Ciao!!
When I set out from Providence four months ago, it seemed totally reasonable to try to update the blog every week. That pretty much worked out at the beginning, because time was going pretty slowly. Three months ago I was convinced that I would be here forever, so the week between blog updates seemed like a pretty healthy dose of time. Now, however, Easter a month ago might as well have happened yesterday, and the last six and a half weeks are hurtling by faster than I can keep track of....despite all efforts to close my eyes, loudly hum "La Forza Mia" (TU SARAI LA FORZA MIA! DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM), and ignore the fact that pretty soon I'll be heading home with everyone else.
A brief update on life since Easter:
- Venice with a friend from school
- Le Cinque Terre, an incredible set of five towns in Liguria with amazing, amazing, amazing panoramas. We went on a field trip for a day, which involved more sunbathing and gelato-eating and was more or less absolutely splendid.
- a trip to France and Germany with other classes from school (this was a lesson in the fact that not all field trips will involve going out to Spanish bars, like the class trip to Florence. :) It definitely depends on the professors who go with you. With this set, we ran into problems immediately because the food at the hotel was so bad we resorted to stealing marmalade packets to make it through the night, which the professors didn't think fell under the category of "comporting yourself well". The bad humor didn't last long though, because they gave us Nutella for breakfast.)
- the prospect of a week in Sardegna with my host family after school finishes in June and four days in the Alps for the end-of-stay orientation with AFS
OK, that's enough of deliberately being a stronza (another fun Italian word which is somewhere between "jerk" and "bitch") and trying to make people jealous. What's way more satisfying than the amazing opportunities to travel and see so much of the world is the fact that after four months, it feels like a lifetime has passed.
Thinking back to the cold, gray February days when I didn't speak Italian and everything was new and my host mother was yelling at me to get with the program and start being a part of their family, things couldn't be more different. Maria Gloria and I are best friends now - we watch Gossip Girl (in English! woo hoo!!! Otherwise there would be no way to follow all of the ridiculous plot twists) and The Fast and the Furious (her choice - she has a weird thing for exploding cars) together, do her homework together (mine is nonexistent) and waste sunny afternoons on the balcony playing with our cameras. It took a long time to try to figure out that the only way to be helpful at home is to take the initiative and not wait to be asked, but now I do the dishes all the time and help my host mom clean the house. My host sister finds this very weird. Two of the most difficult conversations I've had with my host mom - explaining the concept of premade spaghetti sauce and the fact that my dad usually does the laundry.
And it's fun that finally everything is starting to feel normal. Homemade pizza every Saturday night is wonderful, but normal. Going shopping in Milan is hugely entertaining, but normal. (Ok, "shopping" means a pair of pants and a sweatshirt....when you go into stores like Dolce&Gabbana it's seriously just to look, since most things are behind glass, like in a museum. So it's much more like going to an art exhibition!) Speaking Italian is enormously satisfying, but I kind-of-sort-of-almost-depending understand what's going on when people talk now, but that's normal too. Not doing homework is also normal, although seriously I'm kind of ready for that to end. Drinking huge bowls of tea in the morning is normal. Taking in sun on the balcony in the afternoons is normal. Singing Italian songs with my friends on the bus in the afternoon is normal. Walking to the bus stop past roses in full bloom and fruit orchards is normal. The problem with five months is that it takes at least three months to reach that level of comfort....and then you leave forever.
Vado adesso....la mamma sta facendo cena e devo apparechiare la tavola!
Baci
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
AUGURI PER UNA BUONA PASQUA!!!!!
Sorry it's a day late.... :)
Anyway, Easter here was AMAZING. And also very very Italian.
Every Easter a significant portion of my host dad's family (with six brothers and a sister, all with their own families, there's no way all of them could come together at the same time) eats lunch together at the nonni's house in Osnago. Sunday morning, we all woke up (my host mother at 6 am, to continue the cooking she had been working on steadily since the same time Saturday morning), and everyone but my host mom (still cooking) went to church. That was rather exciting - my host dad was singing with the choir like usual, but the service had a twist because the priest was a visiting Vietnamese man who looks like he's twelve, and a woman who we think was pregnant had to be rushed out right before Communion.
After church, we dashed back home, tried to figure out which of the dishes piled in the refrigerator we were supposed to get, ran back inside because we had forgotten the bottle of wine and vase of flowers, and then drove to Osnago with all of the food balanced on our laps. Luckily my host dad was driving, and not Luca, because otherwise the vitello con tonnato wouldn't have ever made it to Osnago in one piece.
In Osnago, we all piled into the formal dining room, and shortly commenced eating. A snapshot: Four courses. Starting with an antipasto of four types of meat, insalata del mare, three types of salad that my host mom had made, three types of crostini, and lots of other stuff drenched in olive oil. Then risotto ai funghi....creamy perfection, with just enough woody flavor from the mushrooms. *sighs of contentment* Then lamb and potatoes, although by this point everyone was so stuffed that most people passed on it. Then gelato. Then colombo, a type of cake shaped like a dove which is traditional at Easter. Then caffè, finished off by a round of chocolate egg. I just wanted to make sure I recorded this meal for posterity.... But the really nice thing is that the food isn't the focus point. Everyone compliments everything and thoroughly enjoys it all, but no one pays any attention to how much you eat, unless to offer you more. Mainly it's just a time to enjoy family. Everyone talks really loudly and at the same time, spills wine on the tablecloth, and tries to stop the 97-year-old grandmother from trying to do everything by herself.
Afterwards everyone was basking in happiness and too much good food, and my family decided to go for a "giretto" since the weather was good. We finally made it to Bergamo, which is closer than Milan and actually much prettier, since all of the old stuff in Milan was destroyed during the World Wars.
When we got home, everyone was exhausted. We all drank warm milk with sugar (nature's comfort food) and ate peanuts and biscotti, while my host mom recounted embarassing childhood stories of Maria and Luca. And then bed.
La più bella Pasqua....per sempre!
Sorry it's a day late.... :)
Anyway, Easter here was AMAZING. And also very very Italian.
