The faint peaceful intro of “in the morning” by the Living End disturbs my sleep, before the guitar kicks in and I quickly kill it so as not to disturb the house, Living in a big South Tyrolean family house on the edge of Caldaro Italy is definitely a little bit of a culture shock for this Australian. But I’m used to it, ever since I lived in Hanoi when I was 18 I have loved the feeling of a different culture or situation to live in its apart of what makes travelling so exciting and this is the best place yet. I decide to leapfrog my slowly stirring Girlfriend and run downstairs for a coffee run before a quick shower, I’d better make her one as well, she usually always does the morning coffee run. Today is going to be hectic, no doubt about it, an early start with Ivan, a 14 year old German speaking Italian, his English is good but he is lazy at times so the challenge is to get him enthusiastic, not a bad challenge for an English Teacher. I get dressed, kiss my girlfriend goodbye and walk down the long winding hill to the bus stop.
This is my favourite part of the journey because at quarter past seven in the morning the temperature is cool and the suns light is flowing off the mountains like an endless wave. It’s something special to take in that beauty and I usually like to bask in it for as long as I can but today out of sheer luck my girlfriends Mother spots me and offers a lift, into to Bolzano we go. For those who aren’t so sure Bolzano is the biggest city in South Tyrol an area that once belonged to Austria but was then handed over to the Italians at the end of the first world war, it still has it far share of German speakers including the majority of Caldaro which is the small town where we live, about twenty minutes from Bolzano by car. The hour with Ivan goes smoothly, he forgets to do his homework so I threaten to tell his Mother, and then we read. Being an English teacher is different to what I’m used to in Vietnam. My classes are small or privates and they desperately want to learn, but they don’t have a set curriculum, I plan my classes with my own ideas. Involving a lot of reading and a little bit of talking as well as grammar activities, and generally they love them. As you can imagine this gives me a kick as a budding teacher who is still finding his feet in the educational world, every lesson is a little bit of a learning experience as well and it helps me grow in confidence, it gives me more and more ideas.
Enough of that, I have a test with a Wall Street student; I’ll have to catch a bus over to Bolzano south, the industrial side of town. Wall Street Institute of English is my main school and they deal with upper class Italian Adults, mostly easy people to deal with and usually some fun to be had. But really it’s not about the students I work with, they were born into this life, they decided what they wanted to do and worked at it, some are doctors and some are nurses but all they are really is a few common nouns with a lot of money, I will always enjoy teaching, whether it be English or Australian culture or god forbid mathematics because it shows me a life other than the one I’ve known, I’ll go home to my girlfriend again with her beautiful smile and indulge in a little German because well that’s when in Rome right? My students will go home to their wives or their mothers, they kiss them and smell the sweet smells, it isn’t a culture shock to them, they don’t know that phrase, for me however every day is new. Is it freedom? Is it a true chance for me to be myself? Well I tell this story from an apartment in Hanoi and for the first time in my life I know exactly where I want to be and it isn’t here or Australia, I don’t care what freedom is, all I want is my girl in a little town in northern Italy where they’re surrounded by mountains and speak a lot of German. Freedom is a state of mind, I know where my mind belongs.
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