Sticky Apple Kisses

This weeks Wordless Wednesday is from my brief stint as supper nanny. To be fair to myself and to give a bit of background, I have always wanted to go to Turkey. (Not that this means much as I always want to go pretty much everywhere). ;-P However I had just finished my Masters (which was the roughest year of my life) and I had just broken up with Patrick. At the time I believed it to be for good. I knew I was finished with grad school, probably for good, and I knew from experience that teaching English was a pretty sweet deal in terms of travel and free time. I had looked into Moscow, as I desperately wanted to go back there. However I found an ad where they paid you a ridiculous sum of money to teach English to rich Turkish people’s kids. I figured at worse I get paid a couple thousand dollars for a months work before I am fired or I run, and I got to see Istanbul.

It did not quite work out like that. Directly before going I stopped to visit a friend in Switzerland, and being so close to Germany I of course went to visit Patrick, and within days we were back together. When I arrived in Istanbul the job (like the last time I worked in house with a remotely famous person) began sweet sweet SWEET, and became hell hell hell. (For the record it takes about 3 weeks for them to get use to you and begin throwing things and screaming before depositing very expensive presents on your bed for forgiveness.) Why didnt I leave? I had become attached to the twin boys. DAMN!

From my gypsy princess blog at the time:

Part of the joys of being a governess is that your part teacher and part nanny. So though while you get to throughly enjoy your preparation time and teaching time, there is also all out play time and the occasional bathroom break time when you are asked “is my bum clean” and you check, and then share some of the pride displayed when the 4 year old boy exclaims “WOW its as big as a snake.” (We were beaming over different things. He was impressed with size, I was happy that all that time spent on phonics and singing “the snake is in the grass” wasn’t wasted).

But there is also the fights over if its study time, or flat out “he/she is my sibling and I can take them out with a well placed clothesline to the neck if I so wish.” And sometimes at parties it gets a little out of hand and you need to sit with one of them while they throw a 40 minute temper tantrum, and you find your greatest fear (that one day you will turn out to be your mother) isn’t true, because you find your fathers words coming out instead “Tears don’t work on me, We should have thought about that before we tried to tackle your brother.” And you wonder how the hell your parents ever put up with you and didn’t dump you with grandma and grandpa and run off Costa Rica. And then you get a tearful apology and you decide to let the offender go.

And you open the door to see a four and a half year old neon orange dinosaur hurdling down the hall towards you. And your thoughts are (in this exact order);

What the fuck?

Where the Hell did he find that?

He cant put socks on how did he get orange spandex with fluffy spikes on?

Oh My God where do I get my own?

(I refer to both the outfit and the 4 year old).

Because we all know we can just go to the store and buy them.

Anyway, Patrick came to visit me, and the picture is from the week we took off to travel around Turkey. That is also when he convinced me to do the mature thing and address the fact that I can not work 15 hour days, no matter what they are paying me. About 4 days after this adult conversation, I was fired. But it was the best firing I ever had. I got to see Turkey! For free!

Other Tell Me About It Thursdays can be found here!

I have been wanting to share this link for awhile now and then I never get the chance.  If you teach English, or ever have taught English, this site is for you!  (If you are merely thinking of doing so, only read if you secretly want to be talked out of the profession).  If you can not take a joke, stop reading right here and do not follow the links.

My favorites are the satanic units,  which have such gems as “Your teacher is spreading the language of the imperialist superpower. Discuss what appropriate steps should be taken” in the unit on terrorism.    And then there is Kevin’s Diary, or his life teaching ESL, and when he says only half is true, I think only the names have been tampered with.

So Croatia was awesome. I wish I had more time, and I have made a vow to travel less by plane and much more by motorcycle . You become so quickly spoiled by the sheer freedom that when you do travel again as a backpacker you want to rip your hair out at the limited possibilities. (What? follow a bus or train schedule? are you mad??? I want to stop here, and go there, and the drivers just IGNORE you!).

However I went to Slovenia for the day and I was not ignored. The old lady across from me kept trying to speak to me in Croatian. I had no sweet clue what she was actually saying to me. When the border guy came around she wanted to peak at my passport. She kept saying “Slovenian?” “Macedonian?” over and over. I kept correcting her, telling her I was Canadian. “See CANADA, Canadian.” but she would only grin and shake her head at me like I couldn’t fool her. Then she squawks “Macedonian” and proceeds to whack me on the arm no less than 3 times. I really began to wonder if she figured I was trying to pull one over on her. yes your right, fake passport. hahahaha. But that’ll teach me for dying my hair black and heading to Croatia.