Every Easter a significant portion of my host dad's family (with six brothers and a sister, all with their own families, there's no way all of them could come together at the same time) eats lunch together at the nonni's house in Osnago. Sunday morning, we all woke up (my host mother at 6 am, to continue the cooking she had been working on steadily since the same time Saturday morning), and everyone but my host mom (still cooking) went to church. That was rather exciting - my host dad was singing with the choir like usual, but the service had a twist because the priest was a visiting Vietnamese man who looks like he's twelve, and a woman who we think was pregnant had to be rushed out right before Communion.
After church, we dashed back home, tried to figure out which of the dishes piled in the refrigerator we were supposed to get, ran back inside because we had forgotten the bottle of wine and vase of flowers, and then drove to Osnago with all of the food balanced on our laps. Luckily my host dad was driving, and not Luca, because otherwise the vitello con tonnato wouldn't have ever made it to Osnago in one piece.
In Osnago, we all piled into the formal dining room, and shortly commenced eating. A snapshot: Four courses. Starting with an antipasto of four types of meat, insalata del mare, three types of salad that my host mom had made, three types of crostini, and lots of other stuff drenched in olive oil. Then risotto ai funghi....creamy perfection, with just enough woody flavor from the mushrooms. *sighs of contentment* Then lamb and potatoes, although by this point everyone was so stuffed that most people passed on it. Then gelato. Then colombo, a type of cake shaped like a dove which is traditional at Easter. Then caffè, finished off by a round of chocolate egg. I just wanted to make sure I recorded this meal for posterity.... But the really nice thing is that the food isn't the focus point. Everyone compliments everything and thoroughly enjoys it all, but no one pays any attention to how much you eat, unless to offer you more. Mainly it's just a time to enjoy family. Everyone talks really loudly and at the same time, spills wine on the tablecloth, and tries to stop the 97-year-old grandmother from trying to do everything by herself.
Afterwards everyone was basking in happiness and too much good food, and my family decided to go for a "giretto" since the weather was good. We finally made it to Bergamo, which is closer than Milan and actually much prettier, since all of the old stuff in Milan was destroyed during the World Wars.
When we got home, everyone was exhausted. We all drank warm milk with sugar (nature's comfort food) and ate peanuts and biscotti, while my host mom recounted embarassing childhood stories of Maria and Luca. And then bed.
La più bella Pasqua....per sempre!
Saturday, March 21, 2009
So much to say!
Starting nowhere in particular, Thursday was absolutely amazing. My host parents had to go to Como in the afternoon to sign something for their insurance company, and afterwards we drove all around the lake that connects Como and Lecco. The lake is quite extensive though, so the road winds for miles and miles through little tiny towns (which by now exist solely through the life-blood of tourism), all perched precariously on the cliffs and mountains overlooking the lake. The weather was very luckily gorgeous - there will be pictures eventually, although there's no way they can possibly do it justice!
There have been lots of really interesting moments in the past couple of weeks that stem from being an American abroad at a very interesting time in American and global history. I have yet to meet anyone who isn't very, very enthusiastic Obama - and simultaneously, very, very strongly anti-Bush. But at the same time, everyone is worried stiff about the economic crisis. Italy's economic boom is relatively recent, especially in terms of how old the country is, and there are still a lot of areas of instability, which are compounded by rising immigration, high unemployment rates, and the fact that everybody is disatisfied with everything the government does. All the time. Pretty much without exception, at least for the small part of Italy that I've seen. So sometimes people just ask questions about American music and habits (and usually if we're all overweight or obese), other times they very, very directly confront you about America's role in creating the current crisis.
It was really neat in today's English class, though, because we started analyzing Obama's inauguration speech. The English teacher is very good - she studied in England for a few years, so she speaks perfectly, and most of the class is actually focused on literature (we've been reading Richard III, and are starting Macbeth next week), so you don't actually lose out on much being a native-speaker. And today we started talking about accents in the US and Italy, because la Maroni (the English prof), had read an article in Time about people in the US cultivating their accents to alter their effect on other people. Afterwards, I tried to teach the other students how to talk like an American trying to talk like an Italian, and then they taught me how to speak like an Italian trying to speak like an American but actually speaking like a British person, who's confused about their place of birth and may or may not actually be Italian. This continued all the home on the bus.... Bellissima!!
Now approaching the seven week mark, it's easy to say that pretty much all of the expectations I had about everything have turned out to be completely wrong. :) There's absolutely no way to anticipate how complex everything ends up being. For example, the last thing I expected is that living in a family would be the hardest part of the experience. But in fact, everything is going absolutely wonderfully except, at times, the relationship between me and my host mother. It's very easy to forget that we've only been living together for 7 weeks, so you don't have the 17 years of mutual understanding that goes unsaid between me and my own parents. And when I found out I would be living in the north of Italy, I immediately switched mind-sets and assumed that I would be with a family that was very cultured, very modern, and very mainstream-European. Instead, my host mom takes enormous pride in still making gnocchi by hand, nobody uses a drying machine for laundry, and one of the most difficult conversations with my host mom was trying to explain the concept of pre-made spaghetti sauce. And I've learned to appreciate the fact that there's a whole lot more to this style of life than simply wanting to be "quaint."
Lots of exciting things coming up!! Tomorrow I'm going skiing with Intercultura, although unfortunately I'm actually the only student going... Everyone else is away with their families or doing an exchange in another part of Italy (unfortunately apparently not an option for the semester students in my region), so it will just be me and the volunteers. Although it's all good because they're all really nice and young and enthusiastic, and I want to talk about the host family stuff. The only problem is the "skiing" part, since my only skiing experience was a total and complete disaster, on the daunting peaks of the Rhode Island mountains. So probably I'll be sledding in the Alps, instead of skiing. Tuesday my class goes to Florence for three days!! And Italians know how to plan their school trips, so there's lots of spare time for strolling through piazzas, in addition to all of the Renaissance art-devouring. Then the 18th birthday of Viviana, one of the girls in my class is Friday, and Saturday Serena and I are planning to go to Milan to see Peter Pan. In Italian!
If people want to write letters, my address is towards the bottom of the blog. :)
Baci a tutti!
