by Some news hot of the press: my brother has got engaged. I know that last weekend he took his girlfriend up for a ride in the plane he subsequently jumped out of, so perhaps he proposed then. I’m happy for him, well both of them, although I was happy for them even before this news. Now that I live much closer to the UK, I might even go to his wedding. Imagine having to fly half-way around the world just for that. I’m only joking – he’s the only sibling I have, so of course I’d have travelled from New Zealand for it – but it does amaze me just how many people travel vast distances for weddings of relatives and so-called friends that they’re hardly ever in touch with. Perhaps the obligation they feel is extremely strong, or who knows, maybe they’re just crazy and actually enjoy weddings. On that note, I half-expected my cousin (the one I stayed with in America two years ago this very day) to invite me to his wedding which took place in northern Italy last year, but I’m very glad he didn’t.
The interview wasn’t too bad. On odd occasions she asked me to speak English, probably because I wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. In fact she did about 80% of the talking. After the interview I had to do an online multiple-choice English test, and I got 60 out of 60 in a third of the allotted time. There were errors in two of the questions that rendered all four of the possible answers incorrect, but I figured out which of the incorrect answers they wanted. Onwards to the second interview I had this morning. The initial instructions as to what this would entail were far from clear, and it’s just as well I asked the interviewer to clarify, otherwise I’d have got the wrong end of the stick entirely. My task was to give a half-hour one-on-one lesson on Skype on the subject of job interviews (!), imagining that it was my first meeting with the student. The time constraint upped the level of difficulty for me; I had a real hard time fitting everything in. But I gave it my best shot and that’s all I could do. She gave me some honest (and helpful) feedback and I probably scored about a 7 out of 10. Whether that will be enough, it’s hard to say. Working in my favour is the fact that their Timișoara office currently has no native English speakers at all. They all flock to Bucharest.
Thanks to my latest bunch of flyers I’ve picked up two more private students, taking my total to nine, assuming they both show up. Let’s hope so. I’ve got lessons scheduled with both of them on Thursday.
Towards the end of my train journey to Alba Iulia I got talking to a woman in her late twenties who wondered what was wrong with me to have got to my stage in the game without a wife or kids. (I notice that the last sentence includes six consecutive words beginning with W. Could that be the basis for some English exercise?) She described me as rușinos, which at the time I thought meant “ashamed” (from the word rușine, meaning “shame”), but actually means timid or bashful. My lodgings (“hotel” isn’t the right word) were pretty basic. Alba Iulia was a tale of two cities: the seven-pointed star fortress and buildings within it which were kept in pristine condition, and the city centre which (apart from the churches) had been wrecked by ugly Communist-era buildings and was overflowing with litter. I’ve just been reading about star forts and why they were constructed like that. Pretty clever really, but the cost of building such defenses must have been colossal. I didn’t do an awful lot on my second day in Alba Iulia; the heat slowed me down. I got back home at about 12:30am.
I saw some economic figures on the news tonight. The average Romanian spends 28% of his or her income on food, compared to 11% for the EU as a whole. Only one in three Romanians buys new clothes as opposed to second-hand ones. (The second-hand clothes shops here are pretty good. I’d never dream of buying anything new here.) So private English lessons are certainly a luxury item.
