Why Italy's Economy Crashed (And Why I Won't Spend a Penny More Than I Need To Here!)

Ok, full disclaimer:  I am not an economist.  I am a 1st grade teacher.  I am living in Italy for two years, teaching at an American school.  I am on month 4 here and am still without "real" internet, a cell phone plan, a TV, a landline phone, tapanade, bus tickets, and local tourist books.  

I have already explained the internet/landline telephone thing in a previous post and this is still not remedied.  I am still using my too-slow-for-skype internet key.  

Telefonino- cell phone.  Our first week here the school rushed us to a Walmart type store (6 minutes by car; 56 minutes by public transportation) to buy the cheapest phones possible.  I brought an old unlocked phone from the US figuring that I would be here long enough to buy a phone plan.  For over the past 6 weeks I have been trying to buy a new cell phone.  
Try 1- Vodafone is out of iphones, so I settle for the cheapest smart phone (hoping for skype).  At the end of the paperwork, the internet at Vodafone (an internet company incidentally) crashes and our contract cannot be completed.  I have to leave the phone there and return the next day.  It is not easy to get to the store, but I go back and guess what!  
Try 2- The internet is still crashed.  No phone for me. Since I cannot return on Monday or during the week, I was forced to cancel the first part of my contract. 
Try 3- I returned the following weekend.  Well, it turns out that because I had to cancel, I also was charged the 100 euro fee.  I told them that I understood, but if I had to pay the fee, I would not use Vodafone for my phone company.  Funny how they found a way to reimburse me the fee after that.  I go through the whole process of getting an iphone, only to have Vodafone tell me that my Italian credit card is not set up for monthly deductions, only one time transactions.  I tell our business office at school and they straighten it out.  
Try 4- However, after that I return to Vodafone one last time this weekend and they have no more iphones set up for a plan, only sim cards.  This has probably taken me over 5 hours and much, much patience.  Now I am without a phone, and Vodafone is without my couple thousand Euros over the next couple years.  I thought about buying a wireless modem from them but the headaches and stress I imagine it would induce are not worth it to me.      


Biglietti-  tickets.  It is Sunday and I am without bus tickets for the week.  It is not that I did not try.  First of all, the economy stops on Sundays.  Normally nothing can be purchased on Sundays, especially afternoons, when even the tabacci shops close.  (The tabacci are the places where one must buy tickets for the bus.  Another appallingly confusing process designed to make even natives confused as far as I can tell, but that is for another bah humbug post.) However, it is the Christmas season so our local grocery coop is open.  One of the stores there is a tobacco shop, but when I showed up today, he was out of tickets!  This could be because there is nowhere else to buy the tickets today, but it leaves me to wonder what if you have a minor emergency and need a bus ticket to get somewhere.  I have one emergency ticket that I will use tomorrow, but it is impossible to buy them on the bus and there are no automatic machines anywhere in the area of Milan.  To me this seems to discourage the use of buses.  Make it easier to buy tickets and people will.  (i.e. spend money in your cities/towns)  How many people ride without paying because they cannot pay for a ticket anywhere?  

TV- my neighbors have been trying to get TV since their shipment arrived 2 months ago.  Still not a channel showing up.  I'm letting them fight this battle.   

Tapenade e libri--  Neither of these two things are such a big deal, but I tried to buy both as Christmas presents.  The tapenade was from a Harrod's food hall-type store, but instead of being allowed to just pick up the jar off the shelf and take it to the cashier and buy it, I got to the head of the line and the cashier told me that I needed a ticket to buy it, but I didn't understand where to even get a ticket.  It isn't a special product and the only tickets were for lines at meat, bread, sweets, etc. counters.  If it were an occasional experience that I had trouble, I would be persistent and use this as a learning opportunity, but due to the absurdity of shopping generally in Italy I have decided I am never shopping there again.  So the store only lost 8 euros this one time, but who knows how many times I would have shopped there in the future.  But my boycott of Italian things continues; I don't need the stress.  As for the books, I have noticed that when I go to museums here there is usually one general book translated into many different languages and all of the specific books are in Italian.  I know what you are going to say, Kate, learn Italian.  I'm trying, I promise, but while I am in the process I would still like to be able to appreciate the things that I am seeing.  