Starting nowhere in particular, Thursday was absolutely amazing. My host parents had to go to Como in the afternoon to sign something for their insurance company, and afterwards we drove all around the lake that connects Como and Lecco. The lake is quite extensive though, so the road winds for miles and miles through little tiny towns (which by now exist solely through the life-blood of tourism), all perched precariously on the cliffs and mountains overlooking the lake. The weather was very luckily gorgeous - there will be pictures eventually, although there's no way they can possibly do it justice!
There have been lots of really interesting moments in the past couple of weeks that stem from being an American abroad at a very interesting time in American and global history. I have yet to meet anyone who isn't very, very enthusiastic Obama - and simultaneously, very, very strongly anti-Bush. But at the same time, everyone is worried stiff about the economic crisis. Italy's economic boom is relatively recent, especially in terms of how old the country is, and there are still a lot of areas of instability, which are compounded by rising immigration, high unemployment rates, and the fact that everybody is disatisfied with everything the government does. All the time. Pretty much without exception, at least for the small part of Italy that I've seen. So sometimes people just ask questions about American music and habits (and usually if we're all overweight or obese), other times they very, very directly confront you about America's role in creating the current crisis.
It was really neat in today's English class, though, because we started analyzing Obama's inauguration speech. The English teacher is very good - she studied in England for a few years, so she speaks perfectly, and most of the class is actually focused on literature (we've been reading Richard III, and are starting Macbeth next week), so you don't actually lose out on much being a native-speaker. And today we started talking about accents in the US and Italy, because la Maroni (the English prof), had read an article in Time about people in the US cultivating their accents to alter their effect on other people. Afterwards, I tried to teach the other students how to talk like an American trying to talk like an Italian, and then they taught me how to speak like an Italian trying to speak like an American but actually speaking like a British person, who's confused about their place of birth and may or may not actually be Italian. This continued all the home on the bus.... Bellissima!!
Now approaching the seven week mark, it's easy to say that pretty much all of the expectations I had about everything have turned out to be completely wrong. :) There's absolutely no way to anticipate how complex everything ends up being. For example, the last thing I expected is that living in a family would be the hardest part of the experience. But in fact, everything is going absolutely wonderfully except, at times, the relationship between me and my host mother. It's very easy to forget that we've only been living together for 7 weeks, so you don't have the 17 years of mutual understanding that goes unsaid between me and my own parents. And when I found out I would be living in the north of Italy, I immediately switched mind-sets and assumed that I would be with a family that was very cultured, very modern, and very mainstream-European. Instead, my host mom takes enormous pride in still making gnocchi by hand, nobody uses a drying machine for laundry, and one of the most difficult conversations with my host mom was trying to explain the concept of pre-made spaghetti sauce. And I've learned to appreciate the fact that there's a whole lot more to this style of life than simply wanting to be "quaint."
Lots of exciting things coming up!! Tomorrow I'm going skiing with Intercultura, although unfortunately I'm actually the only student going... Everyone else is away with their families or doing an exchange in another part of Italy (unfortunately apparently not an option for the semester students in my region), so it will just be me and the volunteers. Although it's all good because they're all really nice and young and enthusiastic, and I want to talk about the host family stuff. The only problem is the "skiing" part, since my only skiing experience was a total and complete disaster, on the daunting peaks of the Rhode Island mountains. So probably I'll be sledding in the Alps, instead of skiing. Tuesday my class goes to Florence for three days!! And Italians know how to plan their school trips, so there's lots of spare time for strolling through piazzas, in addition to all of the Renaissance art-devouring. Then the 18th birthday of Viviana, one of the girls in my class is Friday, and Saturday Serena and I are planning to go to Milan to see Peter Pan. In Italian!
If people want to write letters, my address is towards the bottom of the blog. :)
Baci a tutti!
Saturday, March 7, 2009
I really should start writing more often - way too much happens and changes in the course of a two weeks that can possibly be contained in a single entry, if we're aiming for a length shorter than the fifth Harry Potter.
In fact, there's so much that could be said (and thus it would take way too much effort to organize all of it), here's another round of impressionism:
- kissing EVERYONE (well, more or less) on the cheek when you meet, and then again when you leave. Consider this situation: six friends meet at a pub, with two groups of three having traveled together. When the two groups meet, everyone who hasn't traveled together has to exchange kisses. The entire procedure must be then be repeated two hours later when everyone gets ready to leave. ......It turns into A LOT of kisses in a very short amount of time. It also means, though, that you immediately break through the ice when you meet someone for the first time. This includes friends of your host sister, host siblings of other exchange students, grandparents of your host sister, host parents of other exchange students, random other friends of friends of your host sister who you happen to meet at odd moments, and the occasional overly-enthusiastic canine. It also makes you particularly aware of how conscious Americans can be about the idea of "personal space."
- never wearing shoes in the house, always flip-flops. And occasionally forgetting that when I leave for school in the morning, causing my host mother to frantically yell "le scarpe!"
- oranges being red inside! Not orange!
- the fantastically amazing panorama from the church in Monticello, looking out in every direction from Milan to south, Torino to the west, and more mountains to the east.
- Carnevale! The streets of every city I've been to in the past week still show traces of all the confetti that's produced during the parades and parties. And now I have a tissue-paper lei and hula skirt which my host mother thinks I should bring back with me, since it took seven hours to make. So if you have need of a tissue paper hawaiian outfit, definitely let me know.
- The other exchange students! Saturday night a group of us met in Lecco for Sigrid's birthday, the girl from the Faroe Islands. We ended up eating in a Chinese restaurant, which was hilarious. We waited an hour and a half, because the restaurant was so small and there were so many of us, to go to "La Pagoda" and order dishes such as "spaghetti con sugo curry." Eating Italianized Chinese food at 10 o'clock at night with, among others, a girl from Hong Kong who hasn't eaten Chinese food for six months is, again, not an experience to be missed!
- Worms II. This is a truly amazing computer game that Maria introduced me to last night. Two players each have four small pink worms. The objective of the game is to eliminate the other player's worms, using weapons such as a flame thrower, teleporter, ninja star, Super Sheep, and rope. Bizarre, to say the least.
