COMPLEANNO—birthday. I know this because I had a birthday here. My first full day was spent like this:
Let me preface it with the fact that both the morning and evening of my birthday were quite pleasant, but the afternoon was positively one of the most terrible ways to spend my first 29th year afternoon (well, any day really).
After a delicious breakfast of chocolate brioche and meetings at school, we had lunch (amazing school cafeteria!) before leaving for the Italian Walmart equivalent, Iper. Jetlagged, I fell asleep on the short bus ride there. (Wisely, the school has chartered a bus for all of our errands this first week.) Upon arrival the chaperones herded us straight for the cell phone stand. Instead of checking ahead to find out how it is done or making appointments with someone who could handle such a large crowd, or even breaking us into smaller groups, we waited almost 30 minutes for a chaperon to negotiate dealings with the clerk so that each of us could have a pay-as-you-go sim card. Then each teacher had to do about 10 minutes of paper work—some taking much, much longer because of technical glitches, etc. With 10 of us there, that meant that some of us had to wait over 2 hours. Exasperated, I took my cart to load up on electrical goodies such as fans, electric kettle, dustbuster, iron, alarm clock, etc. circling around every 10 minutes or so to check on the progress. Finally, taking pity on me one of the chaperones ran me over to another store in the mall and let me buy just the card since I already had an unlocked phone. Almost everyone else had to buy a phone too since American phones do not work in Europe.
After getting my card, I bought basic groceries. I was delighted to find a 3E bottle of white wine and my favorite lettuce (already packaged so I didn’t get fined, hit, or arrested for touching) as well as enormous jars of Nutella and my favorite Italian Store (Arlington, VA) cookies for under 2E. The check out was another story however. All of my joy from finding foods I have missed so much evaporated when I stood in line again for 30 minutes, just to check out. The head chaperone insisted that we do self-check which turned out to be a huge mistake! There were the world’s slowest self-checkers ever ahead of us! The evil register monster (whoops, I mean monitor) never yelled at him. However 3 people later we were up and she spent most of the time scolding and yelling at us. In an effort to speed things up I was taking things right off the end of the conveyor belt and that turned out to be a huge Italian faux pas of some sort.
At home instead of crashing and crying which is what I wanted to do, my neighbors (two other new teachers—Carrie and Simon) and our landlord assembled our new fans on Simon’s beautiful terrace. After assembly I brought out my wine, bread, Carpaccio, and Caprese salad. The three of us sat outside eating and drinking in the cool night air. It was a much nicer way to end the day.
CANE-- This means dog and is not to be confused with the word for meat, carne. We have a huge German Shepard who guards our building. In particular he guards the trash bins. We tenants cannot take any refuse out to the bins. The landlords have to do it. This is ok with me for several reasons. First, I am not a huge fan of scary dogs who do not understand English. (Well, ok, scary dogs in general!) Second, taking trash out here is absolutely insanely complicated! Instead of having trash and recycling or even adding compost to it, and sorting it when we get to the recycling post, each home has separate food scraps/compost, glass/tin/aluminum, paper, plastic, and incinerator bins. My two resourceful neighbors, Carrie and Simon, and I all decided to go in for a set of hall bins. When they fill up I’m not sure how we will get them past the cane...
LAGO—Lake, as in Lago di Como. We spent Saturday on Lake Como in a town called Bellagio. It was breathtaking. I’ll let the pictures speak for me. The pictures really don’t do it justice. (At the end they are from the summit of the mountain. People practice biking up the mountain so there is a shrine to the Madonna of Bicyclists and a hilarious statue. I personally think the bikers are nuts to ride there because the roads are so steep and twisty that our bus had to do a couple 3-point turns around the bends!)
IKEA—as in the furniture store. This it turns out is an international word. It sucks the same in every country. It is open Sunday mornings however so when I got home from our 3 hours in IKEA, I spent the afternoon when everything else is closed assembling my new furniture.
There are also some other international words that have come in handy. The one that comes to mind immediately is Garnier. That is a brand we have in the US and I discovered in here as well. I found the same face wash I used in France that feels like Altoids on your face. Not always the best feeling, but great this week since my room is holding steady at a not-so-cool 87 degrees.
My living room BEFORE the Ikea trip:
AFTER:
CIAO—Ok, I may have known that one before. Perhaps also international, but everyone says it here. So here I’m saying it to you, as in ciao, goodbye. One last picture is of Carrie and Simon so you have a picture. We are at a school happy hour Monday night.
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