Living a Dream

I'm talking about little things, and you've all heard this before. Not just the little things spoken of by the greatest assortment of musical talent ever , nor the little things spoken of by the most accessibly human gangsters you've ever seen, or even the little things from the song by Bush. I'm talking about actual little things to do for people that make a difference to them. See, it's very easy to make a comment to someone or to give a little something that reminded you of someone, and it's even easier to receive such things. About a week ago, Jenna and I were out for a walk in the evening, conversing (as we do) in English. We passed an older man by himself who suddenly burst out in struggled-English with "Have a good....! Uhh! Aaahh! Happy Holidays!" We laughed and thanked him and returned the well-wishes. Our best guess is that this guy heard us speaking English and got excited because he knew a few things and how to say them, and amid h...

Things *are* different here. I give up. I won't go on pretending that everything is the same (I will, however, go on pretending that my last post wasn't about how things are different here). I do want to focus on one particularly curious area though, and that is the lovable supermarket. For you older stateside readers, you've been hearing about European-style supermarkets for years and years. There might have been one or two in your entire metropolitan area as of 15-20 years ago, but they're growing in number in the US of A. Aldi is the most notable one, and they're doing booming business (there are probably statistics to back this up, but I'll pass on them) in lots of big cities where people want cheap food options. Yes, you have to pay for bags. No, carts aren't an option. Yes, you bag your own groceries. These are some of the smallish quirks of the European grocery store. It's really very simple and they're almost indistinguishable from their ...

People have asked several times what it's currently like to live in Milan, and there are several answers I can give. Instead of answering them like a normal person (i.e. when people ask), I've been ignoring most of you for three solid months and will now unleash a brief and incomplete list of things that "define" what it's like to currently live in Milan. 1) Remember that scene in Beverly Hills Cop when Axel starts laughing at the two guys who walk past in their Michael Jackson jackets? It's like that. People all hear that Milan is a bigtime fashion city, and in a lot of cases it really doesn't matter. But nearly every day I will see someone who looks so ridiculous that I stifle laughter. There are lots of outfits that scream "prostitute" in America that apparently scream "I fit in" in Milan. It takes some getting used to. Also, saggy-butt parachute-style pants are honestly a thing over here. Young males wear them and don't see...

If you know anything about me, you know I love lots of really stupid things. Good Christmas music is on the list. But since I have some sort of self-respect (none), I've decided to make a list of the best Christmas songs that exist with brief explanations as to what makes them so great. These aren't all the standards, but you may recognize a few names. The Backstreet Boys - It's Christmas Time Again. A little-known ditty by a lotta-known band. I didn't know this jam until my much-much-better half took me to a BSB concert in December 2013. They were chatty, fun, energetic, and proud of their newest holiday jam. Take a look at the video and tell me they don't look as fresh as ever! Kanye West (et al) - Christmas in Harlem Another subtle, understated, insanely popular artist with a song that somehow kinda flies under the radar. Rappers have a tougher time getting into this habit lately, even though the namesake for this article exists and is seen below. Newis...

Roughly 100% of what I've seen from the internet this week has been bad news. I don't want to contribute to that flux. Chin up, world, we can't all be that bad. The fact that a lot of people are angry and protesting and showing that they actually give a shit shows that, well, people are angry and protesting and showing that they actually give a shit. Giving a shit is a great thing. Continue. Fight the fights that deserve to be fought. Being 4000 miles away from the US is weird, especially when I'm reading about the states all the time and what's going on there. I don't really want to write about the things I'm reading because everyone has, so I'll trust you (people who are so obscenely smart as to read things that *I* write) to make informed opinions about life and try not to generalize everyone and everything. Three things have happened to me that were really note-worthy this week and I'm gonna tell you about them now. Number 1: Someone asked ...

As it's a week later, I thought I'd update everyone on what it was like to spend Thanksgiving, a purely American (and American in its celebration tactics, especially) holiday, in Italy. First, we'd heard about the handful of restaurants in Milan that would be offering Thanksgiving dinners to patrons. You come in and throw down what should be a reasonable sum of money and have your free run of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and more, or so we expected. We started looking into these places and - look at that! the prices started at about 55 euros per person and went up from there. You don't have to google the exchange rate - that's upwards of $70 per person for Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. Considering we once got two round-trip flights to Brussels for about 60 euros total, this option was officially eliminated. Option number two was a simple one: Go to some grocery stores and pick up a few items that would properly mimic Thanksgiving foods. A turkey-based di...

I like it here in Italy. I've written thousands of words into a pseudo-journal about what life here is actually like, not to mention the thousands and thousands of words about the traveling we've been doing on weekends (which is currently at 10 countries and 13 trips in 13 weekends, ho-hum). There are, however, some things that I cannot figure out, and I will tell you about one particular thing that happened to me today. I teach a class at a school in the suburbs. My commute includes two metro trains (like the el in Chicago), a regional train, and then a bus to the school. Three weeks ago, on a rainy day, I was waiting for the return bus to take me back to the train station in this suburb - called Monza, for what it's worth - so I could arrive at my next lesson that evening. As my bus pulled toward the stop where I waited, I stepped toward the curb in anticipation of, you know, getting on the bus. You can imagine my surprise when the driver looked at me and opted not to...

