Doing Learning.

So at
about ten to midnight last Friday, I had a roll-up in one hand, a half-drunk
beer in the other, and was stood in the middle of a bar in a prayer circle.

Middle.
Of. Bar.

Prayer
Circle.

Uh-huh.

On a
somewhat related note, I also found myself crying roughly every
seventeen-and-a-half minutes last week too, for reasons including but not
limited to: school visits, focaccia bread, a beautiful description of ricotta
cheese in the best book about Italian food that I’ve ever read in my life, people being
nice, people being mean, getting my period, getting baby oil on my favourite
dress, and saying goodbye to 85 of the most incredibly gifted, talented and
self-aware people I have ever met in my 26 short years, even though I had only
known them for five days.

Learning
point for the week? FIVE DAYS IS SOMETIMES ALL IT TAKES.

I
never feel more myself than in the summer when I wear this red t-shit and teach
my peers how to teach. And I mean, HELL. Somebody pulled me aside to tell me
that the evening before the course began their grandmother died, and on the
first day they had already planned to quit to go home and mourn. But then
during our introductions I said something about how this experience changed my life,
and so they decided to trust me and stay and she said that now she feels like she is honouring the memory of her passed family. HOW CAN YOU NOT BE HUMBLED INTO
CRYING SILENCE WHEN SOMEBODY THANKS YOU WITH TEARS IN THEIR OWN EYES?

That
was a trick question Internet. The answer is that you can’t. You can’t not sob.

Also:
delayed reaction to leaving Rome, much? At 7.30 a.m. on my first morning here
my alarm wake-up call was My Pregnant Friend being in labour. All day I knew
there was a little baby girl coming out of her vagina, and when I started a
workshop on how to teach young learners there was no baby AND THEN 40 MINUTES
LATER THERE WAS ONE.

Being
a professional gypsy is hard. I miss my people.

(Also:
being pregnant is a bit like being a magician. It really is.)

But then,
despite missing all the people from a life that in two short weeks feels like
another existence ago, WHAT ABOUT ALL THE NEW ONES? The ones who can be all shots and cheers and roll-me-another-one
one minute, and then BAM. Give
you one of the most memorable moments of your life the next.

A guy
I had hardly spoken to all week started to tell us about his life that night in
the bar. As we slurped down the last of our drinks and ordered the next one, he
told us how he had opted out of high school when he was younger as a protest on
formalised testing. How he now took classes at a local university to make up
for it because he realised he needed that piece of paper. He explained how now
he does calligraphy and Arabic and travels and not one word of it was wanky
rhetoric to impress people, he just really wanted to share his story because
now he was in Italy and those experiences brought him here.

That
guy isn’t even 20 years old yet.

Do
you know what he said? He said that every time he finds life getting hard he
thinks of his granddad who emigrated from South to North America not knowing
any English at all, and he worked his way up to master language and living and
that is what keeps this guy going. Knowing that is his grandfather had the
strength to unapologetically build a life from nothing means now his grandson
comes to bars on the Italian Riviera and holds an audience in captive rapture
with his honestly about living his best life.

Essentially,
he is brave with his life so that other people can be brave with theirs
EXCEPT HE ISN’T A DICKHEAD ABOUT IT.

Do you
know how many of those exist? I’ll tell you: about 6. And one of them is Obama.

And
then I realised that it was him- this overwhelmingly genuine and
grab-life-by-the-balls being of incomprehensible compassion and warmth- that
wrote on his feedback form for the teaching course that day: Laura in an inspiration for teaching… and
for my life.

And
then we all stood up for a group hug, because he declared that he had something
to say, and before I knew it eyes were closed and addresses to our heavenly
father muttered and I couldn’t stop sobbing like a baby because me and inspiration for his life? There is not a single thing I
could have taught this man, and in five minutes of genuine conversation he
taught me more about myself and the person I want to become than I ever
knew I was looking to learn.

Its
just… people, man. Fucking people. They put you in a prayer circle in the
middle of the bar and sometimes? You don’t even mind. That’s when you know they
are the good ones.

The
really good ones.

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