Politics

There’s a lot to get through so please bear with me.

Summer ended last Sunday afternoon and I thought the world might end with it. A freak storm whirled through, splitting tree trunks down the middle, lifting tiles from rooftops, and smashing windows. Debris swirled as if in a washing machine. A large copper sheet flew off the cathedral, whose clock stopped at 3:31. After only 15 minutes, all was calm. I was so lucky to be inside at the time. Tragically eight people lost their lives including five in Timiș district. One person was killed at the zoo by a falling tree, another by the large overhead sign at one of the entrances to Timișoara that crashed down on his car as he was driving. The storm was unforecast; people were just enjoying their Sunday afternoon.

As the storm hit I was making some animal cards for my latest student, a 4½-year-old girl. I’m not sure exactly where my teaching comfort zone is yet, but kindergarten-aged girls aren’t even on the same continent. On Monday I made my way to Dumbrăvița for a one-hour lesson with Alexandra, armed with my animal cards, number cards, and a simple board game that I’d painstakingly drawn out. Alexandra was lovely. But she was shy and didn’t want anything to do with me. When her mother’s request for her to come downstairs was met with “De ce?” (“Why?”) I knew I was in for a tough time. Teaching quickly became secondary to the task of making any sort of connection. Sadly I didn’t have much success. Both her parents were there, and that only made me more self-conscious. Of course, being the first lesson, I didn’t know what she knew, even in her native language. She did know her colours and farm animals in English. Next time (apparently there will be a next time) I’ll probably just bring my laptop and put on some cartoons.

There was a funny moment in one of my lessons on Wednesday. This was my 34th lesson with my first-ever student. We’d done plenty of reading, listening and speaking since November but very little writing. I had three subjects face-down on sheets of paper, and asked him to pick one at random and write about it. “Write about someone you admire.” He didn’t particularly fancy this topic. I told him he could do one of the others instead, but he said, “They’ll all be the same shit.” He was half-joking, and in the end wrote quite a moving paragraph about his aunt.

Yesterday I had a three-hour lesson with a woman just two years younger than me. She was 15 minutes late, which is good going for her. We had what I’d like to think was a fun and productive lesson. Pronunciation Battleships (a game I basically invented) raised a few laughs. It’s like normal Battleships, except the coordinates are pairs of words that almost nobody in the whole of Romania can pronounce, so instead of a square being B3 or F5, it’s rough–queue or bought–fruit. I certainly get some interesting pronunciations of “queue”: I’ve so far had kway, kwee and kwee-wee. I gave her a writing exercise: she had to write about a country she’d like to visit. She picked Australia, full of mountains, museums, castles and beautiful villages. I was flummoxed by this; I didn’t twig that she meant Austria. It was tipping it down outside and I mentioned to her that I had to take the bus to Dumbrăvița for my next lesson (with Matei). At the end of the lesson she offered to drive me there, but only after she did some stuff in town. This was awkward for me – there was obviously no way I’d get to my lesson on time once she’d done her stuff, but she didn’t see that teaching is my job, and being on time for my job is important to me. I’d rather have taken the bus, but I felt it was impolite to refuse her offer. Even the clock in her car was three to four minutes slow – that would drive me insane (a stopped clock or one that showed an obviously wrong time would be much better because I could simply ignore it). I was 15 minutes late, but neither Matei nor his dad seemed to be too bothered. Even though my 35-year-old student lives on a different time zone to me, we get on well. I’ve invited her out for a drink tomorrow at three, so if I leave at ten past I should have heaps of time.

By then, a picture should have emerged from New Zealand’s election. I haven’t followed the run-up much – the last three years have seen so many high-profile elections and referendums that I feel electioned out – but from what I can tell, people have been far more engaged than last time around. The Jacinda effect is surely a part of that. And this time serious issues that actually matter to people are getting talked about, unlike in that ghastly 2014 campaign. The massive and increasing gap between rich and poor, the housing crisis, immigration, the mental health crisis (let’s not mince words here), education (the burden on teachers in NZ increases every year and they don’t get paid nearly enough), the dairy industry messing up the environment – there’s a lot that’s badly wrong. I still expect National to form a government, just.

