Canterbury Tales [2]
It’s well past ten in the evening, now regular time I’ve been returning home here on the campus in the last four days, leaving it as early as 8am. Knackered is too weak a word to describe how I feel at this point of the day. Just said ‘Ci vediamo domani’ to Antonia, my Italian housemate, and got round to writing this little recap. Six hours of deep sleep does miracles and will make me ride high on the morning adrenaline again.
One new and striking thing about Pilgrims this summer is a large group of Chinese teachers, allowed to leave their country for the first time. Having recovered from the jet lag, they now started showing a mixture of enthusiasm and genuine curiosity about the place and people around. Most of the time they stay in their own training groups, but when out of seminar rooms, they cling to whoever comes across at coffee breaks in the cloister, over lunch and afternoon workshops. Eager to speak, they politely drill Europeans with their newly acquired language tools. At Mark Almond’s drama workshop today, three of them visibly dominated other nationalities with their own punch and panache that had little to do with language, superbly stealing each play they were in.
Quote of the day:
‘Any activity should be effective as much as affective.’
(Silvia Stephan on variation in the classroom)
I can see you’re enjoying your training trip :) So I guess it was worth it, waiting so patiently and hopefully, as you did.
Hmm, but can you tell me who Mario and Laura are? :)
Truly, I’m having a great time here, which is inevitably coming to an end. Everybody wishes they could elongate it a bit.
Laura is an Italian teacher in my group and Filippo’s mother. It’s hard to introduce Mario. Find out about him at http://teachers.pilgrims.co.uk/teachers/html/difference.asp