Cross-stressing

Today is A-Day.

That’s how our family refers to January 8. It’s the anniversary of our 2012 arrival in Amsterdam.  Amsterdam Day. Arrival Day. Aankomst dag.

On our first A-Day anniversary I baked an apple tart and decorated it with some Eucalyptus leaves I bought from our local florist. I thought it was a terribly sophisticated melding of cultures. Ned Nederlander, ever the agricultural scene-stealer, pointed out that my thoughtful garnish had probably not come from our Antipodean homeland, but in all likelihood had been imported from a plantation in Africa. De Jongens commented, as they do at almost every meal, that “this would be better without the green stuff". Maybe this year I can take creative cross-cultural symbolism to even greater heights; perhaps a Gouda pavlova or some wattle-seed bitterballen. Chuck another herring on the barbie.

Whatever our family does to celebrate A-Day 2016, the cross-cultural highlight of my time in Amsterdam is (and will likely forever be) my weekly meetings with a small group of parents from De Jongens’ school. For the past few years I have had the enormous privilege of leading an English conversation group for an hour a week as part of a wonderful parent-run program called Let’s Talk.

Participants have come and gone over the years, as is the beautiful, horrible reality of an international community. Each of them has inspired me with their humility, determination, humour and openness. They have graciously shared a piece of France, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Iran, Hungary, India, Germany, the Czech Republic, Catalonia and many other places with me, and made my world so much richer.

 

They teach me far more than I could ever dream of teaching them. I teach them about irregular verbs; they teach me about the world. It hardly seems a fair exchange. We don’t use a workbook or a lesson plan. We simply talk. And laugh. And eat. We’re proof that if more people in the world sat down and ate together, there would be fewer conflicts. Recently I took them to The Drover’sDog, the best Australian café this side of Boronia Park’s Unwritten, and as a result some in our Let's Talk group are convinced that lamingtons have the potential to achieve world peace.

Together, we navigate vast and frequently-amusing inter-cultural chasms; I come away from every session with my spirit soaring, my sides splitting and my head spinning. Inevitably, I also come away with my own understanding of this ridiculous language greatly undermined.

Try explaining the pronunciation and spelling of ought, taught, taut, and sort and you’ll start to agree. Then clearly and rationally explain why an alarm goes off but a light goes on.

Keep a straight face while you insist that your nose runs and your feet smell, even while your nose is smelling and your feet are running. It’s a ridiculous language, which is partly why I love it.
 
Our Let’s Talk group talks about everything and nothing: weddings, grammar, national politics, feminism, food, international politics, restaurants, idioms, child birth, food, dogs, moving countries, staying put, going home, vocabulary, food, raising teenagers, past participles, raising pre-teenagers, social blunders, linguistic blunders, food, careers, eating, verb phrases. And food.  Oh, and on one memorable occasion, penises. But that’s a story for another time.

This experience -these people - have changed me. The most tangible change that they inspired is that I have recently become a formally qualified teacher of English to adults. In the process I also became a stark-raving lunatic, obsessing over concept-checking questions, student-centeredness, receptive skills, lexical sets and the phonemic chart.  How hard can it be, I arrogantly thought when I enrolled, to teach a language that you’ve already got covered? As it turns out it’s extremely hard, and very stressful.
 

On more than one occasion during one of my frequently disastrous practice lessons I wanted to run from the classroom screaming, far from the furrowed brow of my tutor, the sympathetic grimace of my fellow-teachers and the bewildered expressions of the students.  During the course I had to resubmit not one but two assignments, with all the associated loss of dignity that brings. No mother should have to suffer the humiliation of having her own son glance at her desk and say, with a cruel smirk “Resubmit, eh? Who'd have thought?” 

But I passed, and in doing so I was forced to acknowledge that being a “real” teacher involves more than sitting around and talking, laughing and eating (even though I’d had considerable success with that approach for the past few years ...).  I haven’t yet decided if I want to be a “real” teacher or a “talking, laughing, eating” teacher, or indeed whether I can be both. Or perhaps there’s another option that I’m yet to discover. Mid-life career changes raise so many questions ...

But answers must wait because first I have to celebrate my fourth A-Day. I’m going to start it in the best way I can think of; by going to my weekly Let’s Talk meeting first thing this morning. This wonderful, eclectic group has raised cross-cultural symbolism and inter-linguistic hilarity to heights that I could never have imagined when I first lay a Eucalyptus sprig across an apple tart. Of course they must share my A-Day.

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Let's Talk. And Laugh. And Eat.