Chaotic

The three-year-olds that are my Friday-evening class are adorable. However... the craziness. It is... crazy.

As I sing the opening bars of the "hello song" which is too incredibly inane to even record here, they stick out their tongues and start spluttering at me. And cosi' via. You can tell they're delighted in their naughtiness. It's killingly cute, but not ideal from a discipline standpoint.

Ten minutes later, I am seated on the pedana (bench-y thing) with them (this is to provide maximum access for holding them in place) reading a story. One little girl is listening attentively. Another is attempting to distract her by rattling a metallic box and its contents under her nose. The third little girl is sorting the crayons into different bins according to color (which is a marked improvement on last week, when she kept herself busy by systematically snapping them in half), and the two boys are alternately sitting down to rip pages out of a book and crying "facciamo un giro!" before running a few laps around the room.

This somehow results in one little boy's nose being pushed against the wall. I try to comfort him while two of the others amuse themselves by turning the heaters on and off (by twisting a dial - a trick I inadvertently taught them a few weeks ago when using the heaters to demonstrate the concept of wind; I now know better). "He's fine," his mother reassures me, sticking her head in (presumably as a result of that crazy mother-radar/sixth sense) and glancing around. I see the room through her eyes for a moment: mass chaos. But at least no one is bleeding.

This thought comforts me for the next portion of the lesson, during which we make a collage of cut-out pictures of petals and leaves. I try in vain to get one of the two shy girls to repeat "leaf, please!" while a mother pokes her head in to check on them. I can't decide whether the expression on her face is one of skepticism or pity. Or perhaps she's just trying to figure out why the third little girl (who is the tiniest bit matta, in my opinion) is assiduously trying to ram a crayon into the center of a glue stick. She raises her eyebrows briefly before retreating into the relative safety of the hallway. I can almost hear her thinking "seems a bit strange, but the brochure does say 'highly trained and very experienced madrelinguiste'".

"Leaf, please!" chorus the two little boys as soon as the door has closed and all witnesses are safely out of earshot. I repress a sigh. "Good job!" I enthuse instead.

By the end of the lesson, two of the little girls have fashioned a bed out of some lengths of cloth and a few cushions we keep in the room, and the little boys have climbed into a basket and are pretending it's a train. The other little girl is spreading glue down the front of her dress.

It takes me ten minutes to drag them away from their various forms of amusement - none of which are related to the original theme (flowers) - and eject them from the classroom. In the process, one little boy manages to clock the other in the eye with a puzzle piece, scratching his eyelid.

So someone is bleeding after all.

Drivel

Taralli are delicious. In particular, the ones that Conad has, in the red bag. Probably also the ones that you actually get in Puglia, but I haven't been there. It's very far down. (Why do some people call it Apulia? It took me a while to figure out that those were the same place, and I still can't figure out with the difference is.)

I went to some Italian lessons last week. That was fun. We chatted about verb tenses and did some exercises with that 'come se fossero' tense, which is possibly my favorite. I really enjoy all of the Ss in it. I'm really jealous of how some of my little little students (like even three year olds) insert it so fluently into conversation. Sigh.

Speaking of three-year-olds, last week one asked me out. "Dopo, vieni a casa con me?" he queried, tugging on my hand and looking up at me. The adorable-ness was truly overwhelming. And then he and his little friend got into a fight over who I would go home with. Simply too cute.

Adorable-ness notwithstanding, I'm exhausted. The sweat-shop-like work schedule is getting to me a bit. Also the rest of the staff is ill, so perhaps I will be, soon, too. In light of this, I have elected not to celebrate the warm weather by wearing sandals. I also don't want to give anyone a stroke. Bah. Anyway, I'm off to teach some beginners... and then another beginner... and some more beginners. Four and half hours down... three and a half to go.

One more thing: I bought some erbazzone today (because it was all I had time to eat) and faceva schiffo. I feel that the fact that I have becoming a discriminating erbazzone connaisseur makes me quasi-Reggiana. However, this only slightly mitigates the fact that it was truly revolting. Will purchase some healthful and practically calorie-free soup on my way back to work. Am becoming obese here in the land of good food.

