Transcript of Premium Bonus 063- Transcript

Charlie:
Hello and welcome to the British English Podcast, the show that aims to increase one's cultural awareness and improve your British English at the same time. And today we have a real culture focussed episode. As the other week I was scrolling through my Instagram. You know, not mindlessly. I'm a mindful scroller. Is that a thing? This reminds me actually in the in the UK they have a campaign against drinking and driving, and they managed to boil the whole message down to just the word think in a very specific font and colour. Um, as in think about it, don't drink and drive, not not think, let's drink. But maybe that should be attached to the usage of social media. Think don't just be doomscrolling, you know. Anyway, I was mindfully absorbing social media and came across a skit of an Italian girl in the UK who was approaching the checkout in a supermarket, and the cashier has a very, very thick London accent who really throws the non-native customer off and with some comical internal dialogue. The Instagram reel was incredibly captivating. So much so, I reached out to the creator, who is called Aurora, and it turns out she has lived two lives, one in Italy and one in the UK, and after asking her to come on the show to talk about it all, here we are. So without further ado, I give you a conversation with Aurora from Aurora.onlinelanguagelessons.

Charlie:
Hello, Aurora. How are you?

Aurora:
Hi. I'm good. How are you?

Charlie:
I'm very well, thank you. The sun is shining in London, is it not?

Aurora:
Finally, I couldn't wait. It's been pretty miserable so far.

Charlie:
It has been. But yes, some blue sky. I was even sunbathing whilst editing a podcast this morning. I felt very smug. Have you been able to appreciate the weather today?

Aurora:
Well, I've been very busy working. I think I'm going to be very busy this afternoon as well, so it's going to be hard to enjoy it. But I had a lovely bank holiday weekend even though Monday was pouring down with rain. So um, yeah.

Charlie:
Let's talk about that straight away. So you're working as a teacher of English, right?

Aurora:
Actually, I am a MFL teacher in secondary schools here in the UK. I teach Spanish, Italian and Latin.

Charlie:
Wow.

Aurora:
I've got my sidekick with... I set up my own business and my own school of English, um, specifically targeting Italians because they feel like my experience being an Italian in the UK is really giving me an insight into, um, what it is like to deal with British speakers and British life in general, getting accustomed to the culture and the language and the humour. So, um, yeah, I've got two, two jobs going on. Um, I have finally come to the decision that I'm quitting school or my physical school, um, and pursuing my, um, my dream of my my own school. So far, we've got 300 students per term. So, um, it's going really well and and continuing. I'm going to continue doing that.

Charlie:
Yeah.

Charlie:
Really cool. Really cool. So I came across you through seeing your social media on Instagram. I saw some of your hilarious reels of you um. It reminded me of Peep Show. Have you seen that show, that comedy sitcom?

Aurora:
No.

Charlie:
Okay. So there's, uh, a couple of guys that sort of coined the POV internal dialogue comedy technique of outwardly portraying what they're thinking by just staring at the other person. And I feel like you've managed to do that in your reels. So one of them I saw was your supermarket example, where you go up to the the checkout and you're trying to make small talk with the, um, the checkout person. But, uh, yeah, the connected speech was really throwing you off.

Aurora:
Yes, exactly. So I studied acting at uni. I did drama and modern languages. Then I've always strived throughout my career to join these two passions, which is foreign languages and acting. And when I moved to the UK to go to university to study drama, I was the only foreigner in the class. So everybody else A) came from a different culture, a different kind of theatre. We tend to come from a very naive, cringey, um, funny theatre, whilst British students come from Shakespeare. So that was very different. But, obviously I really struggled with the language. I could barely, you know, act myself in English. So I think that really developed my, you know, imitating native speakers and trying to sound like one for my, for career purposes really helped. And that's what I'm trying to do with my own school and my own teaching today, to this day when I teach it, even when I teach Italian or Spanish, I try to do it, getting my students to feel the the foreign language.