Maybe all these problems are because I am not Italian, but there are many non-Italians here and many of us have money to spend.  As for me, I will be spending most of my money on things when I am in the US over Christmas or in any other country during my breaks.       

My conclusion is that things in Italy are too hard to buy.  If they were easier they may not have a booming economy, but consumer spending would be on the rise.  I, for my part, have decided not to buy anything else non-essential (groceries, trips out of here, social life, art museums) here.

Busy Month!

Ottobre-  October.  So it has been quite a month!  At the beginning of October Carrie and I went to St. Raphael, France.  

It was a three-day weekend so the trip was quite quick.  Saturday we went on a mini-French grocery extravaganza.  I bought some yummy goodies that you cannot easily find in Italy.  Mostly chocolate items, but also a butter dish, not for eating of course.  Sunday turned out to be a lovely day!  Julie, our generous hostess, invited us to church so we went to a British service in a tiny French town.  We went immediately to the train station to find out the exact time we had to leave to catch the right train on the Italian border.  In true French fashion, the clerk told me that there was a strike the following day and we would have to take the super early train to make it in time.  With our information we met Julie and  her brother and sister-in-law (both visiting from Florida) at a restaurant for lunch.    The meal was excellent. I had lamb and ratatouille.  

The view was possibly even better because we looked out on the sea.  The weather was perfect!  We spent the rest of the afternoon reading on the boardwalk.  Carrie bought a bottle of rose` that she discovered there.  We went home and eventually to bed.  The following morning, not being able to reach the taxi service, we hightailed it by foot to the train station to catch the first train not en greve.  The train was super-crowded but every one got off in Monaco and we had a long but easy and amusing ride (but dark since our car's lights were broken and a headrest kept falling onto this older woman) back to Milan.  From Genova (now under water) to St. Raphael we rode on the coast the whole way.  While a good chunk is through tunnels, the parts that are not are spectacular.  

We got back to Milan.  My life went into a mini-tailspin where I had several emotional crashes.  For example, when I found out that I will only be able to attend 50% of the Italian classes, I hit the roof.  One class is scheduled for the same time that I have my girls running club.  (The friendlier cheetahs, remember?)  I'm glad I'm doing that though.  The girls are just so fun.  And, while we are talking about running, the PE teacher and I signed up to do our first marathon in April...  Stay tuned for training in monsoons.  

The lowest low point was when I was told by the installers after waiting for 2.5 months for internet (wi-fi) to be connected in my apartment that it could not be connected because there is a 10 meter concrete wall that is blocking the phone box to our building.  However, the landlord downstairs can get it.  Interesting, eh?  (It has also been a point of contention that our school does not think internet at home is essential enough to have it installed before the teachers arrive.)  I also found out about the cement wall the same week that our school installed a new security system and we could no longer use Skype, Facebook, or g-chat, along with a slew of other sights that I use for planning.  (This has since been remedied; It was just insanely bad timing.)  In tears of rage and desperation, I ran down the street to the one tech store in our town.  I made it 10 minutes before it closed and bought an internet key (like a thumb drive with a sim card that connects to the internet).  While it is not the most reliable and certainly not the fastest internet around, it works for things like email and reading a-z, which fulfills my short-term needs.  

The highlights were a field trip to the zoo where I saw a kangaroo for the first time.  We have a very nice zoo an hour or so away.  The kids had fun and in contrast to the crazy logistics and 8th grade chaperones of previous zoo field trips, it was the best field trip I've had yet.  Educational, fun, and easy!  Our school also took teachers on a day trip wine tasting and to Alba for a truffle festival.  It was so fun.         

