Saturday I visited Padua and made a friend (Padua by the way is absolutely amazing and as much as I like Ferrara, I wish I lived in Padua). Her name was Claudia, she was wearing a pink fuzzy bear costume. Claudia was about four years old. I played with her in the streets for about 10-15 minutes. She would 'sneak' up on me and throw confetti all over me and then I would reciprocate... it was such great fun! There was so much confetti everywhere! This is what happens during carnival, the children dress up in costumes and go in town and throw confetti... other stuff happens too, but that is not important quite yet! Needless to say... I got back to my room and found colorful pieces of paper in crazy places you wouldn't think it would still be after 10 hours.
Speaking of friends... its time that I make one besides an American. I have two plans of action. 1. Tomorrow is my first choir practice. I only have it once a week, so I am going to force myself on my fellow choir members. 2. I am generally a study in my room type of person, but I have decided I need to go to the study room in my building to make a friend. I know, you aren't supposed to talk in the study room, but I'm going to strategically place myself so that I can ask somebody for 'help'/if I'm doing my Italian homework right. After they answer my questions it won't be weird to introduce myself. Little will they know that the whole thing had been prepared in my head... Hey whatever I have to do to accomplish Operation Find a Friend.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Laundry Outfit
Yesterday was crazy. Yesterday everything seemed to go frustratingly. I don't know if I would call it a bad day...just frustrating. I'm going to ignore the fact that I had a midterm, that I worked at school in the lab for 2 hours next to a smelly girl, and that at lunch I had a horrible discussion about my diet... which wouldn't be that bad, I know that it sparks discussion, but the debate was so uninformed and frustrating!!! What you should know about is my doing laundry.
The building I live in has three towers. Each tower is 8-9 stories tall and each floor has 6-7 appartments. That means there are approximately 108 people who share each laundry room. The laundry room is located on floor A (between 1 and 2) along with things like the electrical room...in other words, its creep central. There are pipes everywhere that are always making noises. The laundry room itself only has two washers and one dryer, and when the washers are on the spin cylce water bubbles and seeps up through the drain in the middle of the floor, I know, weird.
So Anne and I decide to do our laundry, and we both brought very limited wardrobes so we needed to wash everything possible. Picture this...I am wearing sweatpants and my down vest zipped all the way up because I'm not wearing a shirt under it, not to mention, my hair looks crazy! Anne looks even better...she is wearing a a sweater on top of a nightgown on top of a lacy slip...yeah, we look great. I wish I had gotten a picture, next time! (The funny thing about this is that I had to run downstairs to the store to get more change and I got hit on more in my laundry outfit then ever! I haven't really experienced it much, but last night the men came out of the woodwork for my laundry outfit!)
Anne says the point of a laundry outfit is that as little people see you as possible...if we were completely successful, we wouldn't even see each other. Lucky for us the machine ate a bunch of our coins so we had to go running around the building to people we know collecting coins. 1 euro here, 50 cents there. Yes, it felt like everybody saw us. Now I looked relatively normal according to american standards, but not italian...Anne just looked ridiculous. Someone did finally comment on it to my great joy!
What made this worse was half way through our evening of laundry excursions, we get a phone call that I answer and the guy says, "Its Andrea, we met in the centro in front of the cathedral. We spoke little english and you live in Darsena 713 blah blah blah." I was so confused and kept saying... "I don't remember, I don't remember this!" I finally told him he had the wrong number and hung up on him. Two minutes later we get a knock on our door and a guy saying, "I'm sorry for the phone call, open the door." Don't worry, we didn't. So then we were all creeped out and we still had to run and take care of our laundry several times. It was bad news.
I didn't get to bed until 1.30 but I ate some double chocolate cookie dough before going to bed so that I wouldn't have nightmares about creepers in the laundry room!!!
The building I live in has three towers. Each tower is 8-9 stories tall and each floor has 6-7 appartments. That means there are approximately 108 people who share each laundry room. The laundry room is located on floor A (between 1 and 2) along with things like the electrical room...in other words, its creep central. There are pipes everywhere that are always making noises. The laundry room itself only has two washers and one dryer, and when the washers are on the spin cylce water bubbles and seeps up through the drain in the middle of the floor, I know, weird.
