Euro trip 2010 has offıcıally begun and so far so good. Im travelıng wıth my good frıend Chrıs Erdman for around two months thıs summer and plannıng on beıng back about mid August. Our excuse for comıng back to Europe is to teach an Englısh emersıon kids camp ın Northern Italy for the month of June, and then since we're ın Europe we may as well see some of it right? so we're gonna spend July and some of August seeing the places we missed. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to lıve vicariously!
Chris and I have had an amazing time for the week or so before camp actually started although the flight was a bit of a nightmare...comes wıth the territory though rıght! We arrived in Manchester having had no sleep, thanks to the lovely 2 year old who was jumping around beside me yelling for the whole trip. She tried to climb over the seat whenever no one was looking and if that didnt work then resorted to slamming the seat table up and down which for some reason her mother had no problem with, and then on top of that instead of sorting her kid out the mother and an older lady at the other end of the row were yapping through me about merital issues...music and headphones couldnt even drown it out. This lasted until the girl fell asleep...20mins before we landed. But now that I look at it, it was just foreshadowing to the way the kids at camp act. The long of the short is that I now respect and understand the concept of bording schools.
We had the day in Manchester which we spent with a friend of Chris's walking around the city before we got on a bus for liverpool at 11:00pm. We caught 4 hours of sleep on the liverpool airport marble which seemed especially soft after not sleeping for almost 40 hours, then caught our flight to Nice at 6:00am. Arriving in Nice to sunshine and Mediterranean waters made everything better and gave us our second or maybe fifth wind. We spent the rest of the day walking around Nice, having a swim here and there along the boardwalk then back to the hostel for some much needed sleep. The next day we got the train from Nice to Sanremo where our training camp was, which turned out to be a beach side hotel...not too shabby. There were 190 people from around the world all staying in one place, which made for an amazing time. It also helped that there was all the 0.89cent box wine you could drink.
Turned out chris and I had the best room too, we were bunking with 4 other guys, 3 americans and a fellow Vancouverite. We had the top corner room, which was naturally dubbed the corner office, had the biggest deck (overlooking the beach/med) and turned into the ideal place to listen to music/play music/meet other tutors/significantly deplete the worlds box wine supply before moving down to the beach to do more of the same. I met a ton of new really interesting and cool people just in the 5 days that we were there and have got a killer tan, cant complain!
We arrived in our final destination for the camp finally, and turns out we lucked out...we got sent to Lake Como, I'll try and get Clooneys autograph for ya!! Chris and I are in the same group with 5 other people that we spent a lot of time with during the training camp so we basically have the super group. We arrived in Como on saturday evening and were met by our host families. Mine is very nice, but kinda quiet so it is hard to get conversation going with the serious language barrier, but they are very nice and very accomidating and by the end of the week things were a lot more comfortable...and we we're in como.
About two days into camp I came to a realization...I hate kids. All things considered I think it actually is going quite well, during the day I would like nothing more than to jump out the window and end it all but at the end of the day when its over I have a good feeling about it; the kids have fun and I think they might actually be learning something. Some of my kids are great, but there are a few who are absolute terrors and just either refuse to do anything or just dont have anything aside from World Cup football going on upstairs. Then theres little Giovanni. I dont think I have ever seen the epitimy of a 'space cadet' manifested in anyone like it is in him. Anything I try and get him to do he responds with in one of three ways: 1) nothing 2) a meaningless scream 3) or he drools. And he has the ability to teleport, I send him back to his desk, look down and POOF! he's beside me again, staring unlookingly at me...but thats the way it goes, and it actually sounds as tho i have one of the better classes so thats good. It is utterly exhausting, but as long as you focus on the rewarding aspects everything is great.
I think the word relief can be summed up in one word: GRADUATION. This is the very last thing that we do at camp, and it is a good feeling. Looking back at it I would undoubtedly do it again. It was an amazing experience in general, living with a family was great because you really get into the culture more and get a feeling of how Italian culture differs from our own (mainly food and the fact that it is amazing!). But it was especially good for me because it really took me out of my comfort zone and forced me to adapt to a situation that I wasn't comfortable in, and knowing that the kids are having a great time and learning something is very rewarding. I would however, like to appologize to all my teachers...it has definately given me a new respect for what teachers have to put up with!
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