Ottobre ended with a four day trip to Florence.  Wow!  What a city!  It reminded me a lot of Paris.  I could see myself living there and being completely myself.  It is a city set up for walking and on a river.  There is obvious history everywhere and the city does not completely shut on Sundays.  Carrie and I went and stayed in a trendy hotel in a neighborhood about 20 minutes from the center of the city. Two other couples went and stayed in different places, but we met up for dinner a couple of times.  We went to Academia and saw David which is truly impressive!  We also went on a Rick Steve's Renaissance walk.  Free podcasts are   so freakin' great for travel!  We went to the Uffizi, Florence's Louvre.  It was equally overwhelming.  I wished my dad were along to tell me more about the medieval art, but Rick Steve's and a kids' guide (Florence, Just Add Water) I picked up told us everything we needed to know.  We bummed around the city the rest of the afternoon and ended up on Piazzale Michaelangelo.  It has a stunning view of the city.  Florence's Montmarte.  We arrived at sunset and watched as the city's lights came on.  The following day we went to Pisa.  Although touristy, it has a university and shops.  I enjoyed walking around and finding a little market where I dumbly passed up the chance to buy a wooden cutting board.  Back in Florence, I went shopping at a market that I assume is mainly for tourists since everyone there speaks English.  I got my second comment about me speaking very good Italian.  If I really spoke good Italian I could have told her that I only can say things like "hello" and "how much is this?" well.        

And, on November 1, I came back to Milan.  The same night a coworker offered me a ride to IKEA in her car!  I got three new lamps and an entryway shelf and a full length mirror.  It's November and my apartment finally feels like my own.  My next project is to buy a ladder so I can reach the bar in my closet and finally hang up my clothes.  Right now I am writing this on my computer online in my apartment AND I can see what I'm doing.  I have a feeling November is going to be a good month.  

I am attaching links to my Facebook albums at the end in case you want more pictures.  france album      Florence album

ciao, xo 

The Movable, Unappetizing Feast of Smells and Sister Cities

Odore—smell.  This is very important for giving you a glimpse of my life outside of school.  I think that all of one’s senses are heightened when living in another country.  I focus on things I’m seeing and hearing that I wouldn’t normally if I was more comfortable in my surroundings.  Smell however is the sense I am aware of most often outside of school.  Basically, one of two smells wakes me up every day.  Good day, baking brioches and yummy pastries float up to my bedroom from the restaurant on the ground level of my apartment.  Bad day, horse/cow/pig shit kicks me awake.  Lots of fields and crops around my town so the smell could come from any direction.  

mmm, laundry

I leave for school and ride through a myriad of smells. Well, first I ride through panic, my own, in which I am not aware of any smells.  I concentrate on just not getting hit by cars passing on a one-way street.  Then, I ride by an apartment that smells like a girls' dorm laundry room.  That smell of different, sweet detergents all being piped out of a window or exhaust pipe somewhere.  Then comes the shit smell for a while until my sight overpowers the smell and I enjoy sunrise above corn fields and behind what I think of as the “African Tree.”  It just looks like it should be on a safari and some elephants, lions, or giraffes should be walking around it, especially with the sun behind it.

African Tree

possible skunk home...

I pass the African Tree and am hit with skunk.  I picture a family of skunks living in a ditch somewhere spraying the road each night, but don’t really know why it eternally smells like skunk, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I will never be venturing out that way at night.   

After this I try not to hit any 6-inch slugs crossing the path, so my sight takes over again.  And speaking of seeing, I have seen an unusually high number of missing fingers.  People in Italy tend to lose fingers at an alarming rate.  In one month I have seen 3 hands with multiple or partial fingers gone!  I have seen 3 people wandering around with huge casts on their hands.  Usually one finger is bandaged to the size of a small potato and the hand is bound down to the wrist. 