- Step Up II. Maria loves hip hop dance, and since it's a distinctly American art form, all of the television shows and movies about it are in English. So now those are my absolute favorite shows and movies, since I can actually understand them. Yesterday during Italian lessons, the boy from Ecuador tried to teach me how to do some sort of hip hop sliding move, but it was a decided failure...
- The profound grief that comes with the realization that, no matter how good it is, you can't possibly accept every offer for gelato that comes to you.
- World Year of Astronomy, enjoyed in true global style! Thursday night, Anna (a girl from my class) invited me to go with her, her mother, and her sister to the library in Merate for a lecture from the president of the National Italian Astronomy Association. Popular astronomy really doesn't change over time and space....
- So much pasta it's really kind of ridiculous.
- Starting to understand bits and pieces of the local dialect! Mainly, you just replace the endings of words with something that sounds kind of like "euhe"
- The fact that, yes, teenagers can drink, and the fact that it's in no way, shape, or form an issue, at least with the other girls in my class. Last Thursday, we went out to a pub in Merate (which in and of itself felt a little weird, since the pub is actually a Mexican restaurant, complete with fake totem pole in the middle). Before I had even started to consider the question of what to drink, Cecilia immediately said "no alcohol!" and started translating all of the descriptions of the non alcoholic drinks. But I was feeling very unwisely confident in my language ability, and assured her that I was fully capable of reading the menu myself. So, while the other girls were drinking things with names such as "Sex on the beach" (another language note: nobody actually noticed what this meant, except me - it's just considered really hip and cool to string English words together. If you're lucky, they might make sense gramatically), I accidentally ended up ordering grape-fruit juice (and also didn't pick up on the clues when Claudia said "ah, non mi piace, troppo acido". Quindi, my first night out in Italy was in a Mexican restaurant slurping grpe-fruit juice. :)
Ciao ciao!
Mary
In fact, there's so much that could be said (and thus it would take way too much effort to organize all of it), here's another round of impressionism:
- kissing EVERYONE (well, more or less) on the cheek when you meet, and then again when you leave. Consider this situation: six friends meet at a pub, with two groups of three having traveled together. When the two groups meet, everyone who hasn't traveled together has to exchange kisses. The entire procedure must be then be repeated two hours later when everyone gets ready to leave. ......It turns into A LOT of kisses in a very short amount of time. It also means, though, that you immediately break through the ice when you meet someone for the first time. This includes friends of your host sister, host siblings of other exchange students, grandparents of your host sister, host parents of other exchange students, random other friends of friends of your host sister who you happen to meet at odd moments, and the occasional overly-enthusiastic canine. It also makes you particularly aware of how conscious Americans can be about the idea of "personal space."
- never wearing shoes in the house, always flip-flops. And occasionally forgetting that when I leave for school in the morning, causing my host mother to frantically yell "le scarpe!"
- oranges being red inside! Not orange!
- the fantastically amazing panorama from the church in Monticello, looking out in every direction from Milan to south, Torino to the west, and more mountains to the east.
- Carnevale! The streets of every city I've been to in the past week still show traces of all the confetti that's produced during the parades and parties. And now I have a tissue-paper lei and hula skirt which my host mother thinks I should bring back with me, since it took seven hours to make. So if you have need of a tissue paper hawaiian outfit, definitely let me know.
- The other exchange students! Saturday night a group of us met in Lecco for Sigrid's birthday, the girl from the Faroe Islands. We ended up eating in a Chinese restaurant, which was hilarious. We waited an hour and a half, because the restaurant was so small and there were so many of us, to go to "La Pagoda" and order dishes such as "spaghetti con sugo curry." Eating Italianized Chinese food at 10 o'clock at night with, among others, a girl from Hong Kong who hasn't eaten Chinese food for six months is, again, not an experience to be missed!
- Worms II. This is a truly amazing computer game that Maria introduced me to last night. Two players each have four small pink worms. The objective of the game is to eliminate the other player's worms, using weapons such as a flame thrower, teleporter, ninja star, Super Sheep, and rope. Bizarre, to say the least.
- Step Up II. Maria loves hip hop dance, and since it's a distinctly American art form, all of the television shows and movies about it are in English. So now those are my absolute favorite shows and movies, since I can actually understand them. Yesterday during Italian lessons, the boy from Ecuador tried to teach me how to do some sort of hip hop sliding move, but it was a decided failure...
- The profound grief that comes with the realization that, no matter how good it is, you can't possibly accept every offer for gelato that comes to you.
- World Year of Astronomy, enjoyed in true global style! Thursday night, Anna (a girl from my class) invited me to go with her, her mother, and her sister to the library in Merate for a lecture from the president of the National Italian Astronomy Association. Popular astronomy really doesn't change over time and space....
- So much pasta it's really kind of ridiculous.
- Starting to understand bits and pieces of the local dialect! Mainly, you just replace the endings of words with something that sounds kind of like "euhe"
- The fact that, yes, teenagers can drink, and the fact that it's in no way, shape, or form an issue, at least with the other girls in my class. Last Thursday, we went out to a pub in Merate (which in and of itself felt a little weird, since the pub is actually a Mexican restaurant, complete with fake totem pole in the middle). Before I had even started to consider the question of what to drink, Cecilia immediately said "no alcohol!" and started translating all of the descriptions of the non alcoholic drinks. But I was feeling very unwisely confident in my language ability, and assured her that I was fully capable of reading the menu myself. So, while the other girls were drinking things with names such as "Sex on the beach" (another language note: nobody actually noticed what this meant, except me - it's just considered really hip and cool to string English words together. If you're lucky, they might make sense gramatically), I accidentally ended up ordering grape-fruit juice (and also didn't pick up on the clues when Claudia said "ah, non mi piace, troppo acido". Quindi, my first night out in Italy was in a Mexican restaurant slurping grpe-fruit juice. :)
Ciao ciao!
Mary
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Buona sera!
And my philosophy teacher (the one from Calabria who always chews an unlit cigar:
We spent an entire class period taking pictures because the Italian\Latin teacher wasn't in school (this made for a very, very happy day - "la lotti", as she's known, is by far the most severe and difficult teacher that we have. When we found out she wasn't going to be in school, there was a class-room wide round of hugs and kisses).
