a wee tribute

I came back from London in December sick and was relieved of my final responsibilities to my classes. I didn't renew my contract, and am therefore finished working for the school, and it deserves a little send-off.

My first lesson of the day on Thursdays was in Bicocca, a little "suburb" that has sprouted around one of the numerous university campuses here. The tram drops me on campus, and I walk through a series of buildings that are all the same, coloured a specific shade of burnt orange and really really square -- hey must have been built in the 70's; they have that look about them -- to a piazza that is literally an outdoor mall and food court, complete with escalators and picnic tables, "paved" with something that looks like tile, where my students live in a really nice 10-or-so-floor condo. The buildings are tall for Milano and rise up all around you. They are still constructing in this area -- it's soon to become even more of a hub, with its own metro line. It's a vibrant area, or at least has some life about it -- the students pour out of the buildings at lunchtime and line up for kebab or a slice of pizza, and sit all over the piazza. Part of the reason I love going here there and everywhere to teach is getting to discover these new areas of the city, not necessarily beautiful in the same sense as the Duomo is beautiful, or the Foro in Rome; but each face of the city lends it its own flavour and deepens my understanding of its people.
I taught the majority of my lessons in Piazza Aspromonte, a 15-minute walk from my apartment. My walk to work will be a nice memory, if banal. By now, the row of kebab shops, restaurants, knick-knack stores, and cafés is as familiar to me as the row of houses on the way to the corner store where I grew up. OK -- maybe not quite as familiar. But it only takes something as small as a daily walk or other mundane routine to instill a sense of home.
My students were all Italian. Some were children, and some of those children were insupportable, but I am going to miss the little girls who drew me pictures. I'll miss the determined university students working towards proficiency exams and the Spanish-speaking Italian businessman who went crazy for Dire Straits. I won't miss the many cancelled appointments and the students who didn't try; these taught me patience, though, and which things to get stressed about and which to let go.
As for working for an Italian school, I think the well-oiled machine that was my Toronto job spoiled me.

I'm done with the school now, my contract having expired as I said; I've chosen to not renew it and spend my last six or seven weeks travelling and focusing on my personal and artistic development, and enjoying myself. My itinerary is up in the air, and more on that will come later, but I am looking forward to an extremely productive couple of months.