Hello again everyone

I thought I should post again, as next week will be busy to the max for me, so probably won't have the time or the inclination to write anything, and I can only imagine how boring your lives would be without a slice of mines to read about.....

After the euphoria of last weeks defeat of Juventus, I went to the match last night against the fascist pigs of Lazio. I don't think alot of them would object to that title either. Genoa are currently in the 4th Champions League place, two points ahead of Fiorentina, who play in a couple of hours. Unfortunately, Genoa didn't really show up yesterday, and we lost 1-0. Because the gap between us and the cheating Florentines is so close, every game is a must-win cup final, to borrow the much used parlance. Therefore, losing is not so good. But, everything crossed that I can cross without serious discomfort, Udinese will do us a favour this afternoon and take some points off Fiorentina. I remembered to take my camera, and even better, remembered to charge the battery, so here's a photo of the Gradinata Nord (my stand):

As you can see, the guy with the flag's a bit in the way, but rest assured there are many flags and other exciting stuff behind him.

Yesterday, my compadre, Crombie dragged himself back to Scotland after 11 months of avoiding work and general travelling. It was nice to speak to him yesterday, and it'll be good to see him in June when I make my return home. Hello Crombie!

And now for the minutia of my life here.

This week's been pretty relaxed, as Monday was a holiday, so only four days of work in theory, with 13 hours of work in practice spread over the whole week. I've yet again been outrageously unproductive and have mostly read and lounged about. In the past three weeks I've worked about 40 hours in total. This was spelling bad news for my pay packet this month, but next week I have 39 hours of lessons. This is the reason I doubt I'll be posting anything. To be honest, I doubt I'll have the energy to post a letter by Friday. I probably won't even have the energy to hide my exasperation when I'm asked again what the difference between 'if' and 'whether' is. Uuuuuuuurgh. It's a valid question, but not an important one, and students should really listen to me the first time I exhaustively (exhaustedly) explain it.

I'll be teaching a group of trainee cruise staff people, who here are called 'animatore'. Imagine my excitement when I was told that I'd be teaching animatore, thinking, not unreasonably I reckon, that they'd be animators and I'd spend 20 hours of my week teaching people whose job it is to make cartoons. But no, they work on cruise ships. I had my first lesson on Friday, and they do seem nice, but they have a reprehensible amount of energy, vim and spirit. It's going to be tough to maintain my usual gloom around them, but I'm sure I'll succeed. I might even manage to break one or two of them, who knows?

My Italian comes along in fits and spurts. Even though I've had alot of free time, as you're probably aware, I am prone to terrible laziness. Therefore, my Italian learning has taken a bit of a blow, but I'm determined to right that wrong today as the weather's horrible. I went to get my haircut yesterday, which merely reinforced the fact that I need to learn the vocabulary necessary for this kind of lark. I'll probably instantly forget it, but at least I'll have made the effort. But then again, I can't really be arsed, and it'll be ages til I get it cut again so might not bother, particularly as I accidentally got a skinhead. Oops!

So, until next time,

That's all folks