Group activities, discotecas and learning Italian

It's 2 in the morning and after flipping my pillow over a few times once one side was saturated in my sweat and sticking my head out the window, I'm blogging rather than trying to sleep. It is molto caldo. Many small shops and restaurants here are closed because the Italians escape the August heat for cooler destinations, I understand why.

My Italian is coming poco e poco, though more rapidly than ever before. I've gotten good practice at home with Tatiana, a Romanian woman who helps Anna keep up the house. Anna has been out of town with her sister who's in the hospital right now. It's fun to work through the language with her. She doesn't speak any English and will talk about anything-- her sick mom, how Anna's sister needs to get over her lost husband, what she likes at McDonald's. Usually I can follow what she's saying. Two words that took a while for me to figure out were "cancro," which is cancer, and "McDonald's" with an Italian/Romanain accent. Today I was really thrown off by one story she told me when I said I only wanted a salad for dinner. Either her parents, who are still in Romania, visited Mexico or friends from Mexico visited Italy and gained 6 or 7 kg from eating too much bread and ice cream all the time rather than salads. How she would have Mexican friends or why and how her parents would go to Mexico I don't know, though I do know I need to not eat too many panini or dolci while I'm here.

Anna's sister has a heart problem and is in the hospital so Anna's been out of town since Saturday. No one else is staying here right now so I've been coming home to an empty, 9-bed apartment every day. It's weird to be here by myself before really getting familiar with the place. I ran out of toilet paper a few days ago and have been going into her bathroom to grab a few squares when I need to go because I don't know where the rolls are stored.

I've discovered that discotecas are the best place to practice Italian. The Italian stallions only know about as much English as I do Italian and don't get angry if I don't understand them the first time, though even their Italian vocab's at my level. And everyone has to speak loud and slow over the music anyway. Being a female enjoying myself at a club and wanting to speak in Italian has allowed me to meet great characters, including an Italian basketball player studying architecture and, while dancing to a Lady Gaga song, Alejandro from Pisa. Don't know if it was Lady Gaga's Alejandro, though I'm sure if I'd asked him to he would have held my cigarette and hushed.

Between the heat, jet lag and exciting new clubs and bars with later last calls, I haven't gotten much sleep. Adrenaline and espresso are pulling me through. We've had 3 hours of Italian every day followed by a group activity. The first was a walking tour around the city led by a history professor, the second about Italy's education. Both were interesting, I don't know much about Florence's landmarks despite having a Renaissance section in every history class since middle school, and with the education system, it's such a contrast to see the inner workings of a country the size of a state of the U.S. It's still big and bureaucratic. Today we cooked a four-course lunch/supper for our class activity. We divided the courses into groups. I made focaccia bread from scratch with olives cooked into it for an appetizer. After that, a first course of pasta from scratch with pesto and veggies, fried zucchini flowers and chicken, and chocolate cake with fruit salad-- all accompanied by samples of two white wines. Reliving that makes me tired enough to sleep now.

Chronicling my first few Italian days

On my first Italian night, I ate dinner with my host "mother," Anna, as well as her other temporary residents Atalia and a Turkish boy whose name I can't remember. We struggled through elementary conversations over spaghetti con pesto and green beans. The Turkish boy is either shy or knows as little Italian as I do, but Atalia seems to be able to hold her own. She's Polish and speaks French and English as well. She and Turkish boy are here in a language intensive school. Anna told me Turkish boy, who's 16, wants to move to Italy and open an Italian restaurant. Atalia, later in English, said she wanted to learn so that she could speak to her Italian friends. Both are leaving this weekend.

After dinner Atalia showed me around Florence. We talked about Europe and our families, got a little lost, then met up with her friends, all of whom are at the language intensive school with Atalia and were either German or Polish. Fortunately all of their second or third languages were my first language, so I felt uncultured though at ease speaking English with them. We bought a box of wine for less than two euro and sat on a curb in front of the Duomo and drank. Unclassy and almost sacrilegious. I called it a night early.

