Language teaching

Just like in New Zealand and the UK, pedestrian crossings have a red and a green man. There must be penalties for jaywalking here, because people are remarkably obedient when it comes to the red man considering how unbothered they usually are by authority. Anyway, red man, green man, easy (once I’ve got out of the habit of looking the wrong way). But this week I saw a flashing orange man. What do I do here? I was stumped. All that Romanian I’d painstakingly learnt, and none of it was helping me translate flashing orange man.

And I’m running into flashing orange men everywhere I go. On Monday I went to the library. A bit of background: Romania consists of forty-odd județe, which are like counties. This library is the central library of the Timiș județ, so it’s a bit like Wellington Central Library in NZ, or Cambridge Central Library in the UK, or any number of pretty big libraries. Or so I thought. The library is conveniently situated in Piața Libertății, one of the main squares in the centre of town where people hang out and relax. I always thought it was weird how I rarely saw anyone go in or out of the library entrance, but maybe there was some tradesman’s entrance that I didn’t know about. So I popped in. There was a guard at a desk. “Um, library? Er, this way?” Yes, he assured me. I went upstairs and downstairs, four fairly decrepit floors in all, and the only thing I found was a reading room with a solitary woman, well, reading. And that was it. Bemused, I walked back to where the guard was. “Er, so where are the books?” He pointed. Ah. In a small room to the left, on the same floor. I walked in, or tried to, but was stopped by another man, this time at a window. “Spuneți, vă rog.” Speak, please. But what was I supposed to say? He then said, “English?” No, not this again. This isn’t a language barrier, this is a flashing orange man barrier. I said in English, “I just want to look at some books,” but then gave up and walked out. I’d expected to see a whole shelf devoted to Mihai Eminescu, a kids’ section with beanbags and “storytime”, a selection of DVDs, a bank of computers, maybe even a coffee machine, but it felt like I’d been transported back a hundred years. I could see why hardly anybody ever went in.

Talking of tradesman’s entrance… I was starting to get a bit frustrated with my lack of work, when on Thursday morning I got a call from someone supposedly wanting a lesson. I was pleased to hold the conversation together in Romanian, and delighted when he wanted to come at 2pm that same day. He then switched to English, and asked me how old I was. Then he asked if I had a boyfriend and whether he could get to know me better. Alarm bells were ringing. He didn’t turn up at 2pm and I was reasonably grateful for that. He does however still have my address.

Yes, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit frustrated at the moment. The worst thing is that my Skype student, who provided about half my business, seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. She still owes me 80 euros, not a lot in the grand scheme of things I suppose but it’s still more than a week’s rent. At this point I’d say it’s less than 50:50 that I’ll ever hear from her again. I did 8½ hours last week; that isn’t nothing but it’s a third of what I’d like. Marketing myself is proving damn near impossible in the absence of lamp-post ads (I saw today that one of the Donald Trump ones I put up outside Piața 700 in November is still there). Adverts in shops just aren’t a thing here, with the exception of the notice board in Kaufland, a large supermarket. I’ll knock on the doors of six or seven language schools next week, armed with business cards and my CV full of unrelated jobs. I’ll also pop into the offices of some publications here. Some of them have English content geared towards expats (or, more accurately, immigrants) like me, but it isn’t English as I know it. Perhaps they’d appreciate a hand (or perhaps not). The biggest thing I can do is get out much more in the daytime like I used to, because heck, it’s a cool city to wander around in, and the money I’m saving by always having my lunch at home is surely outweighed by the health (and who knows, financial) benefits of being outside and in contact with people.

All three of yesterday’s lessons did materalise, and all in all it was a bloody good day. Going to another part of the city, or strictly speaking a suburb just outside the boundaries of the city, makes the whole experience that little bit more interesting. To get to Matei’s place I hop on the M14 bus (I now know definitely not to get on the 14, without the M, that comes just a few minutes before) and get off 20-odd minutes later at a stop called Fropin, just outside a Lidl supermarket. From there I walk through a new and quite visually pleasing development before turning right onto Strada Platinei. (The street on the left is Strada Superba. Superb.)

