That night me, Christina, Meghan and a few other girls wandered down to the shore and found a place on the water for dinner. We ate at this really cute restaurant that had rooftop seating and very delicious food. Unfortunately the umbrella on our table didn’t protect us from the rain blowing sideways so we had to take cover inside. It didn’t let up at all so we had a lovely walk back to our hotel in the rain but we didn’t really care after realizing we were in Italy.
It was pretty tough to wake up on Sunday. I slept for almost 13 hours on and off but in my defense I had slept about three in the 18 I traveled. After finally getting myself out of bed around 11 I went exploring around Sanremo with Meghan, Tina, Talia, Drew and Nathan. We ate a quick lunch on the water followed by amazing gelato. I had nocciola gelato for the first time in over a year and I was essentially on cloud nine. After dying of gelato happiness we walked to the same area where I had dinner the night before because there is a long walkway along the rocks of the shore which equals a beautiful view of the port. The sun was finally coming out so we decided to grab our bathing suits from the hotel and find our way to the beach. We got directions for la brezza (the breeze) but ended up at tre ponti instead. It was a pretty long walk back to the hotel and then to the beach (there is surprisingly little sand and more of a rocky coast), so by the time we got settled the sun was only out for about another 20 minutes until some clouds ruined our fun.
ACLE arranged for everyone (all 150 tutors and staff) to meet at Sax Bar at 8 for some mingling. It was pretty cool to meet everyone especially when hearing the different accents that would come out of their mouths. There are a lot of Americans and Canadians working for ACLE but there is also a good amount of tutors from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Australia.
Orientation started bright and early Monday morning and was about the same everyday up until Friday. I would wake up at 7, eat breakfast around 7:30 or 8, and walk to either Palafiori or Villa Armond for orientation at 9. It reminded me a lot of the obnoxious number of leadership camps I went to during high school. There were a lot of energizers, songs, and team activities. But all of these things they taught us are what we will be teaching the kids, but of course with the point of learning English.
About every 10 minutes I would switch from sheer panic of “OMG I CAN’T DO THIS WHY AM I HERE I AM GOING TO FAIL MISERABLY AS A TUTOR” to “wow this isn’t bad I can totally do this” and then back again. I think I finally got the hang of teaching by Thursday of orientation.
I switched up a lot between actually liking and not liking orientation too. With 150 people obviously little groups or “cliques” are going to form and I honestly could care less about that kind of stuff now, but for those who were really invested in that idea, they could be pretty awful. I can’t even count how many times that either I or someone else would say something to someone from a different “group” and there would just be no response. Or the feeling of well I can tell this person is rushing to answer or respond so he/she can walk away immediately. The orientation was run partially by returning tutors so they could “lead by example” but they did the exact same thing too. And one of the two female returning tutors was always extremely rude to me. It kind of put me off from ACLE itself. When we finished on Friday and found out our first assignments one of the staff members said “welcome to the family” and I just felt “meh.” I was more excited when the Apple salesman said that to me when I bought my mac.
But I am really excited to start working. My first camp is in Torino and I’m going for two weeks. As I write this I’m on the train with four other people from my orientation. Only one of them is coming with me to my camp, and another girl will be meeting us there. My second week in Torino will only have myself and one other tutor. So other than the camp director (who is an Italian) there won’t be anyone else other than either me and two tutors or me and one other tutor. I’m running the show. My first week there will be 33 kids total and I’ll have a group of 11, and the second week there will be 20 kids total so I’ll have ten.
I think I’m most excited for the organization of the whole thing. The camp won’t just have kids sitting inside learning grammar all day. At every location we have to organize a camp wide Olympics but I think it’s great that my first one will be in Torino where the Olympics were five years ago. We can also pick a theme for the week if we want and we have to write a short skit with a song for the kids to perform for their families on the last day. The last day of orientation we performed our own skits that we had been working on all week. Everyone was assigned one of the levels that we will be teaching. My group was ages 8-10 so they are learning comparatives and superlatives, cardinal and ordinal numbers, descriptions, and the present continuous. We performed “The Last Mario Kart Race. Ever.” and I played Mario, complete with the mustache.
Tuesday of orientation - AKA the second day - we were sent to an Italian school to teach a class an activity or song. I was with a group of about ten people and we went to two different classes of 6 and 7 seven year olds. In the first class only five people taught and the rest of us observed. The first group of kids was pretty well behaved for it being so hot and early in the morning. I was lucky enough to have to teach the second group kids who were referred to as the “smack kids” because they were acting like they were on drugs. I have never been so terrified of small children in my life. At first we were trying to just teach how to say “my name is ...” and then ask someone else “what is your name” but they would not stop getting up from the circle or saying “my name is Berlusconi” or doing anything else to drive us insane. We finally got them to calm down by just playing a circular clapping game and had them repeat body parts. Oddly enough the staff that was observing us told us we did an amazing job because they children were literally the spawn of Satan.
Another memorable day was Wednesday when we played a lot of water games that we weren’t previously warned about. So everyone was soaked and wasn’t too happy about it. We also played a shoe race game which required everyone to take off their shoes they had been in, in the very hot sun, and had been running around in all day. So again, no one was too happy about that.
Every night they had dinner organized for us. I went to this place called Tahiti Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. It was about a 45 minute walk along the ocean so it was nice but just kind of a pain every night. We had to be there at 8:30 and camp didn’t usually end until after 5 so I didn’t have a lot of time to do anything in between. Thursday night half of us ate in the old part of Sanremo which was absolutely beautiful. The founder of ACLE, a man called Arrigo, took us on a tour of the old town before we ate and it was amazing. Friday night they took us all down to the port where I ate my first night. But this night they got everyone a personal pizza and we sat along the long walkway/rock wall and watched the sunset and drank wine of course. Most people went to Tahiti afterwards for some farewell drinks and dancing.
A few of my friends had to leave on Friday with about 25 other people because they were either heading to Sicily for camp or to somewhere in the south. Everyone else left Saturday morning for wherever they were headed to.
Overall I was pretty happy to finish orientation and head off to my first destination: Torino!
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