Okay. Next time perhaps I will treat you to some uncharacteristically eloquent prose rather than this stream-of-consciousness nonsense.

Miscellaneous

The weather has been getting warmer. It's very pleasant. I bimbi are still all bundled up in their parkas and wool hats, though. At home, I'd almost be wandering around in a t-shirt (okay, maybe a sweater) in weather like this, but here I don't dare even get out my spring-y-ish trench coat for fear that it would be an irreperable faux pas. One of my colleagues started wearing shoes without stockings again a few days ago (gasp!) but she has a better accent than I do, so somehow that makes it okay... um... in my head, anyway. What do you want to bet that the second spring starts "officially" (the 21st) everbody's beige trench coats come out all at once? It's like synchronized swimming but with fashion over here.

In the meantime... visited Piacenza the other day. This is significant (in my head) because it's the end of the regionale line. Although, actually, I think you can take the regionale all the way to Milan. But maybe it's a different one or something. In any case, it was exciting. They have several exceedingly creepy churches in that town. Also some excellent gelato. And some very impressive horse statues. And a lot more gente per strada then we have in Reggio.

Took a walk along the river Crostolo this afternoon. Pleasant weather, but my coat was bothersome. The river Crostolo is not very impressive. It's more of a trickle, really. Still. Will give it another try when lighter attire is permissible.

Taught in a scuola media yesterday. Four identical lessons in a row. I liked the kids better than I thought I would, though. Let's face it: 11/12/13 are not particularly lovely ages, but they were actually really sweet. I have now taught children of all ages from 2 to 13, and also 17-ish. (I don't know, actually: quarta superiore - how old are they?). In any case, I feel quite accomplished. Pity that I don't actually plan to go into teaching for the long term.

Also tried the potato/leek/onion/pancetta business again the other day, this time in the oven. There was a bit of the false start when it turned out that someone had left a bit of tupperware in the oven (why?) and it started to melt, but I rescued it and then resumed cooking my stuff. It still tasted like crap. Am not cut out to be a chef. Will stick to eating taralli and pasta-practically-in-bianco for the time being. Although I bought some sundried tomatoes the other day because they were on sale in Esselunga and I was inspired, but, upon reflection, I have no idea what one actually does with sundried tomatoes. I suppose I could always just put them on toast. If I had a toaster...

Anyway, off to bed. Scuola materna bright and early tomorrow, followed by some business people... some factory people... a random thirteen-year-old... and a few more business people. Sigh. I kind of preferred when it was still the weekend.

At least there's a song at the end...

"Have a good evening!" I call cheerfully after my student. I figure I should at least inject some enthusiasm into wishing him a good night, because he had me right after the children, and they always leave me a bit drained and dazed.

As the door shuts, I turn to my next student. "Hello, Marco! How are you?" I sing my greeting in his general direction, stretching my face into a smile. He takes a few moments to compose his response, and I use the time to try to remember what chapter we were in with his group. The one with the family tree? No, we're not that far yet. Perhaps it was the one with the jobs. Luckily for me, he takes lessons with another student, who hasn't arrived yet.

"We'll just wait a minute for Gianni, okay?" I try to figure out how to mime waiting for Gianni, and fail. Instead, I point to the chair to indicate that he should remain seated, and retreat behind the screen that shelters the "office" from "reception".

I grab their register and the book I'm using with them, and then it takes me a moment to decipher my own handwriting before I uncover what page they're supposed to be on. Ah. The chapter with the map of the small town. Splendid.

Another teacher looks up from her diligent photocopying.

"Rough day?" she asks.

"Meh," I reply noncomittally. "Not so bad." She glances over my shoulder.

"Hey, there's a song at the end of that chapter!" she informs me bracingly. "Beatles." I ponder this. A guaranteed six minutes of not teaching (they'll need to listen to it at least twice). And with heartening music, too.

Well, at least that's something to look forward to.

Anyways

Every day when I get in at work, the sub-boss and I greet each other.

"How're you?" one of us will say, in a chipper, chirpy, cheerful voice.