Ah, where to begin.... Starting from where the last entry left off - Milan is very satisfyingly enormous and overwhelming.
Saturday, while I was typing the last blog entry, Maria came in and completely randomly announced that we were leaving for Milan in twenty minutes. So I clapped and shouted in excitement, and then asked "perchè?" (why?) Maria's response: "boh" (linguistic note - "boh" is a really lovely word that very eloquently and concisely expresses all sorts of things ranging from "whatever" to "who knows" to "I don't care," and is highly favored among Italian youth). But since it's Milan, you really don't need a reason to go....
The distance between Monticello and Milan is more or less the same as the distance between Providence and Boston, but it takes longer because, as usual, the roads aren't straight. Luca drove us all (Maria and me) to a subway station, and then the three of us took the train the rest of the way in. Walking up the subway steps, the first thing that you see is a sweeping pedestrian walk-way completely lined with grandeur buildings filled with fashion labels (Prada, Armani, Dolce and Gabbana.....the works), all leading to Milan's greatest treasure, the Duomo. We got there around four, so everything was lit up by gorgeous afternoon sunlight.
There are lots of pictures of streets, because streets in Italy seem to be particularly photogenic. :)
We walked around for a couple of hours, absorbing the atmosphere and stopping to look at the Scala theater and Luca's office, which is RIGHT IN THE VERY ABSOLUTE CENTER of everything. When I asked him what it's like to work RIGHT IN THE VERY ABSOLUTE CENTER of Milan, his response was also "boh", and said that except when you come in the morning and leave at night, from a street RIGHT IN THE VERY ABSOLUTE CENTER of Milan, it's no different from living or working anywhere else. Go figure.
This week is Carnevale all throughout Italy (and there will be more on that after this weekend), so the streets were filled with little kids dressed up in costumes, exactly like Halloween in the US. And Carnevale is synonomous with confetti, so the streets were also covered with little pieces of colored paper.
If it hadn't been Milan, the whole trip would actually have been a little counterintuitive. We traveled a total of 2.5 hours, braved Italian drivers and, even more frightening, Luca's driving (again see below), so that Maria could buy a plain gray sweatshirt at H&M. But again, it was Milan, so definitely worth it to see the city. Hopefully there will be more trips soon, and a chance to actually go inside the Duomo!
Now, Italian drivers. To put it in perspective: having lived here for six months, when I get back, there will never again be any reason to fear driving in Rhode Island. Seriously. A few days ago, my host dad was driving me back from school, because I had stayed after with the English teacher to try to hunt down more textbooks. Roads in Italy are pretty narrow; as in, there's usually just enough room for two cars to comfortably, but narrowly, pass without having a head-on collision. That would mean that there really isn't room for a truck and a car to pass each other, although somehow it magically always ends up working out. So, my host dad is driving and we're getting pretty close to bridge, which means there isn't really a shoulder on either side. Then, all of a sudden, his cell phone starts ringing. So, of course, he answers it. So, he's driving with his left hand, holding the cell phone with his right, and Oh? did I mention? the car is a stick-shift - occasionally letting go of the wheel completely to change gears. And I almost forgot- Italians also like to talk with their hands. A lot. Including on cell phones. Are you picturing all of this in your mind? Okay, now imagine us approaching the bridge, with an enormous tractor trailer coming the opposite direction, just far enough away that we'll intersect it RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BRIDGE where there isn't any extra room. At this point, I've said goodbye to everyone and said thanks for at least having a chance to read the 7th Harry Potter before I died. But since this is Italy and things like this are a daily occurrence, the car magically and smoothly slid past the oncoming truck and we continued on our merry way.
Driving with Luca is even more of an adventure, because you get to add him singing along in Italian to all of his favorite songs on the radio.
School continues to be one of the best parts of the experience!
This is my class:
And my philosophy teacher (the one from Calabria who always chews an unlit cigar:
We spent an entire class period taking pictures because the Italian\Latin teacher wasn't in school (this made for a very, very happy day - "la lotti", as she's known, is by far the most severe and difficult teacher that we have. When we found out she wasn't going to be in school, there was a class-room wide round of hugs and kisses).
More ways in which school in Italy is different - last Friday, as a joke my class decided to give the philosophy prof a birthday party, since his birthday was Saturday and they were hoping to bribe him into not giving them oral exams this week. So on Friday when he walked into the classroom, Anna ran up to the front with a bottle of champagne (yes, really) and Claudia and Cecilia put a cupcake on his desk with a candle in it. This all seems really generous and extravagant, right? But the prof takes one look at everything and shrieks at the top of his voice that we can't possibly celebrate his birthday because it's unlucky to do it the day before! All of the students kept asking "stai scherzando, vero?" (you're joking, right?) But he was totally serious. So we had a bottle of champagne sitting in the back of the classroom for a week, until yesterday the prof finally let us celebrate for him and we split the bottle 17 ways.
No school tomorrow, Saturday, or Sunday for Carnevale! AFS is going to Lecco for the festival\parade on Saturday, and we all have to dress in clothes from a different country, so tomorrow I'm going to spend the day trying to figure out how to make origami flowers for a lei. I decided that Hawaii was the cheapest option, despite my horrendous track record at origami projects.... Vediamo!
Tonight eight or nine of the girls in my class are going out to a pub in Casatenovo! None of our other plans to go out have worked out, so this will be the first time. Everyone's really nice (and very mature and responsible, compared to impressions of American teenagers) so it should be really fun.
Everything is set for me to go with my class to Florence for three days in March!! We're going with the History of Art teacher who's BRAVISSIMA - incredibly nice, very enthusiastic, and very very funny. I can't wait!! Hopefully it'll also be possible to go to Strausbourg later in the year with another class, since Max and Ryoto are both going too. The school is also going to be offering free classes after school for music, so I've just signed up for piano and voice lessons! It'll be really good to have a chance to meet more students and be out of the house more... Teachers and students are also really enthusiastic to help me find a school for dance, so hopefully that will work out as well! At the least, I hope to connect with people enough that it might be possible to see a show at The Scala... :)
A presto!
baci
Mary
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Ciao a tutti! I've been writing this for like four days, so the meaning of "yesterday" and "tomorrow" is kind of irrelevant.
So, I just thought that the world needed to know that my life was pretty much changed forever yesterday when I discovered that schools in Italy have machines that dispense instant espresso and cappuccino for roughly $.75.
Starting this week, every Monday and Wednesday, for two hours in the morning and two more in the afternoon, Max and Rioto (the two other exchange students at Agnesi, both with Rotary - Max is American, Rioto is Japanese) and I go to Italian lessons with other kids from the area. We're the only exchange students; everyone else has immigrated to Italy with their parents. There are a six girls from Romania, a girl and boy from Russia, three girls and a boy from India, a girl from Albania, and one boy from Ecuador, but the three exchange students are the only ones going to both morning and afternoon sessions. Anyway. Yesterday was our second morning, and after an hour of working (kind of, but I'll get back to that later), Max and Rioto wanted to eat something (this is a very common occurrence). I decided to go along to see more of the school, since the lessons aren't actually held at Agnesi.
And then I saw the espresso machine. To begin (prepare yourselves: this is a truly poetic description), it has like 12 different choices based on whether you want sugar/chocolate or a cappuccino or just plain espresso, and then after you make your choice it whirs and hums and performs its espresso-magic and then down comes a little plastic cup and a little plastic stirrer. And then the machine beeps its Italian greeting, you lift a little plastic door, take the cup, and walk away with a steaming (in my case) cappucino. I'm seriously still excited by this discovery, and eagerly anticipating next Wednesday. :)
A word on the actual lessons - they're way more fun than I would have ever expected. Everybody has been in Italy for different amounts of time, and been under different pressures to actually learn the language, so we don't actually have a planned, orderly lesson. Instead the teacher assigns exercises in books as we go along, stopping at each individual student. Except that the teacher is really young and relaxed, so this quickly turns into goofing off and throwing things at each other, albeit in Italian.
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Maria just came in and told me that we're going to Milan this afternoon!!!!!!! Okay, back to blogging:
Things keep getting better in school. I now have books for almost all the subjects, except Latin, history, and math, so I can follow along in the discussions (kind of sort of). English is definitely my favorite, besides actually understanding everything going on. The teacher studied in England for a few years, so her English is really really good, and this year they're concentrating on literature, so instead of doing grammar worksheets, we get to discuss Shakespeare. Right now we're reading Richard III (well, excerpts anyway), and since I'm the only native-speaker I've been reading all of the longer passages and soliloquies. And the best part is that since I'm an exchange student and have learned over the past three weeks to absolutely embrace making a fool out of myself, there's no reason to shy away from hamming things up. Also, probably the most isolating thing about not knowing the language is that you can't follow along when people tell jokes or when something funny is on tv, so it's really really nice to actually know what I'm laughing at when Shakespeare makes funny plays on words, or other things like that.
This is a nicely disorganized entry, so I thought that now I'd talk for a minute about food, which is rather important here. We do eat lots of very identifiably Italian food, but things vary a little bit because of all of the culture associated with living in the mountains. Lunch is nearly always meat (chicken, bistecca, sometimes fish) and salad or carrots or potatoes and beets (I nearly died of happiness when I walked in from school and saw a large bowl of beets on the table). Dinner has included, over the past three weeks (it really doesn't feel like three weeks already) pastasciutta, lasagna, crespelle (which took two days to make, including all of the crepes, the ragu, and the bechamel sauce), risotto (tonight it's risotto milanese!), minestrone (which here means a soup with rice, potatoes, and lots and lots of parsley), and pizza, all of which are very recognizably Italian. But last night we eat something whose name I still can't remember, even though I asked like three times, which was apparently very typical of the mountains. Potatoes (which are in a bag hanging outside of a window, so when you want a potato, you open the window and reach out to grab one), cabbage, a funny gray type of pasta which also has a name that I forget, and roughly a pound of cheese. Oohh!! And the cheese here is soooo gooooodddd!!! Last Sunday we just ate cheese, bread, and vegetables, and it was supremely amazing. And then Tuesday night, when we were going to eat risotto but didn't because there wasn't any rice, my host mother made the absolute most extraordinary macaroni and cheese that has ever existed.
Since I'm on a role with the food topic - last night we had gelato for the first time! Every couple of days my host dad has to run errands and asks me to come with him, I guess so I can see more of the area. So yesterday we went out in the afternoon so he could drop stuff off at the Gruppo Alpini, and then walked around Casatenovo, a town near Monticello, while he explained all of the finer points of Italian butchers too me. Then we waited to pick up Maria, who has a prep class for a big English exam Friday afternoons. As soon as we got back to the car, Maria started saying "gelato gelato gelato gelato", even though it was 40 degrees out and windy. So we ended up going to the gelateria in Casatenovo. I was really not going to get any, because it was freezing cold and by this point after 6 pm, so dinner was relatively soon. But my host dad was appalled that I didn't want any, and I realized that I was in Italy and this was gelato, so why not... Two flavors were mandatory, so I had frutto di bosco (berries) and limone. It was absolutely sublime.
I think that's enough of food for a while. More later (including more pictures), because now WE'RE LEAVING FOR MILAN!!!!!!!
So, I just thought that the world needed to know that my life was pretty much changed forever yesterday when I discovered that schools in Italy have machines that dispense instant espresso and cappuccino for roughly $.75.
Starting this week, every Monday and Wednesday, for two hours in the morning and two more in the afternoon, Max and Rioto (the two other exchange students at Agnesi, both with Rotary - Max is American, Rioto is Japanese) and I go to Italian lessons with other kids from the area. We're the only exchange students; everyone else has immigrated to Italy with their parents. There are a six girls from Romania, a girl and boy from Russia, three girls and a boy from India, a girl from Albania, and one boy from Ecuador, but the three exchange students are the only ones going to both morning and afternoon sessions. Anyway. Yesterday was our second morning, and after an hour of working (kind of, but I'll get back to that later), Max and Rioto wanted to eat something (this is a very common occurrence). I decided to go along to see more of the school, since the lessons aren't actually held at Agnesi.
