girl in clover

I spend my days in this pristine, empty, brand new school, making myself useful and surfing the net on about a fifty-fifty split. We have a dedicated chocolate drawer, a very, very large TV (good for after-hours Twin Peaks sessions) and wireless everything. I am surrounded by teachers I respect, for their pedagogical know-how and their capacity to hold their whiskey, and we are building a school together. A school the likes of which this country has never seen.

It's all so shiny and bright. There are no defeated-looking old hacks sloping around the hallways telling you that 'we don't do it that way here.' We are making up the rules as we go so, yes, if I do it that way, then that is the way it is done here. You know what the first month of a job feels like, when you are straining every muscle to 'show initiative' in the middle of a stack of bureaucratic procedures that haven't made sense to anybody for the last five years? I feel like all of that confusion and irritation is getting its pay-off now. Say I have a project to do, like make a written placement test (it's only going to get teacher-geekier from here on, I warn you). I talk to the others about it, and they say things I haven't thought of before. Then I think about what the ultimate written placement test would be to me--the one that is better than all the annoying, inadequate placement tests I've ever seen. Then I make it. Then everyone is happy, and we go and eat pizzas the size of monster truck wheels, and then we drink a lot.

It was really very hard to take this job. I was schlepping around Italy on my own, trying to evaluate towns for liveability without knowing anyone or any nice places to eat, sharing hostel rooms with crazies or cheap hotel rooms with my neurotic self. I had a tremendous urge to return to Sydney. I was making frantic teary calls to Matt, Lily and anyone else who would listen, from phone booths where I couldn't hear the person on the other end properly for all the mopeds burning past. My parents were AWOL in Morocco. Whose parents go missing for two weeks in Africa? Freaks. It is a matter of family legend that I never take advice, but it's amazing how much suspiciously advice-like information my parents can impart in a half-hour phone call.

It seems quite a miracle, therefore, that I've landed up in about the best job I could have hoped for. Assuming the school gets some clients. I think my boss is quietly worried about it (I have had many opportunities to observe her psychological state, since I am presently crashing on her floor, along with three other teachers who are yet to find apartments--everyone tells me that people live in each other's pockets in this town, but this is ridiculous). But Kathryn and her husband seem to know everyone in Reggio, and word of mouth among their friends alone could keep us going for the first three months. I'm still not sure how long I want to stay here. I'm mentally divided between Reggio and Sydney. But I am starting to recognise the feel of the days here--it's the life that people have been describing to me for the past five years: their season on The Continent. In fact, what with all the Jeff Buckley playing in the bars, and the seedy clubs on the edge of town with late-nineties electronica, and the fashion, it feels like Europe has waited five years for me to arrive. Me, solipsistic?