However she never ended there. In addition to assuming to my nationality, she also assumed to share my water. Because when a lady joined us as asked for water she whacked me again and pointed to the new lady and then at my bag. She ratted out my small bottle of water! And the woman took it and drank it, needless to say I never had any more water to Slovenia. But what riding would be there!!!

Dragon Eating Moon in Slovenia:

Just a quick little note to let everyone know I am still alive, I still plan on posting to the blog, but the cost of internet in this place is insane. So I am typing something quickly on my laptop, sticking it on the memory stick, and hoping to keep the final cost to under 3 Euros for 30 minutes of internet time. However I wanted to share this as a reminder to myself when I bitch and moan about teaching English or about German bureaucracy that my life is not so bad. On Friday afternoons both myself and my friend Caroline finish at 1. So we celebrate our 2 ½ day weekend with coffee in the afternoon followed by a beer around 5. This week however we made no plans (obviously as I am in Croatia, wheeeeee) and this afternoon while I was sightseeing in Samobar (about 20 km outside of Zagreb) I received a text from her asking “what are you up to this afternoon?” And it was with a gush of happiness at my chosen life (I refuse to write profession because I still like to think I will not be doing this in 10 years, and even if I am it was never chosen so much as necessitated by my poor German skills) that I got to text back “Exploring castle ruins in Croatia.” This is what I like to do with my Friday afternoons.

Maybe I will accidentally on purpose miss my plane back on Sunday.

So again a sort’ve short and condensed post, but I promise full details on Croatia. (I leave tomorrow). I am also writing more over at Gypsy Princess on the weekend in Madrid because I have paid links with deadlines, soooooooooooo I can break up Madrid into a couple of posts and hope that my friends don’t murder me for all those sneaky links. (But last months paid links over there paid for a semi private room for our hostel in Croatia, and after Madrid I REALLY want a private room.)

But long story short, it was an awesome time, I am really glad I went, BUT I wouldn’t go back anytime soon. It is a pretty city, it is a fun city, but asides from shopping and partying (which I can get from any big city as well as lots of other things as well), and no I did not go to the museums. Why you ask? They had Picassos on loan, and this is what the line looked like:

And well I am not that devoted. I stood in a line up like that for Lenin, and I did it for Mao just because I did it for Lenin, but I figured unless Picasso himself is in there (be it real or plastic or debatable), I was staying where I could drink coffee and shop.

And oooooooooooooo did I shop.

It has been one of those weeks. If I owe you an email, a favor, a birthday greeting, or even a lesson, I am sorry but it had been one of these weeks.

So here I go whine whine whine. You’ve been forewarned, with ample warning. Skip ahead to the 4 star toilet. (or behind, I dont even know anymore).

I will fully admit to being a wee bit overworked. Or horrendously so. The trip through Africa has been scraped due to political instability in Kenya. This does not mean my year away has been canceled. It has just been rerouted through South America instead. Which considering that we need to fly rather than drive the bikes there just means more work. (Or wait till next year, which at the moment neither of us really want to do, but to continue the weeks I have been having may mean waiting).

Anyway - a summary on why I am such a bad slack ass not getting anything done:

Friday: work for pay 9 - 1:00, run to workshop which lasts from 1 - 6 pm on how to use the flip chart in your classroom. Not paid, but also free to go to. Get told off within 2 minutes of getting there for holding marker wrong and SQUASHING the top. Also committed grave error of putting the top on the back, which results in a heavy marker apparently. Thought about stabbing instructor or myself in eye with said marker.

Went for drinks, went to a party, for each thing I was late.

Saturday: Off to Heidelberg, woke up late due to previous party, have awesome time on train with friends but we dont get into town until 3. Check camera, memory stick is in Patrick’s computer. Warrrrrrrrrr

Get last train back due to lateness of getting there, miss phone call home to brother for his birthday.

Sunday: Sleep, start emails, plan, treat self to movie.

Today: rush home for student at 7, TRAIN IS NOT RUNNING TO MY STOP. Go back into town, get U Bahn instead, an hour late, student cancels lesson due to not wanting to wait anymore.

Now home, counting down the nano seconds to Madrid on Friday afternoon.

Enjoy a non Heidelberg castle for getting this far into a rant over nothing: