English Cramps

Ah the life of an ACLE employee... the romanticized version is that of young people traveling Italy, playing games with children, being pampered by wonderful Italian families, seeing areas of the country most other never visit and making friends for a lifetime. All true? Yes. Easy? No way.

I rolled into San Remo on June 2nd after an unexpected, but wonderful, 24 hour lay over in NYC where I hung out with Rick & Farinas



and helped rick make some blingin' new scraper rims for his bike



Giuseppe picked me up and we had a good time driving the familiar ligurian coastline from France to Italy, like Jay-Z showing us what he's got.

San Remo was fun but crazy. 80 new tutors hanging out at orientation. I worked a lot, hauling the trash down the hill at the end of the day, running around trying to get food for everyone, grabbing people from the train station, and trying to find parking on the only main road through a city that has way too many cars for it's size. The upside is that I got to meet some great people and propose a few of my famous toasts on some unsuspecting victims in front of big crowds.



Valeria got the chance to catch up. She had been waiting for 7 months to challenge me to a 50 contest... who can write down the 50 US states the fastest. As in most of our competitions she won. I also showed her how Americans eat peanut butter with a spoon. She felt sick to her stomach watching me and told me I was going to have a heart attack. The old Nutella vs.Peanut Butter debate still comes up and I won't let it die.

After hours of rearranging 120 people with different requests and demands we managed to get everyone put into a camp. After 5 days of learning about how to teach English, big Do's & Don'ts of Italian culture, and everything else in between, you hope that everyone is prepared and you know that maybe 4 of them actually are. We rounded everyone up at 8:30 at the train station, gave them train tickets, and wished the "good luck" as they jumped into something they may or may not really enjoy.

I jumped in with my friends Jessica, Estee, and Carlee to Udine. "WHERE is Udine? Oh... um ok" were my first thoughts