And then I saw the espresso machine. To begin (prepare yourselves: this is a truly poetic description), it has like 12 different choices based on whether you want sugar/chocolate or a cappuccino or just plain espresso, and then after you make your choice it whirs and hums and performs its espresso-magic and then down comes a little plastic cup and a little plastic stirrer. And then the machine beeps its Italian greeting, you lift a little plastic door, take the cup, and walk away with a steaming (in my case) cappucino. I'm seriously still excited by this discovery, and eagerly anticipating next Wednesday. :)
A word on the actual lessons - they're way more fun than I would have ever expected. Everybody has been in Italy for different amounts of time, and been under different pressures to actually learn the language, so we don't actually have a planned, orderly lesson. Instead the teacher assigns exercises in books as we go along, stopping at each individual student. Except that the teacher is really young and relaxed, so this quickly turns into goofing off and throwing things at each other, albeit in Italian.
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Maria just came in and told me that we're going to Milan this afternoon!!!!!!! Okay, back to blogging:
Things keep getting better in school. I now have books for almost all the subjects, except Latin, history, and math, so I can follow along in the discussions (kind of sort of). English is definitely my favorite, besides actually understanding everything going on. The teacher studied in England for a few years, so her English is really really good, and this year they're concentrating on literature, so instead of doing grammar worksheets, we get to discuss Shakespeare. Right now we're reading Richard III (well, excerpts anyway), and since I'm the only native-speaker I've been reading all of the longer passages and soliloquies. And the best part is that since I'm an exchange student and have learned over the past three weeks to absolutely embrace making a fool out of myself, there's no reason to shy away from hamming things up. Also, probably the most isolating thing about not knowing the language is that you can't follow along when people tell jokes or when something funny is on tv, so it's really really nice to actually know what I'm laughing at when Shakespeare makes funny plays on words, or other things like that.
This is a nicely disorganized entry, so I thought that now I'd talk for a minute about food, which is rather important here. We do eat lots of very identifiably Italian food, but things vary a little bit because of all of the culture associated with living in the mountains. Lunch is nearly always meat (chicken, bistecca, sometimes fish) and salad or carrots or potatoes and beets (I nearly died of happiness when I walked in from school and saw a large bowl of beets on the table). Dinner has included, over the past three weeks (it really doesn't feel like three weeks already) pastasciutta, lasagna, crespelle (which took two days to make, including all of the crepes, the ragu, and the bechamel sauce), risotto (tonight it's risotto milanese!), minestrone (which here means a soup with rice, potatoes, and lots and lots of parsley), and pizza, all of which are very recognizably Italian. But last night we eat something whose name I still can't remember, even though I asked like three times, which was apparently very typical of the mountains. Potatoes (which are in a bag hanging outside of a window, so when you want a potato, you open the window and reach out to grab one), cabbage, a funny gray type of pasta which also has a name that I forget, and roughly a pound of cheese. Oohh!! And the cheese here is soooo gooooodddd!!! Last Sunday we just ate cheese, bread, and vegetables, and it was supremely amazing. And then Tuesday night, when we were going to eat risotto but didn't because there wasn't any rice, my host mother made the absolute most extraordinary macaroni and cheese that has ever existed.
Since I'm on a role with the food topic - last night we had gelato for the first time! Every couple of days my host dad has to run errands and asks me to come with him, I guess so I can see more of the area. So yesterday we went out in the afternoon so he could drop stuff off at the Gruppo Alpini, and then walked around Casatenovo, a town near Monticello, while he explained all of the finer points of Italian butchers too me. Then we waited to pick up Maria, who has a prep class for a big English exam Friday afternoons. As soon as we got back to the car, Maria started saying "gelato gelato gelato gelato", even though it was 40 degrees out and windy. So we ended up going to the gelateria in Casatenovo. I was really not going to get any, because it was freezing cold and by this point after 6 pm, so dinner was relatively soon. But my host dad was appalled that I didn't want any, and I realized that I was in Italy and this was gelato, so why not... Two flavors were mandatory, so I had frutto di bosco (berries) and limone. It was absolutely sublime.
I think that's enough of food for a while. More later (including more pictures), because now WE'RE LEAVING FOR MILAN!!!!!!!
Friday, February 13, 2009
Starting out on an exchange program (and then trying to right a blog about it, hahahaha) is a lot like being in an impressionist painting. There's so much going on and so many new things that it's completely impossible to describe it all, or give a blow-by-blow account of everything that happens and everything that I'm experiencing. i.e. I'm lazy. So! In true Monèt style (I'm not sure if there's an accent in his name, I just wanted to play with they really spiffy keyboards that make it way easier to write using accents), here's a list of what, for me, right at this very moment, identifies Italy:
- My Philosophy teacher, who dresses all in black and who Cecilia, one of the girls in my class, has a wild crush on. He chews an unlit cigar everyday when he comes into class, and speaks with a thick southern accent (North\South prejudices are still very pronounced - the other students describe it as not being "pure" Italian)
-the fire in a wood stove in the living room of my house, which is the only reliable source of heat and forces everyone to spend large amounts of time reading or watching TV together, to stay warm
- the weekly deliveries of bread and biscotti from my host dad's brother, and the smell of the bread during every lunchand dinner when we put it on top of the stove to warm up
-hot lunch every day, which my host parents have waiting when Maria and I get home from school (actually Mom, when you read this, I kind of miss making my own lunch and just eating peanut butter!) We only really eat two substantial meals a day, so Maria and I end up eating tons at lunch because we're starving after all morning at school, and we don't get back until 1:30-3:00, depending on the day of the week.
-the view from the classroom window, overlooking church towers and the Alps (yes, really)
- three or four girls in my class going out for a smoke every day during the 11 o'clock break
- one or two girls (and one boy) hanging up their motorcycle helmets on the coathangers in the morning, when they get to school
-my host dad baking at home, making pizza or tarts or biscotti, usually wearing a bright red, flowery apron, and often singing at the same time. His repertoire ranges from Beyoncè to church hymns.
