The End

What a manic time; I've moved house three times in a week, seen more shows than I normally would in a term, run into a whole load of Cambridge thesps and comedians and one friend from hippy camping festival of my childhood.

Very uncertain what the future has to hold, at the beginning of the festival stint I was thinking I ought to go onto the standup circuit once my year in Berlin is up, but by the end, having witnessed lots of stage deaths, medeocrity and arrogance, and having taken photos for a few shows and remembered how much I enjoy that I'm probably veering back to the photography path. I feel I should mention now that I did see some really entertaining and up and coming stuff at the festival along side the rest of it, it's just I'm not sure I want to get broken on the wheel of shame that is being a new comic in order to have my moment of fame.

I was congratulated for sticking with the job by my boss when the summer school ended, which I took as a complement. The best thing that happened in the last week of teaching was watching a love affair blossom between two of my students, one a loud, beer loving Italian boy, the other a studious Taiwanese girl. On her last day they exchanged the most heartbreaking love letters I've ever seen (which I and my colleagues had the privilege of proof reading for spelling and grammar). When she was on the bus he ran up to it begging him to stop so he could have one final kiss goodbye. They even told eachother they loved eachother, promising to visit and stay in contact. My heart broke over the idea of the distance between them.

That evening I went to console the Italian guy at the school disco I was supervising, seeing he looked melancholy.
"Is your heart breaking now she's gone" I asked expectatly
"Meh, I'll get over it" was his reply "Teacher, come out and drink with us this evening."

Ah well, romance is dead, long live beer. Needless to say I graciously refused his invitation.

Well, I don't have much more to say on the subject of Edinburgh now. Watch out for my new and exciting Berlin Blog starting as soon as I make it there.

Week 5 and a half

Gmail isn't working again...

Edinburgh has changed significantly since the festival started. The proportion of people I run into that I knew from before had gone up as has the number of beautiful, young people and I've been sleeping in my breaks during the day in order to watch as many shows as I can by night.

Other news - tomorrow is my last day of teaching. I'm a little sad as I've got use to being a teacher. Also I'm a little sad as I'm a little homeless from now; I think I'm sorted for kipping on a couple of floors for the next few days, but fear I may find myself on the cold wet streets of Edinburgh with only a rucksack and a sleeping bag for company...

I'm going to be back in London next Wednesday evening, and will be around for two/three weeks or so.

Week 4

Last week was pretty full on. Loads of kids, many of whom were boisterous (favourite term of the teaching profession). Things of note:

A veritable of mice and men Lenny-esque pupil of mine: massive, irresponsible and powerful. What do you do when the group leader's response to poor behaviour is "He is a good boy, from good family, he is always polite, you mustn't criticise, he from good family". I don't have so much time to explain, but the leaders who take these kids on holiday are often linked to the families, and careers and stuff ride on the students going home and saying they had fun, so it gets anarchic. Incidentally the leader who forbade me from telling off his student also felt the need to hug me in the corridor and kiss me on both cheeks later to apologise for his own cowardice in the situation. The following day he tried the same put down behaviour: "Na-o-mi, are you still angry with me?" (With arms held open for a slimy embrace) and I raised both hands, gave a saccharine smile and replied "I'm absolutely fine".

The Spanish and the Italians did not have the fight that had been brewing in the end but tensions were frayed. It's a funny old situation, in the first couple of weeks when the World Cup was on I saw the Italian kids whipped into a frenzy over their nation, hand on heart singing the national anthem at the television, suffering every missed goal along with the players, celebrating jubilantly with each success. When Italy won, one student showed up for the following three days to class with the flag, which I had the privilege of touching - like some holy relic. On the other side we had the Spanish and Catalonian kids, some of whom supported Germany and France, partially in order to make divides with the Italians. We also had an international cultural evening, where the Italian students far outnumbered any other group and insisted on singing the national anthem and football songs after every performance delivered by the rest of the students. This was all led by my difficult student; even without the words of wisdom from his group leader I would not have tried to intervene when him and his posse of gym-loving friends moshed to the national anthem.

At all turns there's some identity frontier to be respected: Catalan vs. Spain, Spain vs. Italy, Italy vs. Taiwan, Taiwan vs. China, and all nested in Edinburgh, the fiercely proud capital of Scotland where an English accent is all you need to malign yourself with the average ned. Not sure where to place myself in all of this; I think it's somewhere between colonialist and globe trotting lefty hippy; I'm here instructing the world in my language which is "the most developed in the world" according to one student's written work, yet alongside this I think we should all be wandering the globe freely adopting languages and cultures.

Ah well, so much for musings. I've now developed a bit of an ear for Italian and, on occasion, like magic can pick up the thread of conversation. Also I can say "Ragazzi andiamo, veloci!" (People, lets go, quickly) and "Vamos" (lets go) pretty damn well - useful when you need to get 30 boisterous students off of a packed city bus at rush hour.

This week the school has changed entirely in character: we now have about 100 fewer students, and the ones who remain average out at about the age of 18 and are far keener to work hard. We've now got Taiwanese, Korean and Italian students, but the proportion of Italians is far lower than before so they're less dominant.

