Buses are expensive in Bergamo!

There is possibly nothing more humiliating than standing outside a crowed train station being treated like a high priority criminal for not having a ticket for the bus. Now granted I had hopped on the bus without a ticket assuming I could buy one on the bus but alas this is Italia! That would be far too simple. Silly me, I feel I should know by now that everything in Italy is constructed in a way that makes sure you really do really really want or need what you are attempting to buy before you can actually physically own it. If you want to buy a drink at a bar for example you have to queue to pay for it, then you are given a receipt; with that receipt clutched tightly in your hand you then have to move 10 metres to your left to queue again before the drink becomes a physical entity in your hand that will help you forget all about the silly queuing system you have just endured. Not to mention the peculiar Italian notion of how to queue…. but I digress!

So, there I am outside Bergamo train station being asked for documentation.... I tell them I don't have anything, seems like a fair and truthful response. He simply looks at me slightly confused and asks again. He then starts pointing at my bag, as he asks me in Italian and then smirks as he walks me over to two other middle aged and slightly pop bellied miserable Italian men. He tells these men of the current dilemma, I don’t have my ticket (alert the media!) and, god forbid, I don’t have any documentation either. The man simply looks me up and down and, holding up three fingers says “30 euros...” After realising he hasn't in fact mistaken me for a prostitute in my hard rock cafe Firenze t-shirt and €10 jeans (what a find they were btw!) I instantly become offended. Ok, I said I don't understand why I need a document but that's because, strangely enough I’ve never put myself in this predicament before not because I'm an idiot that can't understand the word 30 without the correct amount of fingers being rudely shoved in my general direction. After a failed attempt at finding a ticket I knew I had bought a few days and forgot to stamp (genuine mistake) I get out my purse and tell the grumpy men I still don't understand why I'm being asked for documentation I blatantly don’t have, and more importantly why I am paying what I consider an extortionate €30. I dubiously take out my English provisional driving license and hold it out as what must be a pathetically helpless expression sweeps across my face, the man that has bought me over to the others grunts before snatching it (yes really) and writing my name on a piece of paper shortly before scribbling €30 and signing it. Oh great! Now my actual name is on a document that's going to be kept in some stuffy office and stop me from ever getting Italian citizenship! ... Perhaps that's  a touch melodramatic but alas it is what goes through one’s mind when they hand over 30 precious euros to the grumpy men who practical snatch it from my hands. I am handed a thin piece of yellow paper that will document forever this highly depressing event and I sheepishly walk off, trying to avoid eye contact with a semi attractive guy that has been watching the whole ordeal with a sympathetic eye. I shrug off into the station and go and buy my ticket to Milano. I've already missed the train I wanted to get so it annoys me that little bit more that I now have to pay an extra euro for my train ticket... Thank you atb! When the ticket is printed and I can regained some control over my facial expression which has turned into an involuntary scowl, I head to the platform to await my train. As I walk through to platform 6 I see the semi attractive boy again and he approaches me... Perhaps this is fate I think to myself; this is how I meet a new friend/ free Italian tutor/ boyfriend... But I was too riled at the way the grumpy bus men had treated me and this must have been written all over my face, still, for as he approached and smiled at me and we made eye contact, he quickly retreated, instead making eye contact with the seemingly fascinating clock to my right... Yup, another fine example of how not to live your life, thank you very much atb bus services! And really, don't feel obliged to meet me again!

Oops, I seem to have moved to Italy

Allora. 3 syllables, 6 letters, simple! Everytime I hear that word it makes me smile. Even now after 4 months in Italy I still smile whenever I hear the word. I can think of no better word to start a post about the joys of Italy and the joys I have had working for ACLE. It has literally been the most exciting and exhausting summer of my life and I have met so many wonderful people from all over the world and all over Italy. Words cannot describe how much I miss some of them and how much most of them made me laugh. My advice to you if you read this and are contemplating teaching abroad, look up ACLE, it will be the best decision of your life and I guarantee you that you won’t regret it!

So here is my summer with ACLE all down in black and white, from orientation to camps across the entirety of northern italia!

My summer started on the 5th of June when I arrived in the sunny San Remo for a week of Orientation. I had no idea at all what to expect and rocking up to a large building at 8.30am on Monday morning, having climbed up; definitely 1000 stairs; I find myself looking around at a room full of equally apprehensive faces all wondering "Did I make the right choice or am I going to immediately regret this decision." After all, everyone here had flown from somewhere across the world to this small seaside town with only an slight inkling as to what they had applied to spent their summer doing. Orientation after that initial moment of “uh-oh” is a bit of a blur for me, jam packed with crazy games and songs. I remember getting a little over excited about writing ACLE related lyrics to the tune of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” my most favoured line of genius being “Don’t stop repeating, hold on to that English. Watch, listen and repeat”…. What can I say…. Im amazing *cough*…. Anyway, orientation also involved taking part in a rather drunkard last night at Tahiti where I accidently flashed my bra to everyone from the ACLE office… what can I say…. I just wanted to be noticed….. (It really was a complete accident and not at all a ploy for attention) There is also somewhere in my brain the vague memory of a talent show where I played a rather poor magicians assistant who thought she was excellent…. And that was that, orientation was over and there I stood at the train station talking to Romina who was surrounded by boxes of juice and fruits for our journeys and awaiting a train that would take me to my first camp. A flustered Vince came rocking up after just taking a bunch of people to their platform to take us, his final group to our train and see us off safely. I remember looking around at the people who, just 5 days ago had been complete strangers yet now felt like good friends, all with big smiles on their faces that matched my own, listening to and telling jokes and funny stories. I wondered if they were as anxious as I was feeling, having had a slight panic about what was going to happen next. As we boarded our train to a place we had never heard of, just outside of a town we didn’t know I began to realise the crazy yet amazingly exciting nature of working for ACLE.