Matei and I spent a large part of yesterday’s lesson talking about our families. He’s an only child, and was surprised that anyone could have as big a family as my mum. (She’s one of seven, her mother was one of six, and her father was one of eight. Yeah, Irish Catholic.) I learnt that godparents are a far bigger deal in the Romanian Orthodox church than they were for me. Matei did much better this time on Millionaire. I managed to persuade him to phone his taxi driver friend rather than lock in the answer “tab” for “What is another word for a taxi?” This time he trusted his friend. His general knowledge is pretty damn good though. He walked away with £32,000 having made use of all his lifelines; he finally came unstuck on the £125,000 question when he thought Hamilton was the capital of New Zealand.

My main concern right now is that I’ll be hit massively for tax while I’m here. For a minute I thought I might be able to avoid tax entirely, but there are only two things certain in life…

I said I’d post some photos but it’s past my bedtime. Next time I promise. And I see it was six months today that I lay on my bed in the hotel here in Timișoara after my two-day train trip and thought, wow, I’m actually in Romania now, how cool is this?

As I wrote that last post my sinus pain worsened and morphed into a full-blown attack, just like I had in 2008. The pain was excruciating and I didn’t properly recover until the evening when I had two lessons. Just as well I was free until then. I haven’t had any further attacks since then, but Monday’s appointment with the ENT specialist can’t come soon enough.

Yesterday I had my first ever lesson with a kid. Yes it was a nine-year-old boy (actually he turns nine in a couple of weeks). His parents aren’t short of a bob or two, that much was obvious, although it was his grandmother who greeted me at the doorstep. The boy’s room was remarkably tidy. He showed me his Playstation games and told me all the countries he’d already been do. He told me all about London and Madame Tussauds. Sometimes he would speak English – his English wasn’t bad – and other times Romanian, which wasn’t easy for me because he flitted between subjects at will, as kids of that age do, so I was unable to “tune in” to a subject. There were two amusing moments. The first was when he said I was a bit young to have white hair. The second was when he proudly declared that he had a knife. In fact he had several knives including old army knives and a very beautiful Arab dagger. I survived the two hours without a scratch, and so did he, but it was really just a glorified chat. I’ve got two more lessons coming up next week, and keeping a young kid awake for that length of time while actually teaching him something will be a challenge. I’m up for it though.

My biggest challenge yesterday was getting to the place. Dumbrăvița is officially outside Timișoara, although it’s basically just a northern suburb of the city. The boy’s dad told me to take the M11 bus, but it was obvious to me that I needed the M14 instead. I jumped on a bus numbered 14 outside Iulius Mall, not knowing what the M (or lack of one) meant. The bus went the right way but came to the end of the line two stops before the stop I needed, so I had quite a walk. Trying to read a map on my phone is no easy task and something is draining the battery. By the time I got there, my battery was well into the red. I saw the return bus (with an M on it!) go by, and instead of waiting an age for the next one I walked home. It took me over an hour. As always it was interesting to visit a new part of town.

I read an article recently about the ten most loved and ten most hated jobs in America according to a 2014 survey. Nine of the top ten jobs either (a) created a product (and by that I mean a real, tangible product, not a so-called financial product), (b) helped people, or (c) engaged the senses, or some combination of the three. The odd one out was financial services sales agents, in ninth place, and I guess some people do just love making money. The rest included firefighters, teachers, special needs teachers, artists and even the clergy. Most of the bottom ten jobs did none of those things and instead involved staring at a screen. So many office jobs these days are soul-destroying, and so many companies try to motivate their employees by using team-building sessions or turning the whole experience into a game (let’s see who can get the most gold points this month!).

P.S. Have you always been able to play Pac-Man on Google Maps or is it a new thing?

