don’t stand-by me

02Jan10

What could possibly go wrong? I thought, in a moment of brazen confidence and remarkable stupidity.  Everyone knows that as soon as those words are uttered, the fate of the endeavor in question has been sealed as a disaster.  This time though, it just sounded SO. GOOD.

Sure, flying standby the weekend before Christmas would be a bit risky, but the benefits were blindingly rewarding.  I’d been offered a “buddy pass” from an airline employee, and the price was less than a third of the regular tickets I’d been finding.  The dates were flexible and easy to change, and, oh yeah, there was also the prospect of flying business class.  After many an experience feeling like an intercontinental deli meat sandwiched between two strangers, I was ready to risk a few hours of waiting around the airport for a shot at the extra legroom and free booze that only business class can offer.

That’s how they made it sound–a few hours of sitting around.  “If you get bumped from the first flight,” they told me, “you just try the next.  It could take a couple attempts, but since you’re alone you should have a good chance.”  I had to settle on a later day than when I really hoped to leave because they don’t always honor “buddy passes”, but I still accepted with enthusiasm.  As of the day before my scheduled flight, I was 11th on the list for 22 available, spacious seats in business class.  (Did you know that they recline to 150 degrees?)  I would fly into Atlanta, and transfer there for Buffalo.  All was going according to plan.

That was, until a huge blizzard hit the entire Eastern seaboard of the US that night.

So apparently, when the flights to New York for hundreds of paying customers get cancelled for bad weather, airlines will try to accomodate them on different flights.  And they will put 22 of those customers on a flight to Atlanta (in business class), and will laugh at someone who thinks they still have a chance to fly with their severely discounted buddy pass.  I called to reschedule my ticket for the next day, and was informed that my chance of boarding would be, “at best, zero.”  Same for the day after that.

Five hours after I’d left that morning, I returned to my apartment with no prospect of leaving any time soon.  Worse still, I discovered that there were only 2 flights a day from Rome to the Eastern US with this company.  This hadn’t been mentioned in the “wait around a few hours part.”  I had wrongly assumed there would have been numerous possibilities throughout the day.

My mother, who expected my presence preferably sometime before Christmas, offered to personally come to Rome just to kick my ass.  “What part of flying without a reservation, in the winter, 4 days before Christmas sounded like a good idea to you?”  Something told me that even having my own TV in my seat wouldn’t be a convincing argument at this point.

I should have just booked the ticket the moment those fateful words–what could possibly go wrong– passed through my head.  Instead I spent my expected day of departure poring over travel websites, hoping to find a ticket that wouldn’t require me to pool my checking and savings account, plus two credit cards.  I cried a little as I pressed “make payment,” but it paid off the next day.

When I arrived for Airport Attempt #2, I saw that the flights from the original company had again been cancelled.  But me and the most expensive coach ticket in the world just breezed past the line of stranded and disgruntled passengers and headed to New York.  Maybe I didn’t get my own personal TV, and I couldn’t recline lest I found myself in the lap of the gentleman to my rear, but it was better than still sitting around the airport.  Plus, we’d been delayed an hour, so they even gave us deli-meats in the back the wine for free.  I’d say it worked out as well as possible.

Still, this experience was not without its lessons.  First, I’ve been able to rule out gambling and investing as potential career paths.  Risk-taking is not my thing.  Second, and maybe more importantly, flying standby in the winter, 4 days before Christmas is not as fantastic of an idea as it probably sounds.  Who would have guessed?

(Oh, and if free alcoholic beverages are really important to you, just fly with a non-American company.  Just sayin’.)

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Those who can’t — teach.

27Sep09

There are many students who say they’re “beginners” when it comes to studying English.  “I need to start from zero” they’ll tell you in Italian, which is almost never true.  If nothing else, they can usually answer the basic questions; How are you?  Where are you from?  What is your job?  etc.  But then every once in a while, when a student walks in and you say “how are you?” they answer in what they honestly believe to be English, “bien.”

