2nd: Rum baba or bust

And so to examining. These days, my current job takes me away from the chalk face of actually having to interact with learners and so I set to my first bit of examining for the year with renewed motivation and interest at being back in the thick of it – well, as ‘the thick of it’ is when someone’s done all the teaching for you and you just have to interview candidates one at a time when they’re well behaved and slightly scared of you. A kind of sanitised ‘teaching’, you might say. Who am I kidding. It’s not teaching at all. Anyway, I’m mingling with students again, so that’s got to be a step away from the somewhat detached world of training.

My excitement didn’t last long as I saw the list of candidates I was to examine – 123 grade one candidates. That’s five minute exams, one after another, for 10 ¼ hours. Still, not much to do but get stuck in and pick the blighters off one at a time. It’s easier if you think of it like that. The cream came right at the end when I had one 18-year-old girl at Grade 8 (upper intermediate) talking to me about The Picture of Dorian Gray. Quite the treat.

When it comes to examining in Italy, there are certain things to look out for / expect with the candidates. The first is that when about to start off on a memorised monologue, they’ll start with, ‘alora’. It’s almost like a verbal indication that you’re inhaling breath for a long turn. Not a good sign generally. The other is that unknown to English native speakers, ‘kitchen’ and ‘chicken’ are remarkably similar sounding words. Just swap the first two consonant clusters around and you’ve got the other word. You point to a chicken and they say it’s a ‘kitchen’. You point to a kitchen, they’ll call it a ‘chicken’. You can lay money on it happening. Statisticians note: the first ‘chicken / kitchen’ mix up prize goes to Giacomo at 11:30 (29^th candidate of the morning) and the first ‘alora’ is taken by Alfonso at 11:55 (34^th candidate). What I did get and which I didn’t expect was that when eliciting items in the classroom, the ‘teacher’s desk’ became the ‘chicken desk’ – and well might it be depending on who’s hiding behind it. It was Alessia at 10:35 on the second day that gets the ‘new to an examiner’ prize. Well done there. And the final award goes to Salvatore (a particularly common name for boys in the centre) at 12:05 on the first day. He wins the prize for looking most like a 10-year-old vesion of ‘the Chief’ from the Battlestar Galactica TV series (I’ve become a recent addict – do try it!). The likeness is uncanny.

Apart from being caught up in a local power struggle between factions in the school, the most interesting part during the examining was the array of cakes and coffees brought in for me. The first break at 11am on Monday saw 12 dense cakes (6 x 2 types) arrive with some sweet tea. I could only manage one and had to insist on the other 11 being shared around the staff. Tuesday break saw the rum-soaked babas. Only six this time. When the cakes arrived, they came with a host of teachers, bearing them as if in some procession, setting them down amongst teas, coffees, waters and what-ever plates are to hand, all resting precariously on and around the exam materials. Monday saw the head teacher join us and Tuesday another group of teachers keen to watch the examiner eat a cake. ‘Does the English examiner man eat like us? Yes, he does! How interesting.’ Then after five minutes, out they troop and it’s back to the grade one exams. Lunch was a similar affair, but off to a restaurant. A brief three courser yesterday and a kind of banquet today, culminating in a really quite good ‘fruit of the sea’ steamed pasta in tin-foil job. Excellent mozzarella for one of the starters, too. But hey, it is the south of Italy.

Feeling a little tired at the end of the day, I very nearly passed up on the invitation to accompany one teacher (with no English) and her 17-year-old daughter (who kept being ushered forward with a wink from the mother) on a brief guided trip around their historical town of Capua. Often keen to mix it with locals with no more than gestures and beer, I set off with them from the school on a twenty-minute drive, during which, through a lengthy guessing and gesturing process to convey the point, I was strongly recommended to see the Turin Shroud. It really is the real thing, don’t you know.

So, into the Romanesque town of Capua and the daughter (Giusi?) and I get out while I assume the mother parks the car. No, she’s not parking the car, she’s going home. OK. Before I realise this and while still looking around for the mother, who I expect at any time to join us, we meet the daughter’s friend, Danielle (not bad with the old English, this one). The way they act together, I assume they’re boy friend and girlfriend. Assumptions, eh?

There’s a picture of them here next to a Saint Lucy (?) who had her eyes gouged out – she’s holding the eyes on a plate in her left hand. After a tour around some unremarkable churches (at least to the untrained eye), the cathedral (with a fresco where the apostles are all painted as women) and a variety of closed tourist sites, I start making queries about the age for drinking alcohol – it’s after six, I’ve had a busy day speaking to people and I’m thirsty. The two of them, quick as a flash, get my meaning and take me to a bar that they go to, and every other underage kid in the town. Apart from the dozen 15-17 year old kids, the only other patrons seemed to be a trio of men in their early to mid twenties taking a mild interest in the girls in the group of kids. Nice.

Now, there’s a notable thing here. Growing up in Scotland (and indeed in the UK), if you give an under-ager the chance to drink when with friends, they will, and drink a lot. Some might even argue too much. And here were these young ‘uns having a beer and, dare I say it, seeming to ‘drink responsibly’. Even Danielle declined a second beer when I moved onto a healthy-measured G&T. Interestingly, they hadn’t heard of a G&T before (“tonic and gin?” exclaimed the youths), so hopefully I’ve put them onto a good thing.

Hanging out with 17-year-olds done, I make a move to get the train back to the billet. But no, the daughter won’t hear of it and, after taking leave of Danielle, we go to her house where her mother will drive me back. It’s at this point that Giusi’s English blossoms and she tells me that she’s deeply in love with Danielle, but that he’s 'a little timid'. A ‘beautiful and sweet heart’, mind. I suggested something along the lines of gin in his orange juice to prompt the issue, but she seemed uncertain. Apparently we’re going to be facebook friends, so no doubt I’ll be told more then. There’s also a business about who he was “meeting” before and all kinds of things you quite forget that teenagers talk about.

Arriving at the house, I’m expecting the same Subaru or such that we arrived in to be my carriage home. But the car was “closed” and so it was the old Fiat 126 500cc to take me, the daughter, the mother, who flows with the largess of life, and her husband back to Caserta. A short journey that the little car made pains to make seem longer, by conveying every bump and pothole in the road up through the light suspension and iron frame of the vehicle. Not the best car for cobbled Roman streets, but you can’t deny the Italian
experience of it all. And when was the last time you were in a car with a choke? All very jolly and all somewhat random after a day of examining. Very kind folk, even if they were a little too keen on finding me a wife and forcing pasta down my throat.

Tomorrow a new centre. And why Italian tomatoes? Why, because it’s the south of Italy and that’s what it’s all about here!