nun at the moment. All I do is read Henry James, and lesson plan. And it's sooo dark in my room at night cos we're in the mountains, I nearly poked mysef in the eye trying to see if I could see my hand moving infront of me. And the house is so cold, I truly believe that if one of the mountains of blankets I have, fell off me in the middle of the night I would wake up purple and probably DEAD from hypothermia (incidentally one of the blankets has large numbers stamped on it in print. Don't they do that in prisons?) I've got no music, hairdryer, straighteners, laptop or curlers cos I only forgot to bring a bloody plug transformer didn't I. So they're all sat there teasing me til I buy one (funnily enough, not that many shops sell English to Italian plug converters here in mountainsville, and trying to explain what one is is a nightmare). So yeah, like a nun, I get up in the morning and wash with fresh mountain water from a porcelain bowl beneath my bed, it really is my 19th century fantasy...
(not really, we have a power shower and radiator in the bathroom, but I can dream).
And the view from the back balconey. Oh - my - god. I nearly cried when I got here and saw it, no I'm not gay, and I wasn't pre-menstrual, it is that beautiful. Like a Cezanne but without the funny shapes. And the walk to school is just phenomenal, 360 degree mountains with clouds rolling down them straight behind the houses, just like Laos. I feel like Mariiiiaaaaaa of a morning.

And the Italians are dead strange. They walk. A lot. I got home from a bike ride (oh yes, clean, pastoral living rocks) at about 7ish and the streets were FULL of the chatter of Italians walking the streets. The shops were shut, there was no festival on, they weren't on their way to church or the pub, weren't drunk. Everyone in the village was just out... walking and chatting. And I saw one young guy in a hoodie walking along chatting to an old man! They're my favourites, the old men. Groups of them stand in the street talking their beautiful language and gesticulating wildly, even in the cold. I'm dying to understand them, cos I'm completely sure that they're discussing the unbearable lightness of being, or the Illiad, they can't be talking of the mundane the way they sound and gesture. Bet they are actually, bet they're comparing their piles or something. Oh, and I finally learnt some Italian, cos I was sick of standing there like a pleb when people mistook me for Italian and came up to ask me for directions, they'd come up and go "Mi scuze, dove esta el scorchio y bella pasta va notte proscuttio michael corleone mi molte bene fettuccini pour favorio mi bambino eh?" (well, that's prolly not quite what they were saying but it may aswell have been for all I understand of Italian) and I'd just stand there looking really vacant trying to think of something to say, but all I knew was "Errr, Molte bene signorina! Buena notte." And then I'd then run away. So now I can say "I'm sorry, I'm English and I don't understand" and they STILL look at me with pity as if to say "Then why the hell are you living here you retard'. Either way I come off looking like a retard.