Charlie:
Lovely, lovely. Yeah, I can really see that. I feel like in just the social media, which is impressive. Um, so yeah, let's, let's go to your Italian background. Um, can you tell us about your upbringing in Italy?

Aurora:
Yeah.

Aurora:
So I grew up in a very small coastal town from which is, um, 50 minutes from Nice in France. So I live by the border. And, yes, I mean, it was very outdoorsy. I spent a lot of time outside. Um, the weather obviously was really, really amazing. We had the sea, we had the mountains. So, um, I really spent all my days hanging out with my friends outside in the main piazza and going to cafes, having a stroll in the main square, going shopping, eating focaccia. And yeah.

Charlie:
So I've got a student that is potentially from where you're from. Um, Ventimiglia.

Aurora:
ah. That's quite close. Yeah.

Charlie:
Quite close.

Aurora:
I'd say 40 minutes, which is nothing for London distances but for, you know, probably have been to Ventimiglia once in my life even though I live like not far away from it.

Charlie:
Yeah.

Aurora:
Uh, in London distances, 40 minutes is my commute to work.

Charlie:
Yeah.

Charlie:
Wow. Isn't that amazing. So are you closer to the border than Ventimiglia?

Aurora:
No, I'm more towards Genova. It's called Imperia.

Charlie:
Ah, okay. So you grew up in Italy and you moved over to London when you were 18?

Aurora:
It was in London. I moved to Essex.

Charlie:
You moved to Essex?

Aurora:
To Colchester when I was 18.

Charlie:
So Colchester. Okay. Uh, did you experience England before then?

Aurora:
Yes. So basically a family friend, um, who's French and had a house in Italy, grew up with my mum, um, ended up being a teacher of French at the University of Essex. And my sister before me, who's nine years older, was super passionate about languages. So she was convinced by the family friend to go to university in the UK. And it was a massive thing at the time because that was probably 2004, something like that. Nobody went abroad to study at the time and she went to the University of Essex and I followed after. So, um, that's.. I would spend every summer in Colchester specifically because my mum's friend's daughter, Elsa, was my age. So we would do exchanges, she would come to me in Italy and I would spend the summer with her in Colchester. But my English wasn't good at all. I mean, uh, it was like a teenager. I was better than my classmates, let's say, because I had more exposure, but not I wasn't fluent at all. But it definitely gave me an insight that was very helpful when I did move to the UK when I was 18.

Charlie:
Right. And so what was it that led you to want to move permanently to Essex?

Aurora:
Well, so so I applied to university. Um, Essex itself was the only university that offered drama and modern languages, so I really wanted to be an actress. But, you know, I also loved languages. So I thought, I'm going to combine these two passions. And the only joint degree in the country was the University of Essex. So I was like, what are the chances? That sounds great. And I went for that. I did quit acting after uni. I could have gone to drama school. But I thought, I'm a foreigner, I've got an accent. How many roles are there going to be that require someone to have an Italian accent? I you know, my dream was over. I was like really struggling with my pronunciation and accent because, you know, even though, you know, other Italians may think, oh, she she speaks great English, her accent is great. You can't hear she's she's Italian at all. Actually, in an acting setting, any sound, you know, will give away the fact that I'm not English. So, um, that really upset me. And that's probably also why it turned into the focus of my school. You don't have to be native to sound like one. You can learn how to sound like one. Obviously a native, a native is a native, and a non-native is always going to be a non-native. But I want to show my students that I'm a realistic goal in terms of their pronunciation. You can reach my level if you really want to. If I managed, they can and I.. what happens with native teachers is unrealistic for us foreigners. And that's why I think it's important to show that, you know, also, as non-Natives [we] have value when it comes to teaching English.

Charlie:
Oh my goodness. Yeah. I was thinking this this morning how, um, most of my non-native teacher colleagues are probably more skilful than my native and myself included as a native teacher, because you've got to learn it from the ground up, you know, the pitfalls of the learner inside out. And you actually know the grammar. There are great grammarians that are teachers of English who are native, but I'm certainly not one of them. And, uh, it's because during our childhood we just absorb the language rather than learn it through the grammatical structure. So yes, I totally respect a non-native teacher.