Lots of my colleagues were on shorter contracts so have departed too. The upshot of that was three days of minimal sleep as we all drank into the wee small hours together, and a very ratty tweed-clad Naomi on a Monday morning (facing a group of students who'd spent their weekend in a similar fashion no-doubt).

Anyway, will do my best to write some individual e-mails when I can. Needless to say I'm missing everyone.

Week 3

>Can't access my gmail very reliably here. The facebook seems to be working better at the moment as is myspace so use those, post a reply on this, or even telephone me if you'd like to get in contact. As ever missing everyone loads.<

Half way through my time here and things were looking up. I found a wicked retro clothes shop in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh, it's called Armstrongs and is somewhere between Oxfam and a costume shop in it's stock. I got this below the knee and above the belly button, tweed, A line skirt for £7. I wore that, a diamond print t-shirt and sensible shoes last Monday and brought open university dull-as-shit style to the pupils along with a scowl and zero tolerance rules. I found it difficult to align myself with the notion of school discipline, being one to feel like a caged bird at school in my own youth, but the prospect of acting the teacher rather than being it helped me through (long live the spirit of the dressup lunch). So last week I planned all the lessons on the Sunday, behaved like a teacher and it all went swimmingly.

This week however we're at full capacity, two management have left, the Italian and Spanish children are threatening gang war and the weather is muggy - I feel a storm may break...

(to be continued...)

Week 2

Social Highlights:
The Stand - sick of teachers and teaching I broke free and visited a comedy club alone. I felt like a bit of a weirdo for a while but then ran into a guy I'd met two years ago at a Cambridge comedy night, had a chat and ended up eating Pringles and dips with the stars of the Edinburgh comedy circuit in the tastefully leopard print green room of The Stand.
Albarrio - After the kid's 'P' disco (in which the only thing vaguely 'P' related they achieved was puke) I was finally warming to teachers and went out with my colleagues to Albarrio which is a Latino night club in what is known as the 'pubic triangle'; an area of Edinburgh dominated by strip clubs. We spent the whole night fending off invading men who tried to pick the women off like lions picking off wildebeests straying from the herd. A good exercise in teamwork.

An extract from the teaching week:
Background Info
Class of 16 kids, average age of 14, sent to UK by mummy and daddy to learn English. Exceedingly apathetic. Key Phrase - "Can I to toilet please" - meaning can I leave the room and speak to Camilla from class 3 for the next fifteen minutes. On discovering this toilet visits were banned in my class.

Story
Ana begins to cry and runs to the door. I ask her where she's going.
"Can I to toilet please?" She says between sobs. I take her out of the class and ask her what's wrong.
"My ankle" she replies
"What happened to your ankle?"
"He die las week" I try not to laugh, her poor dead ankle... She continues, "I think about and I sad... Can I to toilet please?"
"No," I say cruelly as I look at her rubbing her dry eyes and sobbing. Back in the class I realise there's only fifteen minutes left of the lesson and ignore Ana's crocodile tears as I try to sort out the bedlam that has ensued. Martina sits with Ana 'comforting her' eventually I go over and remind Ana that when we cry there are tears and tell Martina to go and get on with her work. I rush through the activity, and look at my watch, there's still half an hour left till the end of the class and Guilio has the look of someone trying to suppress a grin as I tell him to correctly set the time on the clock for me. Repeat ad infinitum.

Week 1

Just so you know, I've sent links to this blog to everyone I thought of in a five minute period, but please do pass it on, it's open for anyone to read.

OK, so now all my friends are truly dispersed everywhere I thought I could keep you all updated on my *wild* life via the geeky medium of blogging. Little update for all those I haven't spoken to so recently:

I graduated, I'm now teaching English in Edinburgh for the summer.

So, graduation ceremony; it was Saturday 1st July and too hot for gowns and furry hoods, but I kept mine on all day just to prove (to myself) I really had done a degree. I got up earlier than I'd have liked to, processed to Senate House pulled Laura Preston's finger, bowed to Onora O'niell and, was congratulated by Terri Apter then 'bang' I'd moved from the dangerously limminal status of 'Graduand' to 'Graduate', and was free!...

...to pack.

8 hours later I was in the car to go back to London, where I unpacked and re-packed my life and got on the 9am train to Edinburgh. Within 24 hours I'd moved from Graduand to Teacher, not bad for a day's work, eh.

So, that brings us up to speed. The first week here has been pretty hectic. The centre is a summer school where we cater for up to around 250 kids. There are about 20 members of staff. I'm a Teacher/Activity Leader (or in management speak T/AL). This means that I teach two lessons a day and most of the rest of my time supervise &/ run activities with the kids. By most of the rest of my time, I do mean I'm working pretty much 14 hour days. Disadvantage is I now have no life, advantage is I now spend no money. Extra advantage is I earn enough to maybe even save a little for my forthcoming trip to Berlin.

Anyway, that's my life in a nutshell. I'm now this moment on a rare afternoon break, so might go and sleep or something, will keep you posted on furthur developments.

> Cambridge friends; I miss you all terribly. I'm very bad at writing e-mails at the best of times, but I'll try to be in touch with you all individually at some point.