Malta, Days #1 & 2 - November 2016
Sliema--Monday, 21. November 2016
It's really warm this morning as we met at the rooftop garden café of the AM Language School for breakfast. It's just half a block's walk uphill from the dormitory. On the way, I ran to a corner grocery store to buy soap and toilet paper, as well as a newspaper. (English is one of two official languages in Malta.) The shop looked like it had everything crammed in there. It was like a grocery store and general store all in one. I had to ask where to find the toilet paper.
The sunrise cast a mystical light over the city, reflecting on all the grey and white concrete buildings crammed together. Malta gets 80,000 foreign students annually and 10% of those attend AM. Old red phone boxes are a part of the scene, as well as a smattering of Arab influences on some of the houses. It has a sort of Middle Eastern flavour here, as well as a more typical Meditteranean feel of Italy or Greece. The Maltese work hard and play hard at night.
After breakfast, we started our first workshop. That lasted an hour and a half before the coffee break, at which time we all reconvened on the rooftop again. I feel like I've been through enough training this past year to last a lifetime. But this one will be different! We're going to learn about CLIL, or content-based language learning, that is, teaching business skills using English, rather than focusing on the "traditional methods" of English grammar, reading, writing and vocabulary.
Kif int? ('How are you?' in Maltese.) Well, I'm fine now after lunch and a walk down to the harbour and waterfront at Sliema. I found a small electrical shop selling the correct plug adapters. Yippee! Now I can plug in my phone and charge it, as well as upload pictures to my laptop. At 1:30, I was back in the "sessions"... which left many of us with our heads spinning, all this new CLIL methodology. None of us were prepared for this, nor do we have any idea what the outcome may be. Of the two lesson plans I wrote before arriving in Malta, I will present just one tomorrow and simply wing it.
The first day of workshops came to an end at four in the afternoon. Everyone felt completely whacked. I went back to the dormitory (just a 2-minute walk downhill) with Andrea from Trnava. We stopped at a store to buy a few snacks. Back in my room, I uploaded all the photos I have so far and then took a rest. Tomorrow I hope we can relax more and treat this adventure as more of a "bleisure" (business + leisure) trip.
Outside my room, a symphony of car horns blares as traffic moves slowly up the narrow, bustling street. One driver gets impatient, then they all do and we get the Stuck In Traffic Philharmonic". Welcome to Malta. Dinner came late again, down at the Surfside Restaurant. I had pizza, which took ages to get. The 21'ta Novembru came to a close.
Sliema--Tuesday, 22. November 2016
It's another bright, clear morning here, and not as warm as yesterday, though. But that's OK. It will get hotter later on. Apparently it's 18ºC in Bratislava, so maybe our friends there aren't jealous that we're in Malta. I bet temperatures will dip right to about zero by the time we get back.
Today's Maltese lesson: Bonġu! (Good morning!) It's pronounced BON-ju, and sounds quite French. Lana, one of my colleagues on this project from Latvia, inscribed something in Latvian in my diary which I won't copy here since I cannot read it very well. One of the beautiful things about a project like this is you get to meet folks from all over Europe.
Looking towards Fort St. Elmo, Valletta
We wrapped up our Day 2 sessions early today so we could take a big group tour of Valletta. Our guise Erik met us at the waterfront in Sliema. He was a tall, well-tanned Maltese man who spoke perfect Queen's English with a crisp accent. I imagined him in another life as a presenter for the BBC. Soon a large tour bus showed up and took us for a guided tour around Grand Harbour and to Valletta, to a major fortress overlooking the harbour. A nice dinner in town followed suit.
