by My parents are staying in Moeraki. This morning (my time) they called me from the hotspot in Hampden to wish me a good trip. The signal was dodgy as ever. They’ll be picking me up in Christchurch on Monday afternoon.
It’s my last full day before I jet off. I’ve made these sorts of trips before without batting an eyelid, but this time it all feels like a bigger deal. Maybe it’s because I’m getting old, maybe it’s because I haven’t done anything like this for seven years and the world isn’t the same place now, or maybe it’s the reactions I get from other people. New Zealand is unimaginably far off most Romanians’ mental maps. Few of them could locate the country on a real map of the world, even one that actually shows New Zealand. When it’s stinking hot (like it is right now) and I open up a weather app that says it’s currently one degree in Geraldine, it doesn’t compute. How can it be both winter and night-time? The US and Canada certainly do feature, however, and this morning I dropped in on my neighbour above me, who told me she (or some member of her family) had just booked a flight to Canada for next Friday, and she’ll be gone for five months.
I managed to keep today free of lessons. My last lesson before I go – my 614th of the year – was an online session last night with a woman who broke her ankle two weeks ago playing tennis. The one before that was with a woman I started with way back in 2017. Since then our lessons have been off and on, and two years ago she gave birth to a girl. Last night’s meeting with her was on Skype; she was at her parents’ place in a small town. It was a traditional house that her grandparents had built – the family house, to be passed down through generations, is a feature of Romanian life – and it seemed to be overrun by animals of all sorts. My student is lovely, and easy to build a rapport with, but she lacks the attention to detail required to really improve. She’s been at about the same level for years. For example, the word “freight” came up on numerous occasions last night because she works in logistics. The first time, she pronounced it like “fright”. It could logically be pronounced that way, if you consider height, but it isn’t, so I corrected her, emphasising that “fright” is a different word. But despite my best efforts she kept on pronouncing it “fright” regardless, and I gave up. I expect that if I’m still teaching her in 2029, I’ll still get messages from her saying “I will late 2 minutes”.
Yesterday was Ziua Timișoarei, the 104th anniversary of when Banat – the region where I live – officially became part of Romania. In the gap between my two pairs of lessons I met Dorothy and we chatted for an hour in one of the cafés in Piața Victoriei – inside, to get out of the heat.
My bags are now packed. I’ve used up half my 30 kg allowance and I’m wondering what the hell I’ve missed.
Update: In tonight’s Muzicorama, the big highlight for me was Paul Young.
