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.
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