Aurora:
It's also the school system's fault because because they don't teach grammar in schools. Um, whilst as Italians, for example, or also Spanish speakers as well, um, study their own grammar loads in school, you guys don't. So it's really hard for you to apply it. And know about it.

Charlie:
Yeah I would do you have any idea why that is?

Aurora:
So I think they, they the school system shifted from, uh, less grammatical approach around the 60s 70s. And only recently they're trying to reintroduce grammar in, in primary schools. The problem is the teachers themselves don't know the grammar because they did study in the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc.. So they have to learn it themselves. So they are shifting back to a more grammar-based approach, but it's only recent. We'll see the products in a few years, hopefully.

Charlie:
Yeah, maybe a whole generation.

Aurora:
Yeah, exactly.

Charlie:
But I wonder why they shifted away from the grammar in the 60s.

Aurora:
I think they thought it wasn't useful even the way they taught foreign languages in the 60s. They tried to step away from the grammatical approach, which I really thanked them for. Whilst in Italy we still learned English as if it was ancient Greek in Latin. So yeah, I think that that's positive with foreign languages, you try to expose them more to real English, real Spanish rather than oh, this is the way it's written, this is the way that it works. We know the grammar really well, but can we speak it in a real situation? Do we understand the cashier when she speaks to us in a real situation? No we don't. So surely we should spend more time trying to understand real English and the way, the way it's spoken, rather than tables of irregular verbs with no end.

Charlie:
Yeah, that's a very good argument. So you said about the accent being a thing in drama. When was that?

Aurora:
I graduated in 2015.

Charlie:
Because I'm just thinking how things have changed somewhat in the last five, ten years in the approach to dialects and how, like the BBC, for example, they're much more open to having a diverse array of dialects being presented as the broadcaster, right?

Aurora:
Yes and no, in the sense that yes, they're accepting people with regional accents - Irish, Welsh, Scottish, etc. but I haven't seen a foreign speaker yet. I haven't seen someone with a foreign accent on TV, as far as the news are concerned yet. So for us foreigners, we're one more step away. I'd say maybe one day.

Charlie:
Well, what about I'm thinking of, um, Sofia Vergara, the, um, South American to US actress. She's famously known for her non-native accent.

Aurora:
Yeah.

Charlie:
Ah, hey, we've got Italian chefs on, uh, daytime TV.

Aurora:
Gino D'acampo.

Charlie:
Yeah, there you go. What about that?

Aurora:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, yes, that's. Well, so the reason why they quit is because I'm always going to be cast as the Italian character. And I thought, I don't just want to play the Italian character, I also want to play other roles. You know, he's not an actor. He's a chef. It doesn't matter what accent he's got. Sofia Vergara yes OK but it's one exception. How many roles are there? You know.

Charlie:
Yeah. That's true.

Aurora:
Unless I'm going to be cast for the Dolmio advert every year. You know, there's only so many roles. So what, um, I thought is with the social media, obviously, initially it started with teaching, like, in a very traditional way. And then I started introducing my drama sketches, and I started playing the Italian character with their accent, and then other characters who didn't have an accent. And I think I played with that quite well, and I ended up turning my social media into the career I've always wanted. But yeah, it took a while.

Charlie:
Yeah. When did you start it?

Aurora:
I started doing videos in 2020, but as I said, it took a while for me to include my drama in them, maybe a year later. 2021, 2022. Last year I just went for it.

Charlie:
Fantastic.

Aurora:
And yes, so so I've got different characters with different names. People know their background. There's the Italian boyfriend, there's the very posh Sarah girl who has a very incredibly posh accent when she speaks and she's always correcting Laura's pronunciation. And then you've got the cashiers. You're right love. Yeah. What do you want today? And she's got, like, more of a Cockney slang. So I'm working on on, on on making and producing those accents as a non-native speaker. For me, so difficult to do that. Some people are like, oh, why don't you do a Scottish one? And I'm like, you know, I'm still not a native speaker. It's really hard for me to imitate regional accents of a language that's not my own.

