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.

Pre-Trip Anxiety

Ugh! One of the lines I hear quite often is, "You are so brave!" Depending on the day I may reply back that sometimes brave is not brave, but just plain crazy. Today is one of those days.

(This is me pre DC move, feeling brave.)

(This is me in a pre-beach moment of anxiety.)

I just this morning returned from a week at the beach with my family. I have not yet been home for 12 hours, but nevertheless I am a nervous wreck. The gravity of what I am doing has really hit me. I am going to a country where I speak barely 100 words and have no idea where I will be living. At dinner tonight, I quizzed my dad on the numbers and my mom on the alphabet. (Both parents have been taking Italian lessons for over a year, never having planned on having to use it to visit their daughter.) The first five minutes of dinner was me practicing counting to ten repeatedly and then making my parents count with me. The rest of dinner was spent trying to name the items on the table. Too many were unknown to us all so my mom sat with our Italian-English dictionary open through the rest of dinner helping me muddle along. After all of that effort all I can remember is insalata and my first 10 numbers-- except 5, I can't remember that one. It's not enough like French. This is not a good sign for my language skills.

Language aside, I have taken to obsessively strolling the streets of what I think will be my neighborhood on google maps. Luckily, it looks safe, but two things that concern me are a) the distance to the school's neighborhood and b) the grocery stores. Let's start with the aerial view of google maps. My school and possible neighborhood are south of the actual city of Milan. When looking from above, it looks way too far for me to ride everyday on my bike. Perhaps it isn't too far (I can never tell distances on google maps), but I think I'll be riding on a highway. From what I hear of the Italian drivers, this could be my end. I am slow and wobbly so I can just picture swerving into a car to let the cyclists behind me pass and my body sprawled out on the side of the highway (and dying because I can't explain the pain or understand what directions are being given to me). I have 2 (due) bike helmets, just in case.

Food is my second concern. My endless virtual strolling has turned up a soccer field, many apartment buildings, a restaurant, a church, a park, and a gym but not one single market or grocery store. I marvel at how this is possible. What if I can't find the store and can't ask or understand how to get there? What if I accidentally touch the food? Will I get arrested or just scolded? The whole Amanda Knox thing has given me little faith in the Italian judicial system.

Next morning update: I just reread the information the school sent me and it assures me that the ride to the school from my possible neighborhood is a bike path. At least, there will be no swerving into traffic, just other bikers. Whew! I also reread that there is a big grocery store somewhere in the neighborhood. However, my food touching anxiety has doubled; you can get fined for touching food. I'm a toucher so this is not looking good for me. Time to take a break from death and jail worries to go fret over packing all my stuff!

The Unknown, a.k.a. Goodbye

First of all, the disclaimer that writing in the US is much harder than writing in Europe. I don't have nearly the time to think that I did in France. Maybe I have more friends here, my lifestyle is much busier, or I understand everything that is said so I have no time to daydream while people are talking to/around me. Anyway, right now I am sitting in a cafe called the Java Train in St. Paul, looking out at the rain.

It is a block away from the retirement center where my grandmother lives. I have been planning this trip for several months--one last hurrah in the Midwest to say goodbye to family here before my move to Italy. In the time since the trip was planned (but just weeks before my trip was already scheduled), my grandfather (who used to live one block from where I am now sitting) died quite suddenly. Since he wished to be cremated, it worked out very well to have the funeral while I was already here. This has me thinking a lot about goodbyes.

I did not get the chance to say good-bye to my grandfather.

This makes me ultra-aware that I need to make this trip count even more and be very diligent in keeping in touch since it could be last time I see anyone. It is very stressful to say goodbye. I know that these next six weeks are likely to be the most stressful because with goodbyes come the unknown.

Right now unknowns seem to be the main theme of my life. While the funeral is certainly a wake-up call that we have no idea the last time we will get to say goodbye to loved ones (especially when we move abroad!), it has struck me several times during this move that the hardest part is just plain not knowing. I know that people are the best-intentioned and genuinely interested when they ask questions about next year. I would definitely be one of those bombarding questions if I were on the other end, but unfortunately every time someone asks any of the following questions: Where are you going to be living? What is your apartment like? Do you speak Italian? Do you know anyone already? What is the school like? my answer is, "I don't know." (I sounded like dummy robot on both the last day of school and my ciao bella party, "Uh, well, I don't really know yet; Nope, I don't know a word; Nope, not a single person; No, never been there before. You get the idea.) It turns out I don't know much, but while anxious and stressed about it I am equally (well, almost equally) excited about it. The unknown can be sad, painful, and about to send me over the edge with stress right now, but it also gives me something to look forward to, something new(ok, many, many somethings) to learn.

I know I'll miss my friends and family, but if you can put up with my "I don't know"s right now I promise to share tons of new experiences and knowledge in the not so distant future.