Jul

31

Italian Job

Filed Under Family & Friends, Food & Drinks, Humor, Language, Life & Leisure, Society & Culture, Travel/People & Places | 7 Comments


We were in Lugano last week for four days and three nights. In this trip, I realized that the only Italian words I knew were “Ciao” (Hello and good-bye) and “Signora” (Madam). I totally came ill prepared on the linguistic front to deal with the locals, thinking that my German, one of the Swiss national languages — there are four (German, French, Italian, and Romansch) — would suffice.

On our last night, for instance, I was not able to communicate at all with the nice chap manning the ice cream shop.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch? (Do you speak German?)”

The young man shook his head.

I therefore relied on my English since my French is as rusty as my old bike, which I left in Manila. “Do you have some ice cream here that doesn’t taste too sweet?”

The man just looked back at me with a blank stare. It’s one of those lost-in-translation scenarios again, I thought.

My husband then tried to mediate. He then spoke in what I perceived as the most broken Italian in the world. It didn’t sound impressive.

But it somehow did the trick.

In Italian, the ice cream guy said that “everything’s sweet here” (a duh moment). (Well, I knew that; I just wanted to know if they had a flavor that would not affront my highly sensitive tonsils with too much sweetness.)

My husband then proceeded to ordering our ice cream: chocolate flavor for me and stracciatella for him.

“Grazie,” I thanked the guy when he handed to me a cone of poorly scooped chocolate ice cream. (I learned how to say “thank you” in Italian on my first day in Lugano. It was important to me to show appreciation to the Italian-speaking Swiss in their mother tongue.)

My ice cream tasted fine, but it was rather too sweet for my personal taste and a little bit on the heavy side. Its texture was rather unique: something akin to a chocolate cake dough put in the fridge for a long time. Interesting.

Outside the ice cream shop, I remarked to my husband that my basic knowledge of German was utterly useless in Lugano. “And one would think that these customer service people in a touristy place like Lugano would at least understand or speak in English,” I added, as we strolled on the sidewalk with our cones of ice cream.

“Well, they actually do,” he said, citing the woman at the reception desk at the wellness hotel and the one at the hotel information counter at the train station as prime examples. “But this guy seems to be the non-touristy type. I guess he just happens to work at the ice cream shop in the neighborhood.”

“Ah, okay,” I murmured as I mulled over the already long list of linguistic struggles I’ve had in multilingual Switzerland.

There was a pause for a moment.

I then cleared my throat and blurted out, “So, when do we migrate to New Zealand?”

Jul

29

Wonderful World

Filed Under Education & Campus Scene, Faith & Values, Music, Travel/People & Places, YouTube | Comments Off

Three summers ago, I was in Ukraine, teaching English to young and old Ukrainians on a voluntary basis. Preparing the lessons and classroom materials was rather tedious, but the general experience was fun and fulfilling.

While my first stint as an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher in Prague — I was still a trainee at that time — a year before proved to be challenging and at some point “bumpy,” my English teaching program in the Ukrainian town of Kremenchuk went smoothly. It could be that in Ukraine I got to spend more time with my students than what was afforded to me in the Czech Republic, where I taught general English in different classes under the scrutiny of meticulous British teacher trainers. Or it could also be that, after my intensive month-long TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) course, I came more prepared…and more confident. My lessons were more cohesive, too.

Armed with English coursebooks, homemade worksheets, writing materials, and CDs, I taught English in one of the spacious classrooms of a Bible college, generously provided for by the local Christian church in Kremenchuk.

My students seemed to enjoy the lineup of activities I prepared day by day. At one point, I handed them a lyrics sheet of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” — I just love this inspiring song — with info gaps (blank lines) here and there that the students had to fill in as they listened to the CD. It was a vocabulary-building task, which I thought they would enjoy. And they did — immensely. My students said they loved the melody and the message of the song. If I remember it right, they learned this song by heart right away. One male student told me during breaktime, “I love that song.”

After the info gap exercise, I started a free-wheeling discussion. I asked them, “What makes you happy?” “What are your favorite things?” It was meant to encourage them to practice their speaking skills. Each one of them gave his/her respective answer. Smiles. Chocolates. Summertime. I particularly remember a student response that pleasantly surprised me and effortlessly warmed my heart: “My English teacher makes me happy.” That was Vladimir’s earnest reply. For a while, I was speechless.

On my last day with my Ukrainian students (i.e., the first two groups of learners I handled), we listened to the CD again and we all sang with Louie. I dedicated my “performance” to all of them, who happily shared their wonderful world with me in the summer of 2005.

Jul

28

Open-Air Cinema II

Filed Under Announcements, Family & Friends, Films, Life & Leisure, Special Events, Travel/People & Places | 2 Comments

And it’s that time of the year again. That is, to go online, check out the movie listing of the Open-Air Cinema in Nidau, and buy a ticket online.

This year’s open-air cinema program is as follows (taken from the Outnow-ch website):

24.07. 22:00 Young@Heart [E/d/f]
25.07. 22:00 No Country for Old Men [E/d/f]
26.07. 22:00 Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis [F/d]
27.07. 22:00 Ratatouille [E/d/f]
28.07. 22:00 Shine a Light [E/d/f]
29.07. 22:00 Juno [E/d/f]
30.07. 22:00 Sex and the City [E/d/f]
01.08. 22:00 I Am Legend [E/d/f]
02.08. 22:00 American Gangster [E/d/f]
03.08. 22:00 Into the Wild [E/d/f]
04.08. 22:00 The Simpsons Movie [E/d/f]
05.08. 22:00 What Happens in Vegas… [E/d/f]
06.08. 22:00 P.S., I Love You [E/d/f]
07.08. 22:00 Keinohrhasen [D/f]
08.08. 22:00 The Kite Runner [E/d/f]
09.08. 22:00 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [E/d/f]
10.08. 22:00 The Bucket List [E/d/f]

I was able to watch some of the featured films in the past — e.g. Ratatouille (funny and inspiring), I Am Legend (scary), American Gangster (forgettable despite the stellar cast), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (still exciting with the same old formula, but you see a much older Indiana Jones) — but I’m keen to watch The Kite Runner and The Bucket List.

I’m delighted to learn that the film The Kite Runner will be shown in English as well (my husband misinformed me days ago that it would not be). My heart did a somersault when I saw on the website the cinema language code [E/d/f], which stands for “English/Deutsch/francais,” beside The Kite Runner title.

I don’t particularly like summer — the summer heat gives me terrible migraine headaches — but the Open-Air Cinema event is something I look forward to, year after year. There’s something about watching a nice film in an old castle, with the glittering stars above you and the cool summer night temperature soothing your skin, that makes me…happy, as juvenile as this may sound.

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