Charlie:
Yeah. So that is. Yeah. Imagine I'm just trying to imagine myself imitating not just an Italian accent, but a regional Italian that is really hard to understand. Yeah, that would be impossible.

Aurora:
Do you speak italian?

Charlie:
Kudos to you. No, that's that's probably going to be even harder, isn't it, to not know the language as well. I'm. I'm focusing on Spanish, but still I would say elementary sort of level.

Aurora:
Yeah. There we go. It's as if you were to produce a an accent from Madrid rather than South American or from from Murcia, for example. You know, they've got a different accent and regional pronunciation. And it's hard for you as a non-native speaker to be able to even pitch that.

Charlie:
Yes. So tricky. So tricky. Let's talk about the cultural differences that you may have noticed between Italy and the UK, because you moved to the UK when you were 18, did you did you notice anything particular that stood out to you?

Aurora:
Yeah. So, um, I was considered by several people quite rude. Um, because I'm incredibly direct. I'm already direct as an Italian. So as an Italian person, I'm a very direct person and let alone in a British setting. So I would literally say what I thought all the time. And I really had to think carefully about everything I said. And the words choose the words really carefully. When that is not your first language, you just want to communicate. You don't really think about the register, you don't really think about the choice of words and how they may be perceived by the other person. And that was really tricky. Um, not so much at uni because it was an informal setting. But when I became a teacher and I started working in schools with secondary school British children. Kids, teenagers, that's when I struggled because I would get angry and have and want to tell them off. But I really had to be careful what words I chose. Um, for example, growing up I was taught that 'shut up' just meant 'stai zitto' - be quiet, right? And I never realised until I got into an actual school setting and I was the teacher that shut up was a very rude, um, way of saying, of telling a student to be quiet. So I would literally go to the student and say, shut up now! And they would all freeze and go like, you can't say that, miss.

Aurora:
You can't say that. And I was like, why not? I want you to be quiet now. Be quiet now. Shut up. So, um, you know, I think the reasons why, the reason why these sketches are successful is because I very much think about myself being a foreigner in the country and what I struggled with the most. And the amount of times I made a fool of myself, um, by getting the words wrong and things like that. So a very funny one is. For example, when I was one of the first, um, dinners at my husband's family place when we were dating, we were 23 or something because we met at uni. Right. And there was this mum, his stepdad, her uncle, all the siblings, etc. and his mum had a cold sore on her lip. And in Italian we just call it herpes. Oh yeah, herpes. So in front of the whole table I just went oh Anne I didn't know you had herpes?

Charlie:
Haha.

Aurora:
And everybody in the table froze and that was the first time, I don't know, I can't remember if it was the first dinner we had together. And she turned around very embarrassed and she said, what do you mean, I haven't got herpes! Why would you say that? And then I realised that probably that wasn't the right word. Anyway. So all of my sketches are based on real-life situations.

Charlie:
That is fantastic. Yes. So before Sydney we were living in Germany and we would be told, uh, my wife has, uh, she has, uh, a cold sore from time to time. And yeah, when we would go into the pharmacy, they would say, oh, mouth herpes. Yes, I can help you there. So funny that she didn't say, how did you know that would have been prying into something very private. But, uh, yeah, I can imagine that being very embarrassing in the moment. Did you did you embrace those moments, like being like, ah, what are you going to do? I'm Italian, or were you quite shy and and worried about it?

Aurora:
I'm not shy about anything. I've always used the Italianness as an excuse. I'm like, okay, are we saying that in Italian? It's fine. I've always tried to laugh about it but it depended on the situation. I end up working in a very, very, very posh private school and those kind of mistakes, when I was literally the only foreign teacher in school, me and another French, um, lady, I couldn't afford to make them because people around me weren't used to, um, deal with foreign speakers. And so they would, um, not be very impressed.

