For the love of a moose!

I am sitting in a hostel in Turin, it is hot, it is stifling, i am about to have my second cold shower in half an hour. But i cannot steer away from the fact that i am so grateful to be here right now, for all the events and things that brought me to be in this place, at this time with so many things to look forward to and back to, that i love the heat for the heat is here and here is nowhere in a sense but in another it is everywhere.

I was writing abut exhaustion last time i wrote. That exhaustion reached a plateua where the fact that i was working all day every day just become a fact and not something to worry about. I knew the people i worked with and the way they worked, I knew the hotel, I knew the deal. In a sense it was peaceful. Well besides the fact that shortly after I wrote last a new disaster struck. I was standing on a balcony, all dressed up to go to the Friday night disco with the children and I shouted

“There was a great big moose”( using my hands as moose horns of course)

They screamed back from below “There was a great big moose!”

“And he drank a lot of Juice!!”

“and he drank a lot of juice” they screamed happily back.

In my excitement of my favourite part of the song (Way-yo, Way yo way yo way yo way yo) I jumped off the chair, landed strangely on my ankle and in tears I called for ice and the next day i was on crutches for 5 days. It was tough, there were only 3 tutors the last week as we had a lot less children and trying to carry things, crutching around, and work at an active camp was painful. This was also added to the fact that the children were obsessed with my crutches so every time i wante do move somewhere i looked around and the crutches were attached to an energetic 6 year old who had incited an older child to make them short enough for her. I enjoyed their revelry so most of the time i did the hop and swing arms for momentum thing and resorted to hand stand walking which as cool as it sounds- isn’t so practical. Luckily, my foot healed fast and I still have an absolute love for the Moose song (For he just drank SO much juice!)

And then it was the Friday night disco again, I was walking somewhat unsteadily but i had 2 feet that transported me (How often do we take such precious things for granted?). I had the week off and was intending on visiting a friend in Switzerland when a strange blonde lady approached me and said “We need people to work for us next week...”

Without asking many questions, I said yes and the next day I watched my children's show around 2pm and whisked myself 200 m down the road to another hotel, another company, another ideology, awaiting children who arrived at 5pm. I was exhausted but happy to be somewhere else doing something different and obviously, being paid. Here we did not sing the moose song or any song in the morning, i did not have to run around and play games and make the children dance on their head. It was very composed, if i wanted the kids to do book work for 2 hours that was no problem. But the show at the end of the week was of utmost importace, I didn’t really understand the power sturcture there but it was myself and one other guy on a summer camp with 30 children (the week before we had been 3 tutors with 18 children) and every night we had group dances (Lady Gaga, Katie Perry, Danza Kuduro and the like) and during lessons in the day all my co worker wanted to do (as he was head honcho at the place) was make an amazing show to impress the parents. As i had mistakenly stolen a friends Beauty and the Beast dvd at the beginning of the summer he decided we should do a whole production of songs and acting of Beauty and the Beast with Italian children. Wow. So he spent time writing the script with the older children, acting, show rehearsng and i was told to teach 8 year olds songs like Tale as old as time, Gaston, kill the Beast and Be Our Guest and with the amount of “listen and repeat” i had to do I was near throttling someone. During lessons these poor kids just had to learn songs and i must say they had brave hearts for the complaining was not as i would have expected. They dealt with the tedium while i was all the while thinking how it was unfair that jsut ebcause parents need to be impressed we need to give children a rough bucket of tedium...

Nevertheless, the show was amazing, ridiuclously amazing, i was impressed with the children and begrudgingly impressed with my coworker for the kind o show that was organised in one week with Italian children but i coulnd’t help feeling out of my depth and somewhat pleased to return to a place where i really know what’s going on.

So i was whisked finally, after 4 weeks of working every single day, every single night and pretty much all the time to a day camp. To the normality of working hours like 8 – 4.30. Imagine. I was shuffled into the most kind, caring Italian family, they did not speak English and the mother was mad about chatting about this and about that, she could talk about anything that came to her mind for hours, food, weather, fashion and with all her chattering away I got the chance to not feel awkward about listening and understanding and trying to reply in Italian. The father was equally cool in a different way. Actually seriously cool. He owned a room which he called his cave, downstairs, musty and dark absolutely full, top to floor, head to foot, side to side of records and cds of quality music. He had been collecting music for 30 years and it’s a haven of interesting music which he can explain the history of all of them. I didn’t always understand beause when he saw i had an interest in this he took me for a little session down in the cave, showing me his turntables and how they work and linking songs for radio but when he saw i was interested he got more and more excited so he spoke too fast and i couldn’t keep up. His enthusiasm was infectious though and without me asking he made me an mp3 cd of all the pink floyd music he owns (which is everything there is, vinyls and cds).

And then i stepped on a stone. A rather big stone. And being Mary I took no notice of it and continued with my life. And then i did not clean the gauge in my foot and then it got infected and it was blue and pussy and disgusting and i was limping and trying to clean and pin it out but was too squeamish to do so properly. So the family decided i couldn’t go on in this fashion so they took me to their friend the surgeon who did a house job and while his 10 year old son handed him various metal tortue devices i watched as he cut my foot open, talking abotu guitar and south africa and other exciting things. He said he didn’t need payment as it was “for Africa” and gave me some antiseptic and some cool surgeon plasters. And then I had tonsilitis and i couldn’t swallow my spit for a couple days (horrendously uncomfortable) and the family took me the following day to another doctor who wrote me a prescription for antibiotices, said he didn’t want payment either (Africans huh) and while i was taken to watch the final Harry Potter in Italian that night my italian parents went out and bought my medicine.

Ah being taken care for the Italian way. Such a level. I got quite a talking to though about not wearing shows (I have never been told off in another language besides English) and swinging in thunderstorms which is what they attributed my tonsilitis to- which i completely didn’t agree with but i humbly accepted the reprimands and the caring that went with it.

The antibiotices improved my disease so fast that by the last evening i stayed with them i went out with the other tutors for a farewell drink and we drank R15 prosecco in the park and giggled about silly things and the next day i awoke at 6am, to find my adopted Italian father ready and waiting to take me to another train station to to take me to another train station which would take me to Swizterland and the holy days of holiday after 8 weeks of continous madness.