I spoke to my brother on Friday night. I think back four years to his very unhappy life with his fiancée and it’s been a total transformation. It’s as if he’s a completely different person now. He’s in a happy relationship and a fulfilling job that enables him to travel quite often and do lots of housey stuff that seems to excite him. The years he spent outside the Army did him considerable good; he avoided being institutionalised. One minute he told me about a presentation he gave about geopolitics, the next minute he was telling me about the ten eggs they were incubating. In the past it was a struggle getting much out of him at all except the occasional grunt. Yesterday I booked a flight to London and all being well I’ll get to see him and his girlfriend. I’m only going for five days, coming back here on Easter Sunday. As much as I like Timișoara I’m looking forward to the change of scenery.

I’m much happier than I was four years ago too. All that futility was almost too much to bear.

Last week was slightly frustrating – I only managed 7½ hours of teaching, compared with 14 the week before. This week I should be busier again. My Skype student continues to piss me off with her constant changing of dates and times to suit her, but being pissed off occasionally is normal in any job and something I take in my stride. We’re currently working our way through a very good textbook produced by Cambridge University Press – it delves into all aspects of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation while covering interesting topics and giving an insight into British life. It teaches British English pronunciation which can be a little confusing for my student who learnt American English before I intervened. In our last lesson we covered “linking R” (four apples) and “intrusive R” (Vienna-r-is amazing), neither of which come into play in most varieties of American English because most English speakers in America are rhotic, so they pronounce the R in a word like “four”, and they tend not to stick R’s in phrases like “Vienna is amazing” or “Pamela Anderson”.

On Thursday I turned up to a potential lesson outside the Continental Hotel, hardly filled with optimism as to how it would turn out. I met not one but two potential students there, a 19-year-old Romanian who could speak virtually no English, and an Italian bloke in his fifties whom he had somehow befriended. The young guy could speak Italian; the Italian spoke some English but had only been in Romania a month and could speak hardly a word of the local language. Communication was interesting – I did quite well in Romanian but my Italian was very rusty. They wanted to live and work in Manchester, a city I’ve never been to. We sat on a park bench and had an interesting chat. I wrote a few basic sentences in a notebook. The young guy wanted to know the word for “steal”, something that Romanians are sometimes accused of doing. After 50 minutes they’d had enough. Have you got some money? You know, we discussed this on the phone. The young bloke said he didn’t expect to have to pay for the first session, and they both insisted they had no money on them. I pointed out the word “steal” on the page, and that was that.

With one of my other students I incorporate a song in every second lesson. So far I’ve used five: Our House by Madness, Ironic by Alanis Morissette, Let Her Go by Passenger, She’s Leaving Home by the Beatles, and Friday I’m In Love by the Cure.

Spring is most definitely in the air now. There’s nothing half-arsed about the seasons here, and I like that. Summer might be the hardest season for me to deal with. My parents are coming to stay for two weeks from 10th June; Dad is worried that it might be too hot for him. When I mentioned this to Mum she said “we’ll just have to put up with it; we’ll be fine.” I then said, “Do you mind if I translate that? You mean I’ll be fine.”

Coming to Romania might be the best thing I’ve ever done. Every day I walk around this city and see something new, a shop front, a doorway, a sign, a tree, and think, this is fantastic. The whole place has a handmade feel about it that I simply love. I read an article last week about malls merging (bleeding, if you like) into city centres. That sounds bloody awful. In Timișoara the big swanky mall with English signs (because they have to use a language that represents opulence and Romanian doesn’t cut it) feels like an enclave, a separate country, and long may it remain so. It won’t be long before tourists find out about Timișoara. The daily Ryanair flights, which began last September, are already making a small impression. On Friday I walked past some young English people in an outdoor bar, talking about a popular pastime among young English people, “getting wasted”. If that’s your aim, this isn’t a bad place to come to.

In the longer term, this might be good place to find a partner, certainly better than the UK or New Zealand. To put it bluntly, a potential girlfriend might put my mannerisms and quirks down to being foreign, when in reality I’m just a bit weird.