Charlie:
Yes, I see, it seems like you still hold dear that you are Italian - that is your your culture where you've come from. Is there anything particular, apart from maybe being direct, that you hold dear to yourself, that you want to keep alive, even though you're in a different country now?

Charlie:
We have come to the end of part one, so feel free to take a break from your listening practice, but if you're happy to keep going, then we're now moving on to part two of this episode. Thanks so much for being a premium or Academy member and enjoy the rest of the show.

Aurora:
Yeah. So well my me and Sam, my husband had twins, baby twins. And they just turned three.

Charlie:
Oh, wow.

Aurora:
Yeah. And I'm on a mission to raise them bilingual. They are very much there already. They are. They switch languages non-stop. They they categorise you, your English. I'll speak to you in English. Your Italian. I'll speak to you in Italian. If I don't know the word in Italian or English, I would say that word in the other language, but with the right accent. So they would switch the accent with the foreign word. I don't know if I explained that very well, but they would go to, um, Sam and say, is that a pub, daddy? And they would go to me, it's like "mama in pub". They would actually change the vowel sound to make it sound Italian, for example. Um, or like the word ladro means thief. And my kids, when they're playing with each other, they speak English to each other. They use it still use the word ladro, but because they're speaking English, they would apply an an English accent to it and wouldn't say ladro they would say Ladro. So go and get him is a ladro. So it's quite funny to see that. So yeah, I'm, I'm really trying to keep, um, my Italianness alive.

Charlie:
Yeah.

Aurora:
Especially since having the kids. I think that's something that's sparked my desire since having the kids.

Charlie:
And to, you know, label a thief a ladro. Are there lots of ladroes around?

Aurora:
No, but my kids are obsessed. Spidey and Spiderman and all those cartoons and the tele, they're all yeah, about.

Charlie:
Yeah, it's amazing that. So my sister had twins. They're of a similar age, actually, and they're obsessed with builders, dinosaurs.

Aurora:
Same builders. Oh my God.

Charlie:
More builders. And and like the building of things, like all those diggers and stuff. They absolutely love them.

Aurora:
Same obsessed. The first words that Dante, one of my twins, learned in English and Italian, is the name of all of the tools. I've got a few videos of them showing the tools of screwdriver "Italian word for screwdriver" and it shows like in both languages. Yeah. Very interesting.

Charlie:
That's fantastic. Uh, so I heard about raising children bilingual, the ideal is to have one parent, one language. Is that true in your case?

Aurora:
I 100% only speak Italian to my twins. And even at times when it's embarrassing, not embarrassing as such, I'd say at times when it's awkward. So we are in the playground and I only speak Italian to them, even in front of other kids. And other mums don't really approach me because they think I don't speak English. And so it's hard to make friends at the playground because other mums think, oh, she's foreign, she doesn't speak English and in reality I, I basically think I feel I'm half English, half Italian. At this stage, I'm about to get my citizenship as well and married to an English, been here all my adult life and it's quite funny that they see me as, oh, she doesn't speak English, so it's okay. I'm doing it for them and it's working so.

Charlie:
That's a yeah, that's a bit of a sacrifice for you because I can imagine that is hard on the day to day kind of small moments. Is there a way that you've managed to break the ice with that assumption that they have?

Aurora:
Well, yeah, I would approach them and make a comment in English so they understand that I'm not as alien as they think.

Charlie:
Would you do it in an Essex accent or like your checkout lady's accent.

Aurora:
I don't know.

Charlie:
All right love? How's it going?

Aurora:
You all right love? You all right, you havin' a nice day?

Charlie:
I love that.

Aurora:
What you avin' for tea?

Charlie:
Uh, it's really good.

Aurora:
The tea issue was quite funny. The tea was, uh. What are you having for tea? And I'm like biscuits. What are you having for tea? Biscuits? Oh. Dinner. Right. Why do you call it tea? Uh, they invited me round for tea. One of my best friends invited me around for tea. "You're coming for tea this evening?" And I was like, "oh, yeah, okay. I'll come." "Okay. Bring something" and I turned up with a packet of biscuits because I thought it was, um, tea and biscuits. No, it was a full-on roast. I did a video about that as well.

