Language teaching

I don’t think I’ve totally lost my marbles yet, although many of the Romanians I meet think I already have for deciding to live here. I’ve been wondering how I’ll cope should I survive long enough to be marble-free, be that thirty years or twenty or ten, because even now I’m almost drowning in a sea of passwords and captchas and invalid formats. Today was particularly bad because I had to reactivate stuff and make payments using my new bank card. Then when it came to logging into plutoman – logging into me – I needed three attempts. My fingers just weren’t going the right way anymore.

Talking of aging, June is almost over, and that’s the month that reminds me that my parents aren’t getting any younger. Dad has just turned 72; Mum had her 73rd birthday two weeks ago. The last time I saw them they were 68 and 69. I miss them a lot. October isn’t far away.

It’s been a scorching June. We hit 35 today, and we’ve got 38s forecast for both tomorrow and Friday. Luckily, unlike today, I won’t have to go anywhere. Today my lessons got a bit messed up because somebody came over to take measurements for installing gas in this block. I went up to one of the apartments on the fourth (top) floor to have a discussion (or more like a listen) with the gas man. The heat up there was something else.

Today I finished the first plays of my new skyscraper board game with the two teenage boys. This morning I was surprised to see that my student’s family had acquired a kitten. We read a bit, and then finished our game. I lost 22-19; it became clear that he would win when we each had about four turns left of our allotted 30. (The game lasts 60 turns – or 60 months – regardless of the number of players.) In the game with the other kid which we concluded this evening, I won 23-19, and it was only clear I would win on my penultimate turn. Most importantly, the boys seemed to enjoy themselves and were obviously engaged enough the first time around that they could still remember how the game worked a week later. Interestingly, they each had different tactics.

Wordle. I thought I might bomb out today as I needed all six attempts. This is the fourth time it’s taken me all six since I started in January. I hoped GAFFY (an adjective for someone who makes lots of gaffes) wasn’t a word.

I had an easier time in Romanian. STARE is a common word in that language just like in English, so I often start with that word in both languages. (It doesn’t have the same meaning in Romanian, where it means a state or situation.) As for my lucky guess ALUNA, that’s a hazelnut.

Woodle is a harder version of Wordle, which I try every evening. Woodle tells you how many greens (letters in the word in the right place) and yellows (letters in the word but in the wrong place) you have, but not which letters they are. If standard Wordle is pool, Woodle is snooker. Here was my attempt today, where I started with four frustrating turns but then struck gold. Attempts are unlimited; today’s six is roughly average.

On a forum I suggested a variant of Wordle which lies about one letter every row, then somebody (who knows how to codify or whatever it’s called) made it. Independently of me, of course. I really like this one, which gives you eight attempts. The red letters are the lies:

I Skyped my parents this morning from the café next to the market and by the river. It was a bit noisy there so I moved to a bench by the river bank. It was already hotting up; a shirtless man on the other side of the river hauled in a fish. On Friday I sent Dad a depressing article about the beautiful River Wye being polluted – killed – by chicken factories along the river. He spent much of his childhood around the Wye, which was then teeming with salmon.

Dad mentioned that a new autism clinic had opened in Wellington and it was a shame I wasn’t still there and able to help out in some capacity. Helping people with autism was near the top of my list of career options when I left my insurance job in 2009, but that never eventuated.

The lady whose birthday was last weekend lent me two small English textbooks entitled Eckersley’s Essential English – triple E – dating from the fifties or so. They aren’t without value today, even if the language is outdated. The illustrations are delightful; they remind me of the John Thompson’s elementary piano books that I learnt from when I was little. Here are a few pages:

Interestingly in the second picture she’s circled the pronunciation of “always” with a schwa, as if she didn’t quite believe it. It does seem extremely old-fashioned; I’m not even sure the Queen says it that way. Or Jacob Rees-Mogg. In the eighth picture the author seemed to think that marquesses were something a student needed to know about.

It’s that time of year again that everything smells in Timișoara. The ripe fruit, the lime trees, the general scent of summer heat. That’s nice, but on Friday there was also the distinct whiff of pollution when cycling along the busy roads. Unfortunately that is a problem here.

The weather put paid to tennis once again yesterday, but it should go ahead later today.