Boys' School

Today, I realized that a ten-year-old has a crush on me. It is flattering, but feels kind of like being the fifty-something heavily-accented hit man in the movie The Professional would -- twelve-year-old Natalie Portman is hanging out in hot pants sending goo-goo eyes at you, and, while you're flattered, all you can do is clean your rifles and drink full pints of milk.

Okay, maybe not quite like that. But every time I walk by to check his workbook, Ravi -- who, as one of my English as a Second Language students, sounds like Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots -- goes, "What are yooouuu doinn'?"

It's very distracting, but sort of charming, if it weren't vaguely creepy. I usually respond with something literal, like, "Making sure you've done your multiplication tables!". Still, he makes an effort to catch my eye whenever I'm on the other side of the room. Occasionally he winks. He's a very smooth, very Spanish sort of little man.

Really doesn't help that, being four feet tall, he's about eye level with my breasts.

In other news, this coffee shop should change its CD. I'm waiting for the day when the Polish employee goes crazy and pulls out a Kalashnikov.

I Suppose

Dear America:

Hi!

I know it's been a while. I'm sorry I haven't written. I've been on facebook -- oh, boy, have I been on facebook -- but sometimes up-to-the-minute statuses and vaguely allusive wall posts are just no replacement for a good old-fashioned journey-across-Europe weblog. So...here it is.

To be frank, my posts may be spotty. I'm deeply and permanently in love with Internet Coffee Shops, which are apparently available even on remote Grecian islands, but my funds may not support a daily cup of coffee, or muffin, or smoothie, or scone -- I will strive for a weekly update, which, considering how addicted to caffeine I am, will probably happen. Maybe there will be more! The muffins at this cafe do rock.

Currently, I'm sitting and writing less than a mile from the sea, in a suburb of Dublin (a Dub-burb, if you will). The suburb's name is Bray. The cafe's name is Finnibee's. Everyone else in here, minus Olivia Younkin, is extremely Irishish. Ireland, while not a land of leprechauns and pots of gold, is cliched in some ways -- it is extremely green, and on Sunday I saw a woman on the train with long dyed-red hair who was wearing an emerald coat. The people drink tea at least five times a day. Everyone's voice is far too musical.

That last bit is actually a problem, at times. You see, right now I'm doing ELTAP in this suburb -- the English Language Teaching Assistantship Program offered by my school -- because I'm considering teaching English as a foreign language someplace overseas after I graduate, and I wanted to get a taste of it before I head to Munich, Germany and spend a semester abroad. I was originally going to be placed at a secondary school, but things changed, and right now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Miss Hennen to a bunch of young Irishmen under ten. They are crafty. They are wily. They are also all completely adorable, and the accent does NOT help. Very often, I spend my time just smiling at them. They go, "Whatever are you laughing for?" and I try to focus, but their freckles, their impishness....

It almost makes the mile - long walk to school tolerable. It isn't blowing snow, or anything like that -- there's maybe rain, if anything. I'm just not prepared for the massive gluteus muscles I'm about to acquire. It doesn't help that I keep doing things like hiking on cliffs and going to Dublin by myself and getting lost.

I live in a house with 8 (!) other student teachers. Three of them (Olivia, Chris Merrigan, and Blair Elliott) went to Morris -- the others (Jennifer! Christen! Heather! Rachel! Sid!) are all from Rochester or Ohio (shh, I'm not really sure who's from where). We're an enclave of Midwesternness in a small duplex that reminds me of Harry Potter's description of Mrs. Figg's house -- it's rather chintzy, and Olivia and I have two different types of flowered comforters on our beds. Hot water is acquired through much, much witchcraft on the part of the user.

Still, life is pretty good here. I just wish we had internet in our home -- I'm getting really, really sick of listening to this coffee shop's one soft-rock CD!

Til later,

Jessie