This episode’s vocabulary
Horrendous
adj. — extremely unpleasant or bad.
Racket
noun — an unpleasant loud continuous noise.
To storm
verb — to attack a place or building by entering suddenly in great numbers.
To quieten
verb — to (cause someone to) become calmer or less noisy.
Boisterous
adj. — noisy, energetic, and rough.
Hacked off
adj. — unhappy, tired, or annoyed, especially because of the situation you are in.
Silver lining
noun — an advantage that comes from a difficult or unpleasant situation.
Quietness
noun — the quality of making very little noise.
Questions and answers
Oh, wow. Well, I was staying at this place in Italy called Aversa. Quite recently, actually. Because I was working in a school there. While I was teaching an online class in a room just next to the dinner hall. There was this horrendous racket from a bunch of kids storming down the stairs from the upper levels, shouting and screaming at the top of their lungs. I was about to get up to tell them off when I actually realized it was lunchtime. So the whole school was actually in the process of making its way down for the usual pasta and whatever else they had with pasta. Once I had that realization, I just sort of calmed down and let it happen, really. The acoustics in the school were and, as far as I know, still are horrendous. So even if you tell the kids to quieten down, even the collective footsteps would create a huge amount of noise just filling the air. Also, there's very little point in just standing and telling kids to be quiet on their lunch break. It's like the one time they have to move around and play and be boisterous. So I just tried to be more understanding about the whole thing. Despite having that mindset about it and while maintaining my calm demeanour I was a bit hacked off, actually. It made teaching a lot more difficult and I struggled to concentrate and focus on what my student was actually saying. Thank heavens, she is clever and didn't need much repetition. Plus, she was still able to find the silver lining that she could cope quite well with learning in such a situation. I'm not sure even I would have spotted that eventually. And usually, I'm quite good at that sort of thing. If I do find myself in a similar situation in the future, though, I think I'd try and have a backup plan and move to a quieter place. Well, in as much as it's possible to find a quiet place in a place like that school. Like I said, the building is not really designed for quietness in mind or designed with quietness in mind. But regardless, I wouldn't be making that mistake again.
Hey! Thank you, Rory, for your story!