Charlie:
Yeah. That's good. I hope she didn't have mouth herpes as well to make it a double whammy. Got biscuits. Oh, you got herpes. Well done. Yeah. Um, okay, so the next question I have is, how has being bilingual shaped your identity and perspective on the world? Wow. Any thoughts on that one?

Aurora:
Um, it took me a very long time before I began to consider myself as fully bilingual. Um, I am a sequential bilingual, in fact. So I learnt English um, way after Italian. Um, but more than the language itself, I consider. Crucial how much have been and felt immersed in a different culture for years now. I've become an adult in the UK. I went to uni in the UK, I bought a house in the UK, I got married, I had kids. There's nothing from my adulthood that makes me feel more Italian. So anything to do with the job, the university, the mothering, I feel English so more than a language thing, or maybe as much as a language thing is the cultural aspect of it. I very much feel like my mannerism has changed since moving here. I have calmed down a lot, or I've developed a skill where I know when I need to act in a certain way in certain situations, whilst before maybe also because I was younger, I would be very much going with the flow and say anything that I that I that crossed my mind. Now I'm very much I'm more careful about the words that I choose.

Charlie:
Right so more reserved.

Aurora:
I've become a little bit more English in the way I see and interact with the world yes. And when I change language, I change personality as well. I'm way more blunt and direct when I'm Italian and a lot more reserved when I speak English, although it may not seem to you. So this is just leaves the room for you to imagine what I'm like when I'm speaking Italian. So yeah.

Charlie:
Um, one thing that I've noticed culturally is that Italians are more passionate and, dare I say, a bit more hot-headed than British people. Uh, do you find that personality in you coming out when you're in your Italian mode?

Aurora:
Absolutely, 100%. The only thing that really pisses me off about you guys is how angry you get just when you are inside a car. I just do not understand all the Britishness about you disappears when you're driving. You become so rude. I've never. You would never. So if you're queuing, you're super polite. You're physically standing there and queuing, you're super polite. But if you're queuing inside your car at the traffic lights, you immediately become angry. It's so funny. I can't explain that. I was talking about this to my husband the other day, and I was telling him, why on earth do you change personality when you step inside a car? You lose all your Britishness.

Charlie:
Yeah, yeah, that's spot on. That really,

Aurora:
What can you say about that?

Charlie:
Is is spot on. I would say it's that we are allowing the feeling of anonymity. As soon as you step inside that car, you're no longer the version of you that's queuing as a human next to another human. You've got this bubble around you to protect you. But as soon as you step outside of that vehicle. Yeah, it would, it would feel quite strange to continue that way. Very strange to be swearing at each other.

Aurora:
At least we haven't got double personality like that. We haven't got split personality. We just keep it.

Charlie:
Yeah. I would, I would argue that, um, culture in cars is a separate thing almost. It changes depending, you know, it doesn't reflect on the natural environment like American driving culture, Australian driving culture. It's a German. It's all different. And I don't think it necessarily it comes from very different things. So it's a confusing one, I'd say. But I hear you very much so with that. Do you get road rage in Italian, in Italy?

Aurora:
I don't think I get road rage in general. I'm quite relaxed when it comes to driving.

Charlie:
Good.

Aurora:
Yeah. I get quite upset if they beep at me, but yeah. Um, you know. No, I don't think I'm i'm the classic Italian driver, to be fair.

Charlie:
Right, right. Okay. We have come to the end of part two now. So again, feel free to pause the episode, to take a break from your listening practice and come back to the last part when you're ready. All right. So moving on to part three now. Enjoy.

Charlie:
So I wanted to go on to - how has living here changed how you see people from different backgrounds?

