If we tried to do anything like that here - ie, sueing for compensation - we'd probably be in our coffins before even getting a tribunal date ...... and then our poor kids left behind would probably be asked to cover the costs or some other such legal nonense.

So - you're not hair stylists then ? lol

Ah well, as for wheter or not you should bother with a tefl cert....Any experience of teaching tefl in italy will totaly depend on where you are. Many schools will employ non qualified people, if they really need someone at the right time in the right place. Sometimes its enough that you can string a sentence together. Having a tefl cert will never go against you though, and i personally found mine to be well worth it. I dont know what your situation is; how old you are, previous employment or education, and how much you need the income. If you are just coming out to italy by yourself for the first time and so on, then do what i did and visit the tefl employment agencies and set yourself up with a job before you get here. Dont expect great pay or sociable hours but i do think that just coming out here on spec is not a good idea. Private lessons do take a lot of building up. In my experience it works on word of mouth and you have to carefuly nurture any contacts. Even then, they are very unreliable and can be very fly by night. Definitely no finacial security in giving private lessons so watch out. Dont let me put you off BUT tefl is usualy ok for young, single type people, or people like me who are mums and need to bring in a bit of extra money, and have kids to arrange things round.

...don't feel inadequate lorna-it looks like you keep yourself busy anyway and besides you do have children which are a handful in itself! i don't know if i would be able to do what i do if i had children and besides if i do, hopefully, have children, then i would most probably want to spend a lot of the time with them.

don't start me on the vatican. i get so angry with their influence on italian politics which then, in turn, effects italian society (ie. no sex education in schools). plus living in the south it all becomes so obsessive. wherever you turn here there is some kind of statue whether it be the madonna or padre pio. and the amount of energy that goes into it all, well let's just say that if everyone who went to church or followed a procession ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING TO HELP OTHERS instead of praying for themselves, then italy would be a much better place. the local magazine called 'fax' is constantly saying how this school has no heating or that school has no windows but the money that is ploughed into church festivities are into the thousands of euro-and i don't mean 10, i'm talking 300 over a weekend...fireworks displays, for example, can last anything from 1 to 2 hours and in the summer there are about 10 displays-can't they cut them down and sort out the schools. no, sorry, no logic.

whilst i can see the sociological perspective of cohesion within the community, i can't help but think it's a total waste of money-money that can be used for much more important things. god (ha!) if only i were mayor, i'd sort this lot out!!!

Ha - how many times have I too wished that I could just "show them and sort them all out" - but after seeing the riot that nearly erupted in one meeeting when I said that I didn't agree with Saturday morning school I have cowardly stayed away from getting involved in a lot of local politics.
I can stand my ground but I'm afraid I don't have the energy to battle the peasant attitude here.
I did get the Giornale Di VIcenza involved in the school battle but the ba$tards never told me they were going to print my full name in the article.
Can you imagine in a village this size seeing your name in an article that went something like this ........
Local mum Lorna Jane Kenn....... takes up issue with school headmaster !

It was the only time I wished I had a plain name like Maria - lol.

oh - and as for the church .........
the only thing I'm doing for it is to keep myself and my kids OUT of it.

I think my daughter might be the only non-muslim here who hasn't been signed up for catechism classes and so far we haven't been plagued with too many comments about "not doing catechism means not being able to First Holy Communion" next year with all the other little sheep in her class.

i'm forever being told by my brother-in-law that my child MUST be catholic. he believes that the child would become an outsider and be bullied at school if he/she didn't do what all the other children do.

my father-in-law told me that if the child wasn't baptized then he/she would go to hell.

no wonder i'm still child-less at the age of 39...

I have a pair of clippers and I'm gonna travel! Can do four hair cuts from number 1 - 4 on the clipper settings. Will I get very far?

well - so far we have had no bullying and no gasps of horror - a few mild comments and lots of whys as I was christened a catholic in the UK and did my first holy comunion (irish grandparents) and of course Italian OH did too but neither of us did our confirmation.
I think my mum was sick of it all by then and my OH flatly refused to have anything more to do wth priests - nuns and the like.

I did shout at the priest one day though - he heard me speak English on the streets as he was passing by. Stopped and asked me where I was from.
When I said England he said "Oh Protestant then"
I told him not to be so bloody presumtuous and that not everybody in England is a protestant - just like not everybody living in Italy these days is a Catholic - especially when there is a mosque in the next town.
That shut him up !!!!!!!!!!

don't think so.

I have a pair of clippers too - but since cutting my little boy's hair a little too short last summer I have since discovered that the clippers work much better and are more effective on my bikini line .......... lol

Actually we currently have an Organic Grocery business & we get some of our stuff from Italy. I don't know if this is unusual for a gay couple but we're eco-concious (vegan - me/vegetarian - him) and part of the purpose of being in Italy will be to have a business which involves growing stuff using permaculture techniques. We'd also like to find/renovate a property along ecologically efficient lines too. We figured we don't fit in too well with the mainstream here so we might as well not fit in somewhere beautiful....

doesn't it grow back thicker and darker? although painful, i prefer to wax my legs and bikini line...

oh dear, going off the subject of all work and no pay!!!

to get back on to the subject, i've worked as a teacher for a few schools but the pay is so bad that hubby told me not to bother. the last job i had was with a school in the centre of bari-contratto a progetto (if i broke it, had to pay the school a 300 euro fine), on call whenever they needed and at 7 euro an hour!!! that's lower than the minimum wage!!! i didn't do the tefl exam also because i found the price high for a month course (also i would have to pay to stay in a hotel or something) which would have ended up costing a fortune.

wow vegan! i've been a vegetarian for years but vegan, i tried it for 6 months and found it tough going. i'd like to try it again though but here it's hard. i think i must have been the only vegan in the whole region at the time...

That 7 euro was diabolical.
Tha language schools here at the lowest offered me 12 euro an hour. One offered 20 euro an hour but out of that I was expected to pay my own INPS.
But as I already said .... I won't take on any evening classes.
All my private students come to my house so i don't have to bum kids off somewhere - kids stay in lounge and watch cartoons for an hour (if they are at home) and I teach in kitchen. I generally get 18 to 23 euro an hour cash in hand. I'm a mean cow and make the business men pay the highest price.

you probably were !
My OH is a vegetarian and whilst all his colleagues moan about the food if they get sent to England, he actually prefers it as all the menus have to have vegetarian options clearly marked with the green V.
He has stopped eating in Italian work's canteen here as he discovered that nearly everything had meat in it.
Pasta with mushrooms turned out to have bacon in it too and even the peas had cubes of ham in !

I'm a mean cow and make the business men pay the highest price.[/QUOTE]

no you're not! they would you-so f*****g right you do!