Sorry, Parents.

The guys I'm working with these two weeks at this 'DreamerSchool' I mentioned are almost proper grown-ups, not the normal first elementary level I have been dealing with mostly. Which sorts of puts into perspective that time I slept with an 18 year old when I was most certainly not 18. Bad, bad, Laura. Consider this my apology to his mother, and my 'You're Welcome' to his next girlfriend. It was my (entirely legal!) pleasure!



Some of these 14-19 year olds don't speak fantastic English, so a lot of what we cover with one class is a lot more basic than you might expect for kids of that age. Like 'I have got...' and the alphabet. Which is crazy when with the other class of kids exactly the same age we hold mock trials to discuss the culpability of video game creators in the murders of schoolkids by fellow schoolkids that get their ideas from 'Blow Their Heads Off 3' or whatever, and chat about Descartes. Worlds apart.



When we covered body parts it was easy to make them laugh by introducing 'bottom' and 'boobies' just to keep it interesting (I KNOW. YOU WISH I WAS TEACHING YOUR KIDS.) but the games we played couldn't be the normal 'Head, Shoulders, knees, Toes' and 'Simon Says' that I've used in every other kick-ass body part lesson that I have ever taught. To ten year olds.



We played a body relay game where the class is in two teams and in two lines. A couple of metres away from the first person in the line sits a student on a chair, and when we call out various body parts it is a race to run to this student, identify the body parts, and then put them together. So, for example, "HEAD TO HEAD!" means that yup. You guessed it. You put your head to the kid-on-the-chair's head.



My co-tutor and I had done the boring ones, and started to introduce the WILD nose to toes, and the UNSTOPPABLE bottom-to-bottom. Like woah. Calm down with the crazy.



Obviously when it was all boys involved we yelled, 'STOMACH TO STOMACH!' and they launched themselves onto each other so that they were sort of straddling one another, which would have almost been a bit saucy if it weren't for the fact that everyone was practically wetting themselves laughing. Italians are pretty competitive, so there was absolutely no question of them getting squeemish about their tasks.



Ha, I thought. I'll show them!



"MOUTH-TO-MOUTH" I screamed, which normally, with the ten year olds, gets cries of "Que skifo!" and that 'I don't think so look' which only little girls can sucessfully master.



Yeah. So of course the 14 year old girls went right in for the kill and didn't hold back with it. Before I had chance to yell 'scherzo!' or 'joke!' they were lip-locked, and the class fell silent. Ohmygod, I thought, I'm going to lose my job. And then everybody laughed. Really hard, and for a really long time. And when we stopped I suggested, "Don't tell your mother." I squeezed her arm just a little bit, too. You know. For emphasis.



I really hope she doesn't report back home. Otherwise I might as well send her with a tee-shirt that reads, "I went to DreamerSchool and I all I learnt was how to make out with chicks."