So Anne and I decide to do our laundry, and we both brought very limited wardrobes so we needed to wash everything possible. Picture this...I am wearing sweatpants and my down vest zipped all the way up because I'm not wearing a shirt under it, not to mention, my hair looks crazy! Anne looks even better...she is wearing a a sweater on top of a nightgown on top of a lacy slip...yeah, we look great. I wish I had gotten a picture, next time! (The funny thing about this is that I had to run downstairs to the store to get more change and I got hit on more in my laundry outfit then ever! I haven't really experienced it much, but last night the men came out of the woodwork for my laundry outfit!)
Anne says the point of a laundry outfit is that as little people see you as possible...if we were completely successful, we wouldn't even see each other. Lucky for us the machine ate a bunch of our coins so we had to go running around the building to people we know collecting coins. 1 euro here, 50 cents there. Yes, it felt like everybody saw us. Now I looked relatively normal according to american standards, but not italian...Anne just looked ridiculous. Someone did finally comment on it to my great joy!
What made this worse was half way through our evening of laundry excursions, we get a phone call that I answer and the guy says, "Its Andrea, we met in the centro in front of the cathedral. We spoke little english and you live in Darsena 713 blah blah blah." I was so confused and kept saying... "I don't remember, I don't remember this!" I finally told him he had the wrong number and hung up on him. Two minutes later we get a knock on our door and a guy saying, "I'm sorry for the phone call, open the door." Don't worry, we didn't. So then we were all creeped out and we still had to run and take care of our laundry several times. It was bad news.
I didn't get to bed until 1.30 but I ate some double chocolate cookie dough before going to bed so that I wouldn't have nightmares about creepers in the laundry room!!!
Friday, January 18, 2008
Non Capisco!!!
I've been in this country now for 10 days and this is the first one that I've had internet. I actually thought about titling this post '10 days without internet' but then maybe everybody would think I was dwelling on this... ok I am. I never realized how much I rely on the internet, not even for email or facebook but for answers to little questions.
I'm a week into my intensive language course and I've learned to count, tell time, and introduce myself. I'm practically fluent! But no, actually I've also learned present tense verbs and the exceptions... very handy. Now I can say 'I don't understand! Do you speak English?' which is 'Non capisco! Parli inglese?'
Non Capisco...its the story of my life. In class I start to think I understand and then I get called on and...oh, non capisco. I ask how much something costs and get chatted at in italian...non capisco. Random boy comes up and says 'I see you standing here and I think to myself, I want to talk to her.' My answer, 'uh...non capisco.' I tell you, its my answer for everything! Either that or non lo so, I don't know.
The social lives of the Italians is something I can understand. The big nights to go out on the town are Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. OnTuesday there's this bar(everything here is a bar, restaurants, cafes, bars...its all the same!) that has dress up night and every week is a different theme! How fun is that!? The other thing is that Italians do not drink until they are drunk, they just drink socially. I think this is the best news I've heard! Its highly frowned upon to get really drunk and make a fool of yourself like Americans tend to do. What a relief! Social drinking... something I can very much understand. And social drinking in Italy starts at lunch time! I feel like I have three options of beverages to order when out... Sparkling water, a glass of wine, or an espresso (I literally drink straight shots of espresso these days!)
I may not understand the language yet, but I'm starting to get the hang of the people and the city, and thats the first step. I shouldn't be expecting too much of myself after only 10 days anyway!
I'm a week into my intensive language course and I've learned to count, tell time, and introduce myself. I'm practically fluent! But no, actually I've also learned present tense verbs and the exceptions... very handy. Now I can say 'I don't understand! Do you speak English?' which is 'Non capisco! Parli inglese?'
Non Capisco...its the story of my life. In class I start to think I understand and then I get called on and...oh, non capisco. I ask how much something costs and get chatted at in italian...non capisco. Random boy comes up and says 'I see you standing here and I think to myself, I want to talk to her.' My answer, 'uh...non capisco.' I tell you, its my answer for everything! Either that or non lo so, I don't know.
The social lives of the Italians is something I can understand. The big nights to go out on the town are Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. OnTuesday there's this bar(everything here is a bar, restaurants, cafes, bars...its all the same!) that has dress up night and every week is a different theme! How fun is that!? The other thing is that Italians do not drink until they are drunk, they just drink socially. I think this is the best news I've heard! Its highly frowned upon to get really drunk and make a fool of yourself like Americans tend to do. What a relief! Social drinking... something I can very much understand. And social drinking in Italy starts at lunch time! I feel like I have three options of beverages to order when out... Sparkling water, a glass of wine, or an espresso (I literally drink straight shots of espresso these days!)
I may not understand the language yet, but I'm starting to get the hang of the people and the city, and thats the first step. I shouldn't be expecting too much of myself after only 10 days anyway!