The next day was orientation, and Atalia told me she would walk me to school. We thought we were going to the same school. We weren't, which made me bemusedly question whether we were not on the same page during other conversations as well. I was terribly late, but I caught 3.75 of 4 hours of orientation so I think I got the gist.

That afternoon I ran a pathetically short run with Blair Lindsey and Emily Hopper, friends from UNC, along the Arno River and over its bridges, passing easily on one side and dodging loiterers and tourists exiting buses on the other. I went back to my apartment to shower, had a late start and took the long way to get to dinner with our group from UNC, therefore ate a panini and gelato alone outside a small restaurant. 'Twas tasty, though I hear the free meal with company was slightly nicer.

Later that night I finally got in touch with Blair and Emily, and after hanging out in their apartment we went to meet up with the rest of the UNC group at a karaoke bar. Along the way I heard two boys speaking English and struck up a conversation. They were from London and were passing through Florence on a multiple-week backpacking trip. I sat with the UNC group for maybe 5 minutes and got the names of about 5 of them, then talked to the Englishmen. We then went to an Irish pub, I had a Harp, and I talked to Mark, one of the Englishmen about politics and universal health care, among other things. The last time I talked health care after drinking was in Chapel Hill with Catherine Smith and Sam Jacobson, the conversation elevated into a yelling match and concluded with all of us agreeing to disagree, silently swearing to ourselves that we would never bring up taboo subjects in social settings again. This conversation with Mark was civil and interesting, possibly because we aren't receiving the same federal care. Neither of us have even visited each other's home countries.

After leaving the Irish pub, the Englishmen (I learned the simple, one-syllable term "Brits" is offensive) and Emily and Blair and I went to the girls' apartment and hung out until about 5 in the morning. We didn't talk about politics or health care.

Today I woke up at 9, determined to find the Italian and not tourist side of Florence. I walked to a caffe' and had a caffe' latte and panini while reviewing my Italian textbook from UNC. I've forgotten so much. I was looking at chapter 2 vocabulary. Eek.

I then walked aimlessly down streets near the Duomo, stopping into shops that looked appealing. Many salespeople would speak to me in Italian, hear my response, reply in English, and I would continue to try to speak to them in Italian. I eavesdropped on other conversations, trying to pick up what they were saying, and would quietly read aloud street signs and store signs to myself. My creeping didn't make me new friends, but hopefully I'll develop a relationship with Anna and other Italians in their language later if I look a little crazy now.

Heading back to my apartment, I overshot my street and stumbled upon a marketplace with clothing, jewelry and produce stands. Ecstatic about reasonable food and clothing prices outside the tourist target zones, I bought earrings, sunglasses and fruit. I continued to resist holding conversations in English.

I made it back to my apartment now, and I really think I could find the market again, though who knows with my sense of directions. I just realized I haven't spoken English today. Hope that'll make the Italian stick.

Italian bedroom view

The window view of my temporary home, provided by the generous Anna Chiocchi.

Arriving in Italy

An inappropriate amount of time slipped by between my last post and now. I ended my internship, spent 10 days at home, and arrived in Italy since then. After my last post I took a blogging break because I worried I'd lost touch with normality when I wasn't interacting with people often due to my awkward work hours. My computer was also attacked by viruses and wouldn't let me do much of anything on it, and then I went home to the beach where I was barely able to pack for Italy in between all the time I spent thinking about how I really needed to pack.

I'll come back to the past few weeks later and dwell on the past few hours of arrival into Italy. I haven't slept for 24 hours. I arrived at my new home for the next four months a few hours ago and have had two cumbersome interactions in Italian with my host's Romanian friend, first about our backgrounds and then about where my purse had been moved. As anyone who knows me well could say, I sometimes lumber through English slowly and awkwardly, so you can imagine how translating my English thoughts goes. More slowly and more awkwardly. I haven't tried to speak in Italian since my last Italian oral exam in the spring, so hopefully practice will oil my communication skills.

Now I'll nap and look forward to lunch in an hour and a half. My impressions about anything else haven't really formed due to fatigue.