Aurora:
So that's a very interesting question. I come from a very small town, as I said, and growing up I was just surrounded by Italians, and if there was a foreigner, it was very tough for them to settle in. In school there would be one foreign student, um, in per per classroom, for example. So out of 30 students, one would be foreign at the time when I went to school. I'm sure things are changing now. But obviously when I left, um, Italy to move here, I was shocked to discover there wasn't that prejudice about me being foreign that my classmates, my peers, showed back in Italy. I don't know, so it's the other way round. I moved here thinking I'm the foreign one. I will struggle to make friends. I can't speak the language properly. This is what would have happened to a foreigner back in Italy when I was young. If there was a new student being foreign and struggling with the language and being culturally different, he would have been left out, unfortunately. And I was very anxious moving to the UK, that I would be left out. So I would be feeling and acting very shy at the beginning because I thought other people thought that of me. But in reality that wasn't the case and I was so surprised in a in a positive way to discover that in reality, um, British people are in general very accepting of people coming from foreign backgrounds. So that's so positive. I've really taken that in.

Charlie:
That's lovely to hear. I'm very happy to hear that. Would you say that that has changed somewhat. I mean, obviously you've not been in in an Italian school in the same way as you were when you were a child. But do you think that's changed somewhat over the years in Italy, or do you think it's still like that?

Aurora:
From what I can see from social media, because that's my window to Italy at the moment, i can see that, um, there are a lot of foreigners that are now second generation foreigners that are actually Italian now, and they are accepted. Um, although the struggle is real, I can't deny that, um, overall people are still very racist and that's that is such a shame. I do hope and I do see that people want to change and there is a change happening, but, um, hopefully a bit quicker would be great.

Charlie:
Yeah. Let's speed this process up, guys.

Aurora:
Yes.

Charlie:
Yeah. Okay. Well, that's interesting to hear though I'm sure there's been many times where it's been useful, but can you think of a particular time when knowing two languages has helped you out in the UK?

Aurora:
Um, well, I obviously did my teacher training in foreign languages, and I became a language speaker here, so I wouldn't have been able to find a job or that kind of job if I hadn't spoken the languages. Um.

Charlie:
yeah, you'd be a bit hungry by now. And homeless. Any moments where, I don't know, you're in a room with Italian people and they don't know that you're Italian?

Aurora:
The funny thing is, unfortunately. Now what's happening is that every time I go to an Italian restaurant or cafe, they know who I am.

Charlie:
Is that because of your social media?

Aurora:
Yeah, unfortunately [oh fantastic] it's okay. But it's also a bit daunting because, uh, every time I go out in London and there's someone who's Italian, they. And not Italian, not just Italians anymore, now "hi, I'm Hungarian, but I follow you." So it's really, um, funny to to see. Um, the other day I went to this bar. It was called 'bar' because it in Italian, that's a cafe. And it was just run by Italians.

Charlie:
Yeah.

Aurora:
And I was like, oh, maybe they'll recognise me, maybe not. I go in and they didn't say anything. They look at me and they speak to me in English and I order whatever. And then I was there with my kids, so they turn around and speak Italian to my kids, and then they, they obviously start addressing me in Italian, and then someone pops out of the kitchen and goes like, "Aurora!". And all of them knew who I was. They were just pretending to not know me. And it was very funny. So, um.

Charlie:
That's fantastic. Yeah, I was just going through the numbers and some of your reels have really gone viral. Like one of them is 7.9 million.

Aurora:
Yeah, the cashier one.

Charlie:
Are there any other even bigger than that? That's that's got to be the biggest, right?

Aurora:
So my biggest page is actually Facebook. [oh really?] But i'd say all of the cashier videos hit million views on TikTok and Facebook. All of them have hit. It's just that those kind of videos are are loved by people.

Charlie:
Yeah, they're so funny. They're so funny. I don't think I've said it. So I should say, guys, check out Aurora's. .Onlinelanguagelessons.

Aurora:
Yeah, because I used to be called just online language lessons, but then people didn't know who I was, so they kept on telling me, "you need to add your name." So I just put "Aurora's" at the front, but.

Charlie:
And you've got 300 students in there at the moment, you say?