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Lessons for Italy
During the last nine months as I have bragged to people that I would be going to Italy I have been given a lot of advice on what to expect there. I'm not saying these snippets are necessarily wrong, or right, but I still find it odd that people who have never even been to Italy seem to know what they are talking about. I won't ignore what you all have said completely, but I've decided to take some of it with a grain of salt.
"Watch out for those greasy Italian men pinching your butt!" This is the most prominent phrase from people that I've heard, or some variant relating to the personalities and conduct of the men from Italy. Now, I've been to Italy... and they aren't THAT bad! My god, the way people talk you'd be thinking I'm going into a war zone! I think its just a reputation they have that they can't necessarily shake. I just finished reading the autobiography Eat, Love, Pray and she spends four months in Italy and the men don't pay her much sexual attention and she feels old and put off. She then is reassured that its not her looks, its that the men have toned it down, not that the world realizes it. I guess I'll find out if this is true. The other thing about the Italian men being affectionate is that it is part of their culture. Isn't it judgemental to project our social ideals on a completely different culture! If thats how they do things over there, then who are we to say boo to that... its not our place.
"Drink wine and Eat" Don't worry, I'm ready, and I've accepted that I'll probably gain some weight while I'm gone. When a church friend of the family found out I was going to study italian language and culture he replied, "So you'll be eating and drinking wine?" I think he's right, even if my culture class isn't about food and wine, my 'independent studies' (so to speak) will definitely be. I've already promised my sister and brother in law to scope out the best gelato place in town so when they come we don't have to waste their time and can go straight to the good stuff!
I also got the parent talks. I HATE parent talks, they are soooo bad! My mom doesn't give talks like Danny on Full House... it just doesn't work that way. They always end with me really cranky and mom being glad its over. I only really get them as I get ready to go somewhere. This trip I've gotten the 'how do you take care of yourself in a city?' talk, which ended in me flat out refusing to talk about it, and the 'be smart around wine(alcohol)' talk. I don't really know why I haven't gotten that talk sooner, like for instance, when I left for college. Anyway, I got it on Saturday and all I could say back was,"mom really, I know more than you think."
"Have a blast!" I'm sitting here writing this before heading to the airport and it still feels pretty surreal that I'm leaving for the semester. I have no doubt that I will experience everything that I can, and I know I will have fun. You all must keep me informed on your lives just as you have the option of reading here about my life. I'll miss you, but its worth it!
"Watch out for those greasy Italian men pinching your butt!" This is the most prominent phrase from people that I've heard, or some variant relating to the personalities and conduct of the men from Italy. Now, I've been to Italy... and they aren't THAT bad! My god, the way people talk you'd be thinking I'm going into a war zone! I think its just a reputation they have that they can't necessarily shake. I just finished reading the autobiography Eat, Love, Pray and she spends four months in Italy and the men don't pay her much sexual attention and she feels old and put off. She then is reassured that its not her looks, its that the men have toned it down, not that the world realizes it. I guess I'll find out if this is true. The other thing about the Italian men being affectionate is that it is part of their culture. Isn't it judgemental to project our social ideals on a completely different culture! If thats how they do things over there, then who are we to say boo to that... its not our place.
"Drink wine and Eat" Don't worry, I'm ready, and I've accepted that I'll probably gain some weight while I'm gone. When a church friend of the family found out I was going to study italian language and culture he replied, "So you'll be eating and drinking wine?" I think he's right, even if my culture class isn't about food and wine, my 'independent studies' (so to speak) will definitely be. I've already promised my sister and brother in law to scope out the best gelato place in town so when they come we don't have to waste their time and can go straight to the good stuff!
I also got the parent talks. I HATE parent talks, they are soooo bad! My mom doesn't give talks like Danny on Full House... it just doesn't work that way. They always end with me really cranky and mom being glad its over. I only really get them as I get ready to go somewhere. This trip I've gotten the 'how do you take care of yourself in a city?' talk, which ended in me flat out refusing to talk about it, and the 'be smart around wine(alcohol)' talk. I don't really know why I haven't gotten that talk sooner, like for instance, when I left for college. Anyway, I got it on Saturday and all I could say back was,"mom really, I know more than you think."
"Have a blast!" I'm sitting here writing this before heading to the airport and it still feels pretty surreal that I'm leaving for the semester. I have no doubt that I will experience everything that I can, and I know I will have fun. You all must keep me informed on your lives just as you have the option of reading here about my life. I'll miss you, but its worth it!
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