In my 50th and most recent game of Words with Friends with my cousin, I’d just broken my record when she promptly resigned during the endgame. I was leading 559-291. It was a crazy game. I had two bingos including one on the opening turn, and several other high-scoring moves. I was fortunate to draw all four of the highest-scoring tiles and both blanks, although I did make a conscious decision to open the game up. I was worried she might not want to play with me again after she threw in the towel, but we’ve since started a new game. I’m now leading overall by 34½ games to 15½.

Apologies for such a long post.

Right now I’m feeling, well, messy. On Thursday I was given some tablets to help alleviate my sinus problems. They’re a combination of pseudoephedrine and an antihistamine. Initially the chemist didn’t give me enough pills so I had to get some more. I’ve also been given a new nasal spray. I realised yesterday evening that amongst all this I’d missed two doses of Citalopram (my antidepressant) in a row, and I started feeling dizzy. I didn’t sleep well last night or the night before; insomnia is listed as a common side effect of pseudoephedrine. Plus I still have sinus headaches and I’m coughing up thick phlegm, sometimes colourless, sometimes yellow, sometimes brown, sometimes lumpy and sometimes even hard and crusty, like the stuff that sticks to the sides of my nose all the damn time. A lot of the time I struggle to breathe out of my left nostril.

I explained my problems at my appointment with an allergist on Thursday morning, the best I could in Romanian. She was very nice and seemed quite impressed with how much of the local language I could speak. I said that I’d had problems in that area ever since I got pneumonia and whooping cough when I was six. She squirted twenty droplets of liquid on my forearm to test for allergies such as dog and cat hair and various types of pollen. They all came up negative with the exception of mould (mucegai in Romanian). I was given a list of tips and tricks for dealing with a mould allergy. After two weeks of taking the medication she prescribed me, I’ll see her again, and I’ll likely get to visit an ear, nose and throat specialist and a pulmonary specialist. I don’t know whether my insurance will pay for this – I guess you could call thirty years a pre-existing condition. I’m very glad to be finally getting it seriously looked at. For so long all the mental health stuff took precedence I just hope they don’t dig up anything sinister as Mum put it; I read some horror stories last night about younger non-smokers with lung cancer.

I did 12½ hours of teaching last week, my biggest week yet, and I expect to do the same this week. With none of the pressure to be somebody else that I’m used to feeling at work, teaching hardly feels like work at all. I’ve now bought a Romanian domain name and am trying to put a site together using WordPress (which I also use for this blog) to help promote my lessons, in particular those on Skype. I’ve created a logo that incorporates my initials and have chosen a colour scheme (yellow, not too bright but not too insipid either) but haven’t yet found a suitable WordPress theme for the simple site that I’m aiming for. Having this new laptop certainly helps though.

Apart from my health issues (a big exception, I know) I’m feeling pretty damn good about things. Sometimes lately I’ve been scarcely able to believe how happy I am.

It’s a soggy first day of spring in Timișoara. I’ve just got in on the action by buying a couple of those flowery mărțișoare thingies, purely as souvenirs because you have to, like, know people to give them to. Female people. The guy I played tennis with in December told me this morning that you give them to women, whether you’re close to them or not.

Yesterday was simply a beautiful day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and after the weather I’d become accustomed to in recent months I was practically sizzling in 20-degree heat as the accordion man and the violin man and the statue man did their thing. In the afternoon I wandered across town, as I often do, to get one or two bits and pieces for my apartment. Buying two screws in a large hardware shop, yes two bloody screws, was quite a performance. My purchase, which came to a few cents, had to be bagged and scanned and registered and signed off in their system. Romania generally works on a refreshingly manual basis so all this faffing around with systems took me by surprise. My biggest purchase was a kind of cube that you can sit on. You can buy them in delightfully weird and wonderful colours in a big store called Dedeman, and I got a yellow and red one to brighten this place up a bit. Having students means people actually see the inside of my flat, and that’s a bit of a departure for me. I’m used to having no visitors for months on end; any thoughts of making interior alterations would bring to mind images of bears taking a number two in the forest. Now I might even have to dust! I now also have a large table, which I got delivered from Dedeman ten days ago, set up beside the window.