Back to the ride, on my way home, the smells are reversed.  The scary part starts earlier though.  There is a blind crosswalk that terrifies me every time.  In the picture, on the right, there is a shrine to Madonna.  I have no proof, but I think it must be to all the people killed at that intersection… (There is also a similar shrine in the middle of the cornfields I run through.  Perhaps a tribute to people who were run over by tractors or died of fertilizer inhalation.) 

blind intersection (little shrine on the right)

 

Friendler--  not Italian or English but a hybrid of two English words-- friendly, runner.  My girls running club came up with it.  They named us the friendler cheetahs.  These girls are adorable and it was too cute not to share.  

Bergamo-a city in Italy that is the sister city to, yes, you guessed it, Greenville, SC.  Last Saturday Carrie and I ventured over the very beautiful, older sister.  Getting there was quite a feat however.  We live in a little town outside of Milan and in an even smaller town just south of us, there is a train station that has a train that goes to Bergamo via Milan.  We walked the 20 minutes to the station in the humid morning heat.  When we got there however, we discovered that you cannot buy tickets at this station.  There were no open ticket windows or machines that sold tickets.  The only way to buy them is to buy them online then print them on your own computer.  In hindsight, we realize that it was a silly assumption to think that you could actually buy tickets at the train station.  I mean, why buy a ticket when you could sneak a ride for free or take the bus, followed by the tram, then the metro to get to another station that sells tickets? 

View from train station

citta alta

But in any case, we made it.  We were at lunch at a sidewalk café by 1:30.  After a quick panino we went to the citta alta (high city, the old part).  We took the funicular up to the top.  The area outside the exit looks very similar to Montmarte in Paris.  Cafes, hotels, European touristy. We wandered around the city for a couple of hours, hiking up and down the hills.  We did happen to stumble (hard not to do) upon the Piazza Duomo which was very airy, cafes and old buildings around a huge square.  We decided to save the museum and lookout tower for our next visit, but we did look at the duomo, which happened to be closed except for a chapel.  The chapel was quite impressive in a Czech sort of way (over the top?).  I only say that because I felt like I was in a chapel in Prague.  It was not particularly religious.  Lady Justice painted on the ceiling, king on a horse sculpture.  (Maybe I missed the Lady Justice part in the Bible.)    

Piazza Duomo

Bell tower

part of the astrology line

chapel

Window to the chapel

After leaving the chapel, we wandered around and looked out over the city.  From the old city you can see the Alps in the distance.  It was hazy but I bet on a clear day you can see forever!  There is a wall now partially covered in grass, which makes me think that the high part used to be the main city and was fortified.  Again, I was reminded of Prague.  After strolling around for 2 hours and having delicious gelatto (raspberry and mango, yum!) in a darling little square, we headed back down to the citta bassa (lower, newer city). 

 

view while eating gelatin

fortified wall

vineyard in citta alta

tour group of the wall

panoramic from the old city

In the new city we strolled down a street and stumbled upon a jazz concert in a courtyard.  The jazz club of Bergamo was playing.  They had a six-piece band plus a singer.  She was a throaty singer who sang a version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" which was fun and funny at the same time.  I thought about all of the Nouvelle Star episodes I watched in France where the singers would sing American songs with a French accent making it a bit difficult to decide if it was the singer or the botched lyrics that made the performance bad.  This woman was not bad, but it was clear she was singing sounds since she left out important parts of words.   I was also struck that all sound guys look the same.  This man was young, had a long ponytail and wore a purple tee shirt and cut off jean shorts.  Some things never change.   We left and ended up stumbling upon great little shopping area so delayed our trip home by an hour to check out Zara Home and a kitchen supply outlet.  I am now the proud owner of some nice new red potholders and a noodle grabber!  (How could I have moved to Italy without one?!)  

We finally got a train back to Milan.  Two hours later we were arriving at our doorstop to be greeted by a notte Bianca (nuit blanche)-- music, markets, and performances around the town of Opera.  They keep going until midnight.  (White night in Europe means a sleepless night.)  Luckily, I had Season 1 of The Wire and with my headphones in, I could only feel the bass, not hear it as I drifted off to a contented sleep, awoken the next morning by the smell of brioche.       