Some friends from St Ives are coming to Timișoara on Tuesday and are staying for a week. On Friday we’ll head off in a car and go… to be honest we’ve got no idea where. They’ve never been to Romania before, so I probably need to decide. They’re very free-spirited people so it should be fun.

Mum and Dad have both had the flu lately and haven’t been able to shake it off. It’s been sending Dad’s warfarin levels all over the show. They’ve just been put on courses of antibiotics. Let’s hope they do the trick.

Last week I taught for 16 hours, a new record! The more work I get, the better I feel. It really is that simple. I did have to navigate some fairly heavy seas on Monday night when my new student (yes, she turned up!) wasn’t at the level I’d anticipated. Our conversation was slow going. Time slowed to a crawl. Will she even want to come back? But she did, on both Wednesday and Friday, and will return again on Monday. She’s a student, just 21 or thereabouts, and like so many young women here, she’s very attractive. She was born and bred in Moldova, where the levels of corruption (as she described them) make Romania sound like, well, New Zealand.

This move has been nothing short of life-changing for me. I now have a purpose, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. My work is extremely satisfying, and in between lessons, I can relax in this beautiful city. I’m longer in this vicious cycle of doing things I don’t want to do so I can do more things I don’t want to do, year in, year out. Yeah, I’d still like a few more hours and the extra money that would bring; I’m having to be pretty frugal. I’d like to meet more people, do cultural stuff like go to the theatre, and of course travel. But Romania wasn’t built in a day. Completely overhauling my life will take time.

I try to avoid most political news now. It feels like it’s been wall-to-wall politics for the last three years, and I can’t be the only one who’s had enough. Still, the failure of the Republicans’ zombie-like healthcare repeal bill did put a smile on my face. As for the weather, last Monday night we had an electrical storm which gave us respite from the scorching weather for the rest of the week, but when I look at the seven-day forecast I see a high of 34, another of 36, a quartet of 37s, and even a 38. The title of this post, by the way, is from Simon and Garfunkel’s brilliant The Only Living Boy in New York. I remember one time that song came on the radio as I was about to go through Mt Victoria Tunnel in Wellington on the way home, but I went the long way instead to avoid missing the song.

I spoke to my brother earlier today. It was his 36th birthday on Thursday. He seemed happy for me.

Eurovision will be starting in an hour. It’ll be the first time I’ve watched it with non-English commentary. I don’t expect I’ll see it through to end (a shame because the end, where they do the voting, is the most interesting bit). The last time I saw it my grandmother was still alive and I wrote about it on my previous blog. Gosh, that brings back memories. I miss her.

I’m currently watching Simona Halep in the final of the Madrid Open.

This is the third wet weekend of wet weather – and wet weddings – in Timișoara. Yes, in Romania getting married is still something people do. Now that the season is upon us, I see and hear about half a dozen convoys every Saturday. Last night we also had a fairly major thunderstorm.

It hasn’t been a disastrous week by any means, with 12½ hours of lessons, but that number still needs to rise. My Skype student isn’t the big provider of work that she used to be. The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? games with my nine-year-old student seem to be a hit. I’ve had some useful advice from my students on where to go when my parents arrive here only four weeks from now.

Emmanuel Macron won the French election by a near two-to-one margin; it was even more decisive than I expected. Hopefully that will bring some stability to Europe, at least temporarily. Theresa May has been a disappointment to me – all you get from her are substance-free words. Very little action. But she’ll probably win a stonking great majority in next month’s election because she has no competent opposition outside Scotland. And as for Donald Trump, it’s all massively entertaining, if only it wasn’t so real. And dangerous.