Have you guys ever read The Odyssey? You probably have. It's long, Greek, and there are about 75000 names used in it over the course of seemingly a thousand pages. You might also remember it for things like Calypso, a whirlpool, Polyphemus the cyclops, Sirens, and various people being murdered for various things, not to mention the tail-end of the Trojan War being recounted within its pages. The reason it might sound familiar but not-that-familiar is that most people seem to be reading this book between the ages of about 12 and 16. This is one of the most loaded books in the history of ever, and it's complicated enough just to follow the plot (Homer, the author, invented the concept of in medias res , where the story begins in the middle and jumps around a bit through flashbacks and such, a style now known as "The Tarantino" or as "the way that one guy makes those weird movies with lots of violence"), let alone follow all the names involved, the historical...

As a warning, I would've written this same thing before starting to teach, but it popped into my head today after a quick lesson with a youngster. Bear in mind that these lessons with kids are not as simple as they would be if we both spoke the same language, so the Italian-to-English hurdle surely gives rise to some less-than-ideal conditions for the kids, which makes them more apt to act out. I have parenting advice. I mean, I have for a while, and I have lots of pieces, and I know that I won't be the perfect parent (although I'll be a hell of a lot better than some of the monsters I've come across in my life), and I'm not pretending to have all of the answers. I'm shooting for one big one right now. Teach your effing kid to play fairly. If for no other reason than it preventing his or her English tutor from getting real pissy and writing a blog post immediately after a lesson. This little kid is actually really adorable. The first fifteen minutes was as...

This is a sequel to Monday's post about Drama English and the worst person I've ever met. In life there are certain phone calls that you dread. Ones you have a premonition of before they ever happen, or the moment the phone rings, you know something terrible has happened. Maybe a loved one has been in the hospital, maybe your child was out late and the phone rings past midnight, maybe your significant other has…something to tell you. Whatever it may be, these exist. Let me tell you about the call I just had. I sometimes fear the worst when a boss calls. I know that’s kind of childish of me, but I do. In fleeting moments, I still fear authority and don’t want to “get in trouble” or whatever it’s called as an adult. So when my phone rang this morning and it was my supervisor - she's my boss, but it's not as if she comes to my lessons or anything. She's more of a tutor-pimp - from one of the lessons, I had a long “should I answer?” debate with myself. Ul...

Whoa. They're bananas. And if you think yours are bad or chaotic or the best or the worst, just know that someone out there probably has you beat. If you've been watching Maury for years, you know this already, but if you're under a rock and just kind of passing the time, let me tell you some tidbits about the kids I've met recently. One family has four boys between the ages of six and nine. That's a nine-year-old, a seven-year-old, and twin six-year-olds. So mom and dad were thinking of trying one last time for a girl and got two boys. They are boys, which means they like to pound each other's faces and bodies at all times. It harkens to all of those adages about moms being the best or moms having the hardest jobs or blah blah blah. If it were that hard, how come like 3,000,000,000 people have that job?? (But seriously, that mom is a hero) One family has two daughters, aged 11 and 14, who are clearly smarter than me. They speak four languages, read books ...

I taught a Drama English class recently. I’m supposed to teach at least 10, maybe 20 of these classes, and I have to inform you that the class was worse than plague. The purpose of the class was a noble one: students would be taught English without really realizing that they were being taught English. They'd play, act things out, listen to instructions while being shown those instructions by me, they'd become characters, and they'd ultimately, hopefully, act out a short play based on a fairytale and their "interpretation" of a fairytale. Pretty tall hopes for a group of six year olds. But anyway, here's the gist. Teachers know that one kid can derail a group to an insane degree – group mind takes over and then things just completely devolve into chaos once one kid starts the ball rolling. I had that one kid, and his name is protected because I am trying to be a decent human being. First of all, this is a small class. I only have six students, ...

As someone who goes into people's homes and does homework help and things like that, I guess I have a certain responsibility to be, you know, a good person. In most cases, this has gone swimmingly. In my short time teaching, I've been invited to Switzerland twice, I've been offered more food and drink than you can imagine, I've been given suggestions of vacations, I've been congratulated, hugged, kissed (the cheek-things that they do in Europe), and high-fived. I've been laughed at and laughed with. I've generally been pretty OK at this job. Last week I made a tactical error. I scared the living crap out of my student. I help him with his writing assignments, and last week's assignment was to write a short story about basically anything. He was given a few genres and we decided that crime stories would be too hard to write in 250 words, so we kicked around maybe a ghost story or a horror story. We played around with ideas and thought about how to...

I’ve been periodically told that there are certain things I would be good at. Public speaking, selling things, “leaving this party because no one invited you”, and even teaching. While a couple of them have interested me, teaching is the one I’ve most recently landed on. Jenna and I discovered that teaching English as a Foreign Language (heretofore referred to as TEFL) would be the easiest way for us to live abroad and feed the travel bug which bit us pretty hard in early 2014. We signed up for classes at the International TEFL Academy and started in May, graduated in August, and moved to Milan in the first week of September, hoping blindly to find work. We’d been told that the best way to go about this would be to simply show up in learning centers or schools and say “hi, I’m here to work for you because I’m an American and speak proper English.” Supposedly this works. I’m not crazy about continual face-to-face rejection, so we took the high road and consulted the TEFL Academ...