Taking a Breath

Finally! A normal afternoon after a long time!

Being in charge of the final (ninth) grade is no joke! Seriously!
Twenty-four individuals, all different - can't be any other way, right? - very strong minds, hormones pumping, high level energy and some of them sleepwalking by day - (different, I said). When you need ideas (and when you don't), they have a zillion of them. When you want to communicate, you should speak teenagean (a whole different language, full of doohs and eye rolling) or at least master the listening comprehension of it. But from time to time you do want to make them uderstand what you mean - even if in other cases you simply accept that their minds work in a way (many ways, actually), very different from yours.

But with all those sighs and eye rolling, they surprised me when we took that trip last week. Yes, it was a week ago, but a very very busy week ago - with all those school things and my mum's birthday on top of them.

Anyway, here is where we went:






Burano is an island and a town near Venice. The houses are so colourful because of their fishing tradition: the fishermen wanted to see their homes from far away when they were returning from the sea. They wanted to recognize it among the other houses. Nowadays the residents need a permit from the authorities if they want to change the colour of the fasade.

It isn't Pisa, but they do have their own leaning tower:

Actually, this photo isn't good enough to show just how leaning the tower is. They expect it will fall down one day, but not to one side, but rather downwards. It will lose the solid ground under its feet and just collapse into itself.

In the following photo you can see many small souvenir masks, typical for Venice, and some not so small, but real size. What Burano is really famous for is lace. You can see it on the right. Fabulous! Lots and lots of work!

We were soon off to another island: Murano. This is what we wanted to see:

I'm telling you: This man has got some lungs!Blowing the glass into shapes of vases and cups.... wow! He can also make other shapes. Mind you: no corrections possible and he only has a few moments to turn hot hot (about 800°C) glass into these:

From Murano we went to this beautiful and world-wide famous town:



With its typical representatives:



And by this I don't mean the tourists, but guys like this:



You cxan't go to Venice and not go to Rialto, right?



And this is the view from up there:



And the square, of course - Piazza San Marco:



How much do you think advertising costs f you choose to do it this way? Just wondering...



Aren't these T-shirts cute?



I also checked out many narrow streets and saw many interesting and cute things that I wouldn't buy:





What do you think about the clocks?

Anyway, it was time to leave, but let me tell you about the kids first: they actually gathered around the guide and listened to her explanations when I had already given up. Well done! They told us they liked the trip. I've been to the same kind of trip some four or five years ago and all we got were sighs and rolling of the eyes.

They had their final party - a kind of prom - on Wednesday, got their reports today and now they're gone. Well, that's life, too. Time flies.