 

The important things: bread, wine, bicycle

Pane--  (rhymes with cane; see earlier entry) means bread.  This has been something that is surprisingly hard to find around here.  Not bread in general, but good bread.  I repeat, not easy to find!!  Our school has fairly good bread, but my grocery store sells hard, tasteless bread.  Recently I did find a good small loaf called ciabattina at the bakery right across the street from my apartment.  It costs .30E for a loaf. 

My first time going to the bakery was almost movie material.  I crossed the street and heard old, jazzy music.  I looked around to try to find it and it was from an apartment right above the bakery.  There was an old man with an old radio playing music.  His clothes were hanging up on the line, he was shouting something down at me, and I felt like I was really in Italy.  Ahhhh.

Before we leave carbs, I must say that along with good bread it is equally difficult to find good breakfast pastries.  Nothing is quite as disappointing as biting into a delicious looking pain au chocolat and getting a mouthful of lemon flavor, followed by chocolate.  For some reason, the Italians think that lemon zest and chocolate is a good combination.  I disagree whole-heartedly.  I think chocolate is best kept by itself and lemon is best in lemonade.

Vino Bianco—white wine.  I live above a tiny little wine shop that sells wine from a keg for 2.20 E/liter.  And it is tasty.  And you bring your own bottle.  The owner is a sweet woman whose mother was there with her the day I went.  The mother speaks no English, but loves to talk.  I love listening because she speaks very slowly.  The daughter is a mother herself and we were comparing schools, ASM vs. local schools.  The older mother is friends with our cafeteria head chef.  Perhaps that is why the wine is so good at our teacher meals.  I also got a frequent shopper card on my first visit and didn’t even need a codice fiscale. 

 Bicicletta--  bicycle.  Yikes!  It (along with some other 450 pounds) finally arrived this weekend.  My shipment made it.  I finally got to change my sheets and wash my towels.  Neither of which I did before in fear of them not drying by the time I needed to use them again. 

1.  unpacking my dishes.  2.  clean sheets at last, drying

Back to the bike.  So, I now have my bike.  It is a little red cruiser that I bought from my friend, Anne, back in the States but never had much chance to use there.  I have had it four days now and have ridden it three of those.  I have not had any major mishaps yet.  My biggest problem was that my bell fell off earlier today and distracted by that I nearly ran into someone.  I got some dirty looks, but I brushed those off when minutes later an Orlando Bloom look alike waved and smiled at me walking my bike across the street. 

I ride the long way to work.  It is about 3.5 miles each way, but there are no hills and no 90-degree turns so it takes less time.  I often think of The Wizard of Oz and the wicked witch riding on her broom.  My shadow makes me think of this (especially when I’m wearing a skirt!), as does the soundtrack my bicycle provides.  Remember that music that plays every time she is flying? 

Also, do you remember where The Wizard of Oz takes place before Oz?  Kansas!  Yes, I bike through what feels like the Midwestern plains of the US.  Every single day I think of driving to Wisconsin through that boring state of corn fields called Indiana.  Toto, I think were not in Milan anymore. 

Today was a beautiful ride through mist and a glorious sunrise on one side of the path and the full moon setting on the other side of me.  Wow! 

Finally, here are two words in English that they need in Italian:

1)     muffler-  as in get your *&&($## motorcycles some %$#%^@!! mufflers.  For some reason using them is not popular here.  My ears suffer for it and I curse the motorcyclists every. Single. Day.!!!

eardrum-shattering Italian motorcycle

2)     Personal space—I feel like I am playing bumper cars everywhere here.  On the sidewalk.  On my bike.  And especially in the grocery store.  Carts and people bumping into each other everywhere.  No “excuse me”s; no “Oh, I’m sorry”s.  Riding in the taxi to the questura (DMV/prefecture-esque government office) today, I realized that even real cars are like bumper cars here.  No lanes.  Speed up and see if you can slow down before you bump into someone else.  Ugh!      

