Thursday, July 13, 2006

Inglesi

For the meeting I'm at, we're staying in dorms - vacated by the regular students, but filled by other conferences and a language school for Italian teenagers. The Italians are here for a month apparently, and I have to wonder how much English is being learned. They mostly seem to wander around the campus in small groups conversing in Italian.

Tonight the Italians had a dance - a disco as it's called. Our group watched them from the terrace outside the residence hall bar (yes, dorms often have bars in England - very handy). I'm getting old. I recognised very little of the music and they kids seemed like another species altogether - the girls dancing and the boys lurking. But by and large these kids seem very well behaved.

It reminded me of when I went off to Governor's School on the campus of Memphis State aged 17 - and nearly got sent home in the first few days as a result of a foolish prank. It was wrong, but seeing a stolen watermelon smash onto the pavement after a drop of 8 floors was a sight to behold.

The organizers told the gathered school the next morning that they knew who the guilty bunch were - but they wanted one person to confirm. That person would get to stay, but the rest would have to leave. We may have been kids, but we weren't stupid - if they had really known they would have picked us off one by one, so we all kept schtum and we all stayed to commit more misdeeds another day.
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

________________________________________________________________________
This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star. The
service is powered by MessageLabs. For more information on a proactive
anti-virus service working around the clock, around the globe, visit:
http://www.star.net.uk
________________________________________________________________________

No comments: