The title above is one of my favorite expressions here in Italy. The Italians use these great expressions for certain sentiments. For example, when they answer the phone, you'd think they'd just say "
ciao," the equivalent of "hello." But no. They say "
pronto!" which translates to "ready!" Hearing Italians say this when they answer the phone puts a lot of pressure on me as a caller, seeing as they've just given me a verbal cue that they're attentive and prepared to listen to whatever I have to say, I feel like I'd better have something pretty damn important to say. Another expression I'm fond of is "
dimmi tutto!" An example of how it's used: for instance, when you approach a person with a question, such as a professor, a friend, or a waiter at a restaurant, you'd say "excuse me, Professor Jones?" or "excuse me, sir?" And in the United States, the person approached might say, "what's up?" or "how can I help you?" or "yes?" In Italy, they say "
dimmi tutto!" which translates to "tell me everything!" I wonder if anyone has ever taken this expression literally. Bet that professor had wished he had chosen his words a bit more carefully...
I guess what made this expression pop into my head is the fact that I haven't been updating very faithfully this week, so I guess it's going to be difficult for me to be able to remember tutto, but I promise I'll try my best. It's easy to let the updates fall by the wayside seeing as there's always much to do here. But as an aspiring writer, I should probably take advantage of this brief time period in my life where I have such a captive audience willing to read my little rants, even if y'all are comprised solely of family members and close friends. It still makes me feel cool, so I'll keep at it for a few more weeks. :)
Allora, (another Italian word I love! You can basically use this melodic little word in any situation; its meanings seem to be infinite. Allora can mean anything from "well then," to "now," to "so," to "in that case," to "therefore," "anyway," etc. etc. So the next time any of you are lunching with an Italian and find a lull in the conversation, I'd recommend throwing in a hearty allora; it'll never steer you wrong) God, my parentheses are often so long that I forget what I was saying before. Let me start over. Allora, for this post, we'll just stick with the highlights of the past week.
Sunday at Viareggio: in honor of the Italian month-long celebration of Carnevale (yes, Italians have managed to stretch the event of Mardi Gras into a month-long celebration), we took the train to a beach town called Viareggio where they have a Carnevale party every Sunday. We dressed up as best we could, layering colorful clothes and donning tacky crowns we bought from the One-Euro Shop (which I can't seem to stop calling the Dollar Tree). The real Italians were all decked-out in all kinds of great costumes, as Carnevale is basically Italy's equivalent of Halloween. We spent a really great day in Viareggio, soaking in the sunshine and strolling along the beach. It was one of those false-spring days that makes you forget it's the middle of winter as you feel the warmth of the summery sunshine. We returned pink-cheeked and went to a really good Greek place for dinner. Overall, a good day!
Monday: What the hell did I do on Monday? I don't even remember. Proof, I suppose, that not all days abroad are red-letter. Let's just assume that I did something so terribly exciting that I was completely overwhelmed with enthusiasm and rendered delirious, causing the memory to escape me completely.
Volunteering Tuesday: The highlight of Tuesday was definitely volunteering at the women's shelter, a little tradition that's become one of my favorite activities here. Gabri was in full form, wild as usual, and I made the huge mistake of teaching him and Mari "Cowboys." Gabri is not exactly a thin child, so it definitely required a lot of leg strength to simulate the line "this is the way the cowboys ride" for Gabri, but he loved it and, as expected, wanted to repeat the process about every 5 minutes. Luckily, I've mastered the phrase "last time" in Italian, a useful expression when it comes to Cowboys. Valerio (the 12-year-old boy who lives there) and I had planned on playing soccer at the park Tuesday, but the rain rendered it impossible. He wasn't too disappointed, as he had just purchased a slingshot for 6 euro and was far more interested in finding ways to inconspicuously shoot his fellow residents than in playing soccer. Luckily his grandma made him get started on his homework, so the sling-shooting gradually subsided. He needed help with his English homework, and for the first time since I've been here I was actually able to speak to an Italian and be grammatically correct at the same time. Never mind that we were speaking in English.
Any Old Wednesday: Had a fairly normal Wednesday afternoon; went for the usual run, went to the park to do some leisurely reading, etc. Wednesday night was a typical Sam's festa; this time they had an American DJ who played some fun oldies songs. Alessandro let me work behind the bar, so that made me feel ultra cool.
*Quick sidenote: I'm going to take a dinner break. Looks like it's going to be a tuna and onion salad again. Meat is expensive here in Italy, so I eat a lot of canned tuna to get my protein in. And lord almighty, the onions. Bought a bag of onions, figuring they'd last me quite a while. For one of our dinners where we had the class over, my roommate asked if she could use my onions, and I figured she needed all of them. I neglected to check the fridge before buying another bag of onions the next day to replace the ones my roommate had supposedly used. Turns out she had only needed half an onion, so I was left with two huge bags of onions. Thus, I've consumed more onions in the past month and a half than I have in my entire life. Onions in my eggs, onions in my tuna, onions in my pasta sauce, onions with my chicken, plain old onions sauteed...I haven't reached the point of adding them to my cereal, but if I don't start making a dent in the next few weeks who knows...
Back from the dinner break. Have onion breath again. On to the next day.
Thursday--Cappelli e Calcio: My hair's been getting too long to manage here seeing as American straighteners and blow dryers don't function here, even with our adaptors, so I decided to chop it off. It was a bit difficult to explain to the hairdresser, Salvadore, how I wanted my cappelli cut seeing as he spoke no English, but he did a really good job. He cut it a lot shorter than I had originally wanted, but after staring at myself in the mirror in shock for a few minutes he convinced me that it was molto carina, or cute. I guess it was my fault for enthusiastically responding "si!" when he asked if he could cut it "come mi piacerebbe," or how he would like it. But after the initial shock wore off, I've actually started to like it a lot. Thanks, Salvadore! After the big cut we headed off to our first Italian calcio, or soccer game! It was Fiorentina vs. Ajax, Amersterdam's team. Throughout the day we saw various groups of Ajax and Fiorentina fans drunkenly yelling out all kinds of cheers. Martina and I tried to learn one, but all I remember was that it consisted of a lot of yelling different words that rhyme with tre, or three. Who knows. I think the teachers of our cheer were pretty drunk. The game was absolutely insane. At one point a fight broke out, at which a huge wave of fans ran towards the back of the stadium to witness and join the fight, but plenty of carabieneri were armed with their sticks to stop the madness. In an Italian soccer stadium, there's not a visitor's section for fans from the other team. There's a visitor's cage. The visitor's section is literally encased in thick glass, with doors to let the fans out after the game. This is no friendly Holy Bowl competition where the Jesuit kids and CB kids are free to roam both sides of the stadium. This is war, and the enemy is kept where you can see 'em. Italians take their calcio very, very seriously. It was a close game, but Fiorentina ended up losing 1-0. It was a sad thing, but we still went out after to celebrate; after all, we deserved a reward for surviving an Italian soccer game.
Friday--A Roman Reunion: There's a place about two hours from Florence called Abetone where people here go to ski, so my classmates had planned on going down there last Saturday for a ski trip. The week before had been pretty crummy for skiing; apparently it was all ice. So last week we hoped and hoped for snow, but no luck. We were bummed, but luckily I had a nice alternative: Friday, the S.W.T.C.S. arrived in Roma! I decided to hop on a train and meet the 6 lovely ladies in Rome for a much-needed weekend with my mama. I was so happy to see everyone, and my mom and I shared a very tearful and very joyful reunion. When I got there, the S.W.T.C.S. was a bit tired, as they had just arrived that morning and had been up for over 24 hours what with all their traveling. But they were troupers and managed to stay awake all afternoon. It felt really surreal to see such familiar faces in my little Italian world, and it was really wonderful to see everyone. We had a relaxing night (a.k.a. they were all passed out by 7 p.m.), which was good for our full day of sightseeing on Saturday.
Saturday with the S.W.T.C.S.: True to form, Auntie Sharon had mapped out the day's activities for us. Saturday was a trip to Ostia Antica, a town outside of Rome with really awesome ruins. Luckily the weather was great, and after the ladies mastered the mysterious art of the Metro and train system with a little help from yours truly, we got there without a hitch. (I realized as the day went on that I had become the new authority on All Things Italian. I was happy to answer any and all questions, but I found certain questions such as "Caity, in this Italian commercial that I saw on the subway this morning, why was their a frog handing out money?" and "Caity, why is this one specific newsstand closed today?" a little difficult to answer.) We walked around the ruins, stopping often for pictures. Auntie Kathy deemed me the tour guide, so instead of the proverbial umbrella I'd wave my water bottle or the Rick Steve's book above my head. I had a lot of fun with the S.W.T.C.S., and it was really comforting to be with everyone from home. That night we met up with Ersilia and Bruno again, and Ersilia insisted upon having everyone over to her apartment for dinner, where she prepared (from scratch) a dinner of fettucine, miniature paninis, breaded pork chops, vegetables, and apple torta for dessert. As usual, she modestly told us that she wouldn't be offended if we didn't like what she made, but of course everything was fantastic. We had a really nice time with them, and with Bruno and I on Team Translators everyone was able to communicate really well. I'm looking forward to meeting up with the whole gang again on Wednesday.
Home Again Sunday: We slept in Sunday and I left the S.W.T.C.S. to fend for themselves after lunch, leaving them to complete Auntie Sharon's itinerary of the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Spanish Steps, and the Trevi Fountain. Luckily I managed to make a quick escape from the hotel without the employees ever wising up to the fact that I had been a stowaway for the weekend. In Italy, the hotels are really strict about the number of people in your hotel room. If you say two people are staying in a room and a third person is found crashing on the floor (as I was in this case), you run the risk of being kicked out of the hotel. It was a very covert operation, (in my opinion overly covert at times, as I don't think the employees were paying as close attention to my comings and goings as the S.W.T.C.S. seemed to believe), but better safe than sorry I suppose. After my quick escape I took the train back home to Florence. Sunday was my friend Martina's birthday, so a few of us went out to dinner at this really small, cozy trattoria to celebrate. Earlier that day while Martina was out her boyfriend Nick and I tried to get a violinist we found on the street to come to dinner with us and play with her, but he only spoke Romanian and kept repeating "grazie, grazie" in response to our requests and animated body language. But even without the violinist, I think Martina had a good time.
Monday: Back to Monday again! Went to class, read a bit, went for a run, and then Martina and I went for a bike ride. My first time on a bike since December! It felt good to ride around, and we found a really big park that's down the Arno a ways that should be a great location for future soccer games. It was a little cloudy today, but really warm outside so we had a good time. Then I came home and did some homework, which was actually kind of fun and no, I'm not being sarcastic. Favorite Teacher Michela always gives us cool assignments. For instance, tomorrow we're presenting the papers we wrote about our hometowns, so I'm excited to bring Sactown to Firenzetown. Our assignment for this week is to write a recipe from our home country. I was able to dig deep into my well of culinary knowledge and decided to translate the recipe for a very refined and complicated dish: s'mores.
Allora, tutti, I'm all blogged out. I promise I'm going to try to blog a little more frequently so each entry isn't a freakin' tome, and that way I'll be able to dimmi tutto!
Auguri e cent'anni,
Caity