More words in Italian

Navigli—these are the canals that I wrote about last time. There are several here in Milan. I always thought of Venise as the canal city, but Milan certainly has its fair share too. The last Sunday of each month (even August, the month to vacate the city) there is a flea market on the Navigli. JL was visiting from France and we went this weekend. It was beautiful. The weather was perfect. I didn’t find much that I needed, but I did find some adorable alcoves where art galleries and art dealers are hidden away. Lunch on the canal was less than exciting. It was good, but not great. After the market JL and I went to the Duomo. We went inside, but I really need to go with my family historian to fully appreciate the inside. The roof view was something I could appreciate on my own however. After some initial confusion as to how to get to the top, we took the stairs. It ended up not being too long of a walk to the top, very doable and cheaper to boot. The views of the city were impressive, but even better was the view of the Alps in the distance. After some gelato and a stroll down Monte Napoleone to see the couture shops and manhole covers described in the NYT’s 36 hours in Milan (NOT WORTH IT!) we headed home.

Lavatrice—washing machine. I posted on FB that I may have set the world record for washing time at 4.25 hours. Turns out I beat my own record yesterday. 10 hours!!! (OK, I was asleep most of it.) As of now, it is not clear if my washing machine is broken or if I just keep using the settings that must be forwarded by hand. The landlord is going to check tomorrow. She thinks it could be that I just have to wash synthetic materials on the advance-by-hand-cycle and that cotton should keep going on its own.

Pranzo—lunch. This is very important because lunch is a major meal here. Teachers here eat lunch in the cafeteria everyday because it is so worth it. It is nothing, I repeat, nothing, like pranzo in US schools. Tell me when the last time your teachers were treated to Prosecco, Carpaccio, fresh cheese, roasted veggies, stuffed squash leaves, stuffed noodles, fresh fruit, and homemade tarts, and tiramisu? And, oh yeah, I forgot to mention the real lobster (shell and all) linguine. So we don’t eat like that every day, but the food is truly remarkable. Everything is made by hand with fresh food, not from a can or frozen and reheated on site. There are pasta choices every day. Right now, it looks like I will never have to make pasta at home because I get it every single day at lunch. Salads have become my dinner because they are fast and easy and less caloric than my lunches. Teachers are warning me that they gained 10 pounds there first year. However, I have lost weight so far since I walk around 4 miles roundtrip every day. (I think I hold my breath about 5 minutes every walk because of the “fresh” fertilizer being used on the corn fields.) Perhaps when my shipment with my bike is allowed to be delivered and I bike more often, I will see those 10 pounds appear. Right now I’m thinking totally worth it!

Stress-- Another one of those words that is the same and sucks in both languages. I have been working like crazy to get my classroom ready for the first day on September 1. Ugh! What a nightmare. Some of the “disasters” so far: 1) no pencils have arrived. As of Thursday there will be no pencils in the school for our students to use. No one in the office staff has deemed it worthy enough to go to the store to buy 2 packs for every classroom. 2) Our elementary school secretary—and keeper of all lower school information-- is sick this week and our brand new principal cannot answer any questions or lead many meetings until she is back and able to give him the info he needs. I feel terrible for the principal because he must feel even more confused than we do. 3) We have new interactive white boards. This is pretty cool since they promise to fix them if they freeze up like my board did last year. The problem is that we got training that psyched us all up, but they forgot to mention that none of them in ES were hooked up yet. The momentum is quickly draining. In fact, my computer was not even able to be set up until today. I have been scurrying around the school looking for empty computers that will meet my printing needs since I have only one poster for my classroom. On a whim, I shoved it in my suitcase before I left. What luck! Anyway, my computer was hooked up today as was my smartboard. Perhaps I will have a chance to play with it one of these days….

Ciao!

Pictures in Italian

My Birthday Dinner

CANE

LAGO

IKEA

AMICI

Words in Italian

Here are some words that I have learned in my 1^st week:

(P.S. The photos won't show up so I am going to post those separately!)

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 29^th 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.