I got back in time for my Skype lesson which was due to start at five, but five o’clock ticked past and she didn’t appear online. When I called her she told me she wasn’t at home and was about to go to her brother’s party. This isn’t the first (or fourth) time she’s pulled this kind of stunt. In future we need to arrange the whole week’s lessons in advance, with an agreement that she pays me for a no-show if she hasn’t contacted me 24 hours beforehand. This evening I’m due to give two lessons including a two-hour Skype one which may or may not happen. Frustrating, most certainly, but these sorts of frustrations are nothing compared to the feelings of complete emptiness I used to experience in the workplace. And it looks like I now have a sixth student! The future is bright.

After forty games of Words with Friends with my cousin, I now lead 28-11 with one rare and dramatic tie. More details to come.

I want to change tack a little with this blog. Shifting your whole life to some weird and wacky country 11,000 miles away where you don’t know anybody, don’t speak the language, don’t have any guaranteed work and have never even set foot in before… well, I guess you could say that’s a fairly major undertaking. For many people with their friends and families and identities all wrapped up in a place called home, it would be like going to Mars (and actually some of the temperatures we got here in January weren’t far off). So I’d like to post a bit more often and talk more about the things I do and see and the people I meet on a daily basis, and the challenges I face with the language and the culture and figuring out the various hows and whys. Last week for instance I took a bus (probably not the best bus, as it turned out) and then traipsed across half the city trying to find a particular shop that might, perhaps, sell the laptop I was looking for. I found the right street, a busy street, a main street. The shop was at 56A and I was outside number 32 so it was clearly just up there a little bit, maybe just past the petrol station. Well it was certainly past the petrol station, and a school, and a few factories, and another petrol station, and a small farm with lots of chickens, and some muddy park of sorts, and I could see a large overhead sign up ahead telling me I was about to leave Timișoara entirely, but sure enough there was the shop, a surprisingly big shop in fact, full of empty spaces where my desired laptop might once have been. That trip took over three hours there and back, and I take similar essentially futile excursions on a regular basis, but I learn a little bit more with each one.

Today is officially the last day of winter. There isn’t a cloud in the sky. The temperature is forecast to rocket into the high teens later today. Perfect for me. The streets are lined with stallholders selling mărțișoare, which are little amulets or talismans that people give to each other on the first day of spring. That’s yet another Romanian tradition that is completely new to me. The central squares are packed with people, even in the middle of a work day, and none of them seem to be that bothered to get anywhere in particular. A bit like me really. Do any of them work? Or do they all have “jobs” like mine? The team bus of Poli Timișoara, the local football team, has just pulled in and the players have filed into the cathedral, but I don’t even think God can save them from relegation now. They were penalised 14 points for multiple irregularities before the season even started, and they’re now sitting on 13 points, second from bottom, having just been hammered 5-0 in Constanța by the competition leaders Viitorul, or The Future.

I now have five students. Count ’em, five! One of them gets four two-hour lessons from me every week via Skype, one of them can unfortunately only afford one lesson a month, and the rest are somewhere in between. Teaching is bloody great! I get to chat to people one-on-one in a relaxed environment, I get to talk about aspects of language which fascinate me, I get to discuss news articles and song lyrics, I get to improve my Romanian a little bit too, and best of all I gets tons and tons of job satisfaction. I don’t get that awful “what the fuck did I actually do today?” feeling over and over, week in, week out, where nothing ever happens and the needle returns to the start of the song and here we go again. I’m helping people and I’m getting paid for something I enjoy doing. It’s amazing, really. As I keep saying, it’s a dream.