by I’ve just had a marathon – 81-minute – Skype call with my parents.
We spent the first part of our call discussing the latest shocking news, that my Wellington-based cousin has cancer in her jaw. My parents had noticed something was up when they met her at their tragically young relative’s funeral in late April, but never imagined it was cancer. Googling “jaw cancer” makes for sobering reading. Jaw cancer is rare and doesn’t exist per se; it nearly always starts somewhere else in the mouth and spreads to the jaw, meaning it’s usually in an advanced stage. The prognosis can’t be good. On Wednesday she’ll have an operation to remove flesh from her jaw and replace it, probably from her arm. I must send my cousin a message, but what do you say?
A good half-hour of our chat was spent discussing life admin. It’s making my parents’ lives a misery. They must get rid of both their flats in the UK. They must move to somewhere far simpler as soon as the building work on their current place is finished. They must do things that are financially sub-optimal, just to simplify their lives. Seeing them buckle under the weight of all this crap is upsetting for me, especially at a time when I’ve been overwhelmed by it all myself.
Yesterday I had my pair of two-hour lessons in Dumbrăvița. When I turned up for the maths lesson, Matei’s father told me that the British school is hiring a maths teacher. I very much doubt I’d get the job anyway because I have no experience of teaching in a school, but if I did I’d have to Get Involved and coach football and heaven knows what else, and um, yeah, I’d have nice long holidays but no thanks.
After my lessons we were supposed to have the latest edition of the English Conversation Club, this time at my place, but just about everybody was away. Sanda, who ran the club in its previous incarnation, showed up at five. We chatted about wedding traditions and the word “venue”, and I gave her a Kiwi vocab matching game which she was somehow fascinated by. Then at 6:20 another woman, Ramona, turned up. She had lived some time in the US, and spoke English pretty well. At one point we discussed silent-b words: “subtle”, “debt”, “doubt”, and words ending in -mb such as “bomb” and “lamb”. Ramona told me, and I get this a lot, that “You don’t pronounce the b in doubt because you’re British. Sorry, but I learned American English and in America they pronounce it.” No, no, no, no, no. I may be British, but I’m also a teacher and I’ve taken the time to learn about pronunciation in different English-speaking countries, I also watch American films occasionally, and believe me, they don’t.
At seven, Sanda said she was going to the open-air museum to see Festivalul Etniilor, where performers based in the Banat region, but with different ethnicities, sang and played and danced. After tennis was cancelled because of the waterlogged courts, I decided to join her. There were Germans (Swabians or șvabi), Ukrainians, Serbians, Aromanians and Gypsies (Roma). It was a riot of colour as all the performers were dressed in their traditional costumes. The event was free and completely non-commercialised, unlike the much more publicised Flight Festival also taking place this weekend. The star of the show, Damian Drăghici with his group Damian & Friends, came on later. In the past he’s been a supporting act for the likes of Joe Cocker and James Brown. Towards the end he played the nai (a traditional panflute); the last song of the evening was Ciocârlia (the Lark), a very traditional Romanian tune – I much preferred last night’s version to the one in the link. I really enjoyed the evening; well, at least I did after the start – I was starving but grabbed a large langoș from a kiosk quite a way from the stage.
I made a summer pudding for yesterday’s club which barely happened, and still have most of it. (We also discussed the word “pudding”. When I was growing up, we never used “dessert”. “Pudding”, or simply “pud”, covered anything that you ate after your main meal. For me, “pudding” sounds about nine times tastier than “dessert”.) The main benefit of yesterday’s “event” was that I made me tidy up the kitchen, living room, and main bathroom.
I promise I’ll talk about my trip next time.