Meeting our first ever camp directors was a slight jolt to the system, they spoke very little English and didn’t often get to practice the English they did know. I remembered the tips from orientation. “Speak slowly, keep it simple, nobody wants to know your life story!” That first meeting was strange, awkward and a little bit overwhelming but after standing in front of a small group of 10 year old Italian children for 10 minutes shouting “Hello!” and “my name is….” I knew that this was going to be an amazing summer! The rest of that week now is a blur involving a rather timid; when compared with later events, water games afternoon and a show that involved spongebob squarepants. Now that I had successfully completed my first camp I felt good and ready to start all over again. There hadn’t been any major hiccups, save the sweet 10 year old girl that really didn’t have a clue. Let me paint the picture, camp has lasted 5 days and she has been answering questions the entire time with a whispered help from her friends. I sit her down to test her and start with what I believe to be a simple question. “Where were you born?” … I am met with blank stares and hazy eyes. Ok, rethink Hayley! What would make this easier? Oh of course… “Where do you come from? Where do you LIVE?” …… more blank stares. I start to replay the moment in my mind, I spoke slowly, very slowly and very clearly. I enunciated every. Single. Letter in a way that would make Michael proud…. I start to wonder if this girl paid any attention at all when I suddenly get an “OOOOOHHHH”…. Phew…. “Allora…” she says with a big smile. “Pizza….. Pasta……Erm….. No…. Pizza.” She sits there, pleased as punch with herself as I paste on my best Disney smile and tell her she can go before putting a small x next to her name.

That one incident became a running theme for me and the other tutors at each camp after that first camp of the summer. Each week, after the initial lesson when you walk into a classroom and do your introductions to the class, the first question asked at break was always “got any pizza pasta kids this week?” It was like a secret code that kept us all amused when we had a moment to breath. That, along with a constant stream of conversations about colours and random outbursts of songs involving baby sharks and other animals such as jellyfish, octopus and moose; not to mention bazooka bubblegum and questionable deep south accents, the summer was shaping up to be one of the best so far.

During the rest of the summer I came to meet so many amazing people, a large percentage of which I fully intend to stay in contact with and a select few very special people that I know will remain a friend for life. The brilliant thing about ACLE is that everyone has more or less the same outlook, even during my week off when I purely by accident ended up in Baiardo, I found that everyone around me was a fantastic human being. Everyone reads, everyone loves to travel and everyone loves to get a little bit tipsy on red wine and to be honest it would be cruel to say no to wine that is €3 for a bottle!

Whenever I think back over the summer I wont just remember the complete sense of achievement you get when an Italian child with a huge smile on their face completes an entire sentence in English, all alone. I will remember the host families that I loved so much. Especially the wonderful family I stayed with in Venice that have literally become like family to me and I miss immensely. I will also remember the other brilliant tutors, I was fortunate enough to be with amazing tutors at every camp during my summer and I have honestly never laughed so much and so often. Once, during a meeting with a camp director I laughed so hard that I broke my Venetian glass ring from Murano by banging my hand on the table a little too enthusiastically. There is also video evidence somewhere of me and a rather wonderful girl from Buffalo laughing so much we are actually crying during a pretty intense “Messy Games” day.

ACLE has given me friends in Australia, America and Canada (we all know how much I love the Canadians!) and made me really appreciate how much I love fellow brits. After spending summer away from home, surrounded by American’s and Canadians I didn’t realise how much I missed British sarcasm until I was placed at a 2 week camp with a fantastic bunch of fellow brits. I still feel sorry for the sweet Canadian girl that was at that camp with us because our conversations, though completely hilarious and not at all offensive to us, must have made her wish she was suddenly deaf to sarcastic and borderline inappropriate banter that we call the natural flow of conversation.

And so concludes my mismatched tales of my summer of fun and excitement. Getting paid to teach English to wonderful Italian children is one thing but being able to initiate afternoons of water games is something entirely different. Not to mention the excitement that comes from applying face paint to yourself and other tutors to ensure you look like the safari animal you are about to become; shortly before running away as an entire camp of children chase you around the playground because you are worth ten points to their Olympic team . Then there’s the fact that it becomes perfectly acceptable to paste nutella onto children’s faces, not to mention your own (for demonstration purposes only of course), whilst throwing cheerios at fellow tutors also covered in nutella, all in order to see which child’s face can hold the most cereal. And all of this is without mention of the thrill you get from running around covered in “war paints” during a game of capture the flag, makes ACLE, quite possibly my favourite way to spend the summer months!.... and that’s without even starting on the beautiful and purely stunning parts of Italy you get to explore…. All from the eyes of truly Italian people!

And so....I leave you with this..... singing NANANANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NANANANANANANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!