One particular student like this explained to me that  only one foreign language was required when she was in school, and she had chosen French.  Now schools tend to require English, plus a choice of another.  In fact, this was exactly what made her decide to come to our school this summer.  “I’m an elementary school teacher,” she explained, “and this year the classes each have English for an hour or two a week.”  As it was required in her curriculum, she thought it would be a good idea to pick up some basic words and pronunciation.

As we outlined some goals and plans for the course, it was decided that instead of following the adult program, she would bring her kids’ books and we could work from those.  I was psyched because they would be much more fun than the adult books we have, and she was happy because she’d be focusing on specific things that she needed to know.

When she arrived for the next class, I was surprised to see that she was carrying a whole stack of children’s books and workbooks.  They appeared to be levels 1-5 of the same series of books.  “Why so many?”  I asked.  “Don’t you know what class you’ll be teaching yet?”

“Sure,” she told me.  “All of them.  First to fifth grade, an hour or two each per week.  I’m the school’s full-time English teacher.”

Ah, of course.

I think my brain actually began to cry as I tried to work out the logic in this situation.  How could something like this happen?  What was her interview like? (Do you speak English?  Yes?  Great, you’re hired!) Who stamped the “OK” on that application?  Does she have some sort of powerful connections?  Who accepts a job that they are so very painfully unqualified for?  And–oh god–what kind of language are those kids going to be speaking by the end of the year??

I mean I guess I can understand why she’s doing it to a certain point.  The job market here is rough, and people don’t just go turning down employment offers.  And at least she took the initiative to study on her own.  But as with many situations here, it makes me feel crazy and there’s not much I can do to change it.  So instead, I try not to think too deeply into it, and focus instead on gentle reminders that you don’t pronounce the “t” in “listen” but you do pronounce the “s” at the end of words.  (That’s tricky after all the years of French.)

Even though reason sustained a serious blow here, the situation is not without its silver linings.  For example, it gives me the hope and comfort that I, too, could get a job in a Roman elementary school if I needed to.  Hell, I could apparently teach Japanese, or German, or even Calculus!  Because I have learned that you can’t let silly details like a lack of qualifications stand in your way.  There is a world of opportunities out there, and all you have to do is say yes.

Do you speak English?

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Tags: english, esl, italy, rome, teaching

Americans are all ______.

10Sep09

Living and traveling abroad can be a wonderful experience.  You learn a new language, you see a different culture and you make friends with people you may have never otherwise met.  There are downsides of course too, like the embarassing situations you create while you’re getting a handle on that new language, and a lessened ability to identify food items.  And then if you’re American, you might run across an extra downside every once in a while.

You probably think I’m going to say something about anti-American sentiment, but I have to say that in my (albeit limited) experience, the overt “ugly American” comments were few to none.  So no, the issue is not that I think people in other countries hate us (although this naturally depends on where you go…), it’s that it seems many people are sure that they already know us.

This situation was highlighted to me a few days ago by a Dutch friend, as he made several statements about Americans in the course of a normal conversation.  We were at a park along with an Italian girl and a Greek guy, sitting on a blanket trying to absorb a few of summer’s last rays.  A large group of people nearby were talking and laughing loudly, in English as it happened.  “God, Americans are so loud,” he said.  “You can always spot them from 5km away.”  I found this amusing for two reasons– first, though I am also American, I did not feel particularly loud myself, chatting normally as we were.  Second, just about 10 minutes earlier, 3 blonde girls had walked by who he immediately declared as American.  “you can just tell.”  As they approached however, we heard that they were speaking what sounded like Portuguese, but definitely not English.    This seemed to disprove his “5km away” theory, but I shrugged it off.  Besides, a big group of friends like the one we saw would be loud no matter what their nationality is.  It’s just numbers.

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Tags: italy, rome, stereotype, tourist, travel, ugly american