by I always feel energised after my English lesson and tonight was no different. I started off with a “twenty questions” game where my student had to guess the five items in a shoebox I’d brought along. After randomly guessing that the first item was a book, he struggled a bit. He kept wanting to guess specific items rather than attributes: Is it red? Is it soft? Can you eat it? Is it made of wood? Do you use it in the bathroom? But we got there in the end. I then showed him some pictures of a typical Kiwi winter and we “commentated” on them. Lots of useful words there: scarf, hood, walking stick, steam, smoke, logs, chimney, stuck, mud, and so on. And that was the end of the lesson. Time flies when you’re having fun, and for me (and hopefully for him too, but I can’t really tell) it is fun. He also said he wanted to get a job working in a park or garden and would be happy to study first; I’ll ring up the council tomorrow and ask what they can do.
I’ve made up my mind now. I want to teach English, learn foreign languages, study linguistics (maybe one day becoming really knowledgeable in a specific field) and travel. Lots and lots of travel. And that’s pretty much it. I’ve given on making money beyond what I need to survive with a modest level of comfort. It feels good to know what I want, and don’t want, out of life. If I hadn’t gone on that fantastic trip to America last year I probably still wouldn’t know.
I still don’t know where to base myself in Romania. My parents had reservations about Timișoara, but they were around lack of shops the likes of which you find in cities with tourism, unrenovated buildings, and a slightly dated public transport system. None of those three things bother me. Timișoara almost certainly will modernise its trams, but I’d actually like to try the old ones first. And I’d much rather get there before Emporio Armani does than after. Sibiu is incredibly picturesque and is much more “done up” – I think it got a cash injection from becoming Capital of Culture in 2007, but it doesn’t have all the markets and old trams that I know I’ll like. Sibiu has other stunningly beautiful places nearby, well, within a few inches on my 12-miles-to-an-inch map, and that’s significant plus for sure, and it has the possibility of volunteer teaching in rural areas close by, which would help me get my foot in the door. Timișoara would be better if I wanted to get to other places in different countries such as Belgrade. And of course there are other places I could go like Oradea in the north-west which I really like the look of.
Talking of Belgrade, you can take a train from there to Bar on the coast of Montenegro, a 12½-hour trip taking in 245 tunnels and 435 bridges, all for 21 euros! I must do that, after first catching a train or bus, or both, from wherever I decide to base myself in Romania.
Shocking scenes from Marseille (another place I want to visit – stupidly long but totally awesome train ride, here we come) at the weekend. Lots of criticism levelled at the police for not segregating the English and Russian fans, but all that tribalism, all that visceral hatred that necessitates segregation in the first place, it’s just so far from me that I have a hard time understanding it. The behaviour of the Russians makes one fearful of what might happen at the 2018 World Cup. But the events in southern France pale in comparison to the mass shooting in Orlando. Just terrible. Sometimes I fear for the future of humanity.