-my host dad's parents' house, located in the middle of Osnago's winding streets, with walls from the 1400s
-homemade gnocchi on Saturdays
-eating bananas (with sugar and lemon juice) with my host dad while I was writing this in my journal....even though I was still full from lunch
-students at school shouting and yelling and crying as they decide who's going to volunteer to be interrogated (self-sacrifice anyone?)
-watching television during lunch and dinner (and the television always being on from 7:00 onward). Right now it's downhill skiing during the day and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" at night (the Italian version), which everyone plays along with. Maria and I just watched "America's Next Top Dance Crew" which is my new favorite show because it's in English and I miss dancing. :)
-my host family being way more conscious of natural resources (or at least, my host parents) Lights are always turned off in unused rooms, doors are closed to save heat, and the only warm room is the one with the wood stove. Clothes are washed much, much less often, and when it rains, my host mom dries them in front of the fire. Food is never, ever, ever wasted. In fact, I just got reprimanded for that tonight - it turns out there's actually a word in Italian for cleaning your plate. Stray strands of pasta or grains of rice are not acceptable.... Every plate is cleaned with bread, no leftovers go uncomsumed, and every morsel of flour is incorporated when my host dad bakes. Showers are taken much more rarely - I feel odd taking them every three days.
-The girl sitting next to me in school, named Serena, who's officialy the nicest person in the world. After every announcement or discussion, she turns and asks if I've understood, and since more often than not I haven't, she always repeats it in simple, slow Italian.
-Seeing Montevecchia every day, to and from school
-Maria telling me about what she likes, always punctuated by "Che bbbeeelllllloooooooo!" or "It's fantastic!"
-Maria reading Frankenstein aloud or doing her English homeowrk while I helpf. or her standing in front of the fire (the most coveted place in the house) and practicing out loud for interrogations.
-The in-your-face prominence (at least to a die-hard-separation-of-church-and-state American) of the Catholic church
-seeing the Alps every time we turn a corner in the car (I still get a shock everytime)
-the morning routine of giant bowls of tea and biscotti
-trying to remember all of the names of Papa's extensive family and making the distinction between family and friends. This is not helped by the fact that every other person is also named Mary.... :)
-church bells, every hour on the hour. The one's in Monticello are simple and just give you the time. The one's in Merate which you can hear at school are much more elaborate.
I'm going to go to sleep now......school on Saturday!
Baci a tutti-
- My Philosophy teacher, who dresses all in black and who Cecilia, one of the girls in my class, has a wild crush on. He chews an unlit cigar everyday when he comes into class, and speaks with a thick southern accent (North\South prejudices are still very pronounced - the other students describe it as not being "pure" Italian)
-the fire in a wood stove in the living room of my house, which is the only reliable source of heat and forces everyone to spend large amounts of time reading or watching TV together, to stay warm
- the weekly deliveries of bread and biscotti from my host dad's brother, and the smell of the bread during every lunchand dinner when we put it on top of the stove to warm up
-hot lunch every day, which my host parents have waiting when Maria and I get home from school (actually Mom, when you read this, I kind of miss making my own lunch and just eating peanut butter!) We only really eat two substantial meals a day, so Maria and I end up eating tons at lunch because we're starving after all morning at school, and we don't get back until 1:30-3:00, depending on the day of the week.
-the view from the classroom window, overlooking church towers and the Alps (yes, really)
- three or four girls in my class going out for a smoke every day during the 11 o'clock break
- one or two girls (and one boy) hanging up their motorcycle helmets on the coathangers in the morning, when they get to school
-my host dad baking at home, making pizza or tarts or biscotti, usually wearing a bright red, flowery apron, and often singing at the same time. His repertoire ranges from Beyoncè to church hymns.
-my host dad's parents' house, located in the middle of Osnago's winding streets, with walls from the 1400s
-homemade gnocchi on Saturdays
-eating bananas (with sugar and lemon juice) with my host dad while I was writing this in my journal....even though I was still full from lunch
-students at school shouting and yelling and crying as they decide who's going to volunteer to be interrogated (self-sacrifice anyone?)
-watching television during lunch and dinner (and the television always being on from 7:00 onward). Right now it's downhill skiing during the day and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" at night (the Italian version), which everyone plays along with. Maria and I just watched "America's Next Top Dance Crew" which is my new favorite show because it's in English and I miss dancing. :)
-my host family being way more conscious of natural resources (or at least, my host parents) Lights are always turned off in unused rooms, doors are closed to save heat, and the only warm room is the one with the wood stove. Clothes are washed much, much less often, and when it rains, my host mom dries them in front of the fire. Food is never, ever, ever wasted. In fact, I just got reprimanded for that tonight - it turns out there's actually a word in Italian for cleaning your plate. Stray strands of pasta or grains of rice are not acceptable.... Every plate is cleaned with bread, no leftovers go uncomsumed, and every morsel of flour is incorporated when my host dad bakes. Showers are taken much more rarely - I feel odd taking them every three days.
-The girl sitting next to me in school, named Serena, who's officialy the nicest person in the world. After every announcement or discussion, she turns and asks if I've understood, and since more often than not I haven't, she always repeats it in simple, slow Italian.
-Seeing Montevecchia every day, to and from school
-Maria telling me about what she likes, always punctuated by "Che bbbeeelllllloooooooo!" or "It's fantastic!"
-Maria reading Frankenstein aloud or doing her English homeowrk while I helpf. or her standing in front of the fire (the most coveted place in the house) and practicing out loud for interrogations.
-The in-your-face prominence (at least to a die-hard-separation-of-church-and-state American) of the Catholic church
-seeing the Alps every time we turn a corner in the car (I still get a shock everytime)
-the morning routine of giant bowls of tea and biscotti
-trying to remember all of the names of Papa's extensive family and making the distinction between family and friends. This is not helped by the fact that every other person is also named Mary.... :)
-church bells, every hour on the hour. The one's in Monticello are simple and just give you the time. The one's in Merate which you can hear at school are much more elaborate.
I'm going to go to sleep now......school on Saturday!
Baci a tutti-
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