Aurora:
We have around 300 students per term, and then we've got a couple of hundred and following remotely my pronunciation for Italian's courses.

Charlie:
Brilliant, brilliant. So you do it um, per term. So you replicate the school year?

Aurora:
Yeah. So every term people can sign up to another bundle of three months, or they can leave if they want to and new people will join. So on average we have around 300 students per term. [Amazing] So far. But it's growing non-stop, so I can't really predict in a couple of months what it's going to be like. [Yeah.] And we're hosting our very first, uh, in London, um, course this summer. So we've got, um, up to 40 students coming from Italy to stay in Twickenham.

Charlie:
Wow.

Aurora:
We're gonna run some workshops. Yeah, they've got host families, so it's kind of a study holidays. Our very first trial. So it's me and my sister Ariana. We are running this school and, you know, we share the project together. And she she doesn't do the acting on social media. She just manages the school. And, um, um, we decided to do this in live in-person course so people will have, um, lessons, um, English lessons. And then in the afternoon, pronunciation and drama workshops led by me. And then they're going to Walls of London led by another content creator called, um, Bowl of Chalk. I don't know if you know him.

Charlie:
Rings a bell.

Aurora:
He's very good. He's from London and he's going to lead the tours. And so we've done that very nice collaboration there with him. Um, and we're so super excited because it's the first time we're going to meet people live. So as we are, um, I'm, I'm quitting my physical school. Secondary school I'm working at this year, next year I would like to do more in live events, maybe workshops, maybe little drama encounters with with the audience. I don't know, we'll see. But, um. Yeah, it'll be fun.

Charlie:
Yeah, that sounds really cool. So I used to do immersion courses in Brighton, but only I think the biggest we had was like 15 people because we, we struggled to find accommodation for that many people. Like how did you how are you getting 40 people together?

Aurora:
So, um, we said because it's the very first time we do it and that we don't want to collaborate with a travel agency like a study abroad agency, because obviously we want to do our own thing. Um, so we just said we're going to sell this course. The course includes the tours, the workshops and the, um, lessons and whatever extra activity we may do, but you need to sort your own accommodation out. We can help you. So we are collaborating with a host family agency that finds host families for them. And we made a list of hotels nearby that they may rent, and they may find accommodation out if they want to.

Charlie:
That's clever.

Charlie:
Outsource that.

Aurora:
So this year. We were like, we don't want to deal with none of the logistics or the flights or anything like that. We sell this course. If you want to come, you need to sort yourself out basically.

Charlie:
Yeah and in a way that probably pleases more people because not everyone wants to go to the same accommodation. Everyone's got such varied opinions, especially nowadays. So yeah, that's that's quite cool. I like that option.

Aurora:
Well we'll see. I mean, I mean, yeah, I think the problem is because it caters adults, it's very hard for them to leave their families for two weeks. So what they're looking for is for something to be done with kids. So maybe that's something we can think about for next year but we're going to see how this one goes and then we'll we'll see.

Charlie:
As in you'd have a kids version alongside it?

Aurora:
I'm thinking of something along those lines or just shorter stays. Like instead of doing two weeks, we do five days, five days, five days and offer it in chunks and people can, yeah, sign up to shorter periods.

Charlie:
That's that's really exciting though. But yeah, there we go. Okay. Well thank you so much, Aurora.

Aurora:
Thank you for having me.

Charlie:
You have me laughing my head off when I scroll through social media and see your, uh, especially the cashier one. Um, so yes, guys, go check that out. Aurora.onlinelanguagelessons. Yeah?

Aurora:
Yes.

Charlie:
But uh, yeah, best of luck with the immersion course as well.

Aurora:
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. It was lovely to talk to you.

Charlie:
Lovely. All right. Well done guys, for getting to the end of this. Bye bye for now. [Bye] there we go. The end of part three, meaning the end of the episode. Well done for getting through the entirety of it. Make sure you use all of the resources available to you in your membership. Thanks once again for supporting the show and I look forward to seeing you next time on the British English Podcast.