"I'm well, thanks!" answers the other of us, invariably. This is because, despite what most people think, 'well' is the grammatically valid response. ('Good' is appropriate for describing what someone is like, not how they are.) And we are English teachers, so obviously we should be grammatically correct in conversing.

In college, I almost always said 'well'. This is because we were all hyper-educated and being grammatically correct even in social contexts just seemed like an added bonus. Now, though, with my other colleagues, I'm a bit more relaxed (read: normal... I think), and I just say 'good'. Because so does everyone else. It's kind of an unspoken mutual understanding: none of us is going to break it by going and trying to look more educated than the others by saying 'well', so we can all just relax and say 'good'.

Except with the sub-boss. I can't remember which of us started it, but now I think we are stuck, because it would suck to be caught using improper grammar by one's sub-boss, and at the same time, she can't risk having one of her employees use better grammar than she does.

What makes it all a bit ironic is that she once got the passive confused with the subjunctive (?!?!) and frequently starts sentences with "anyways...". Still... I always have to steel myself for the feeling of pretentiousness that washes over me every time I step into the office.

In other news, I really need to get a haircut, but I am scared of Italian haircutters (or it could just be haircutters in general) and I don't know where to go and, also, I don't know what to say when I get there. I think this is because I am embarrassed to be a foreigner and not know all those little polite phrases. You know, like "yeah, I'd just like to get a quick cut, please" rather than "I need a haircut please." Knowing how to say "would like" and where to stick the "just" and the "quick" and stuff like that. It's difficult. Will confer with my colleagues (who all look less scruffy than I do, and must therefore have had their hair cut somewhere) and let you know if I manage to solve the problem.

How to make my day

"Strano, pero'," says the southern guy I to whom I have just been introduced at a work-related dinner, "non hai un accento molto americano." He chews contemplatively on his pizza.

"Suona piuttosto europeo."

The way to this particular girl's heart is definitely through her accent-related insecurities. Pity he's already taken.

How to make really awful food

1. Ensure that there are no witnesses. This is of paramount importance.

2. Decide what to cook. If this involves glancing into your fridge to evaluate the contents, vaguely remembering your grandmother doing something with some of them once when you were little, and therefore electing to throw all of them into a pan with some olive oil, so much the better. For example's sake, let's say you have chosen potatoes, leeks, onion, and pancetta. (Your grandmother makes something delicious with onions, pancetta, and potatoes. Potatoes and leeks go together in soups or something, as far as you recall. Ergo, should be good. Never mind the fact that roasting - like with the grandmother's dish - is not the same as making soup, and neither of those involves a pan anyway.)

3. Cut up the onion into very small pieces. This will ensure that it cooks before the rest of the ingredients are finished and will permeate your apartment with a nice burnt smell.

4. Cut the potatoes into small cubes and throw them into the pan. Google "sauteed potatoes" and note that all the recipes call for boiling them first. Abort mission and prepare to try again.

5. Remove the eyes of the potatoes in a somewhat haphazard fashion, since you cannot remember exactly how to find the eyes, or how to remove them correctly anyway. Cut large, vaguely spiral-shaped chunks of potato out. Wonder if perhaps you're meant to boil them before you peel them, remove the eyes, etc. and decide that it can't possibly matter. Throw them in. Be proud that you didn't get boiling water on yourself. (Small mercies, you know.)

6. Chop up the leeks, noting that it is extremely difficult to make the stalks stay together. Put them in the pan with the onions and some olive oil. Admire your handiwork while the potatoes cool so that you can cut them. Briefly wonder if, like potatoes, leeks should be boiled before sauteeing them. Or if you're really supposed to sautee leeks at all. Decide you're too lazy to start over and watch the leeks for signs of intense distress.

7. They look fine. Cut up the (boiled) potatoes, noticing that, once again, you have removed them before they were done (okay, so, mostly boiled). Not a problem, though: just cut around the still-raw part in the center and use the rest.

8. As advertised, the too-small onion bits are beginning to give off a bit of a burnt smell. Toss in the potatoes (the cooked parts) and hope that that will absorb some of the problem.

9. Mix it all around, feeling important. Things are not really cooking at the same rate and everything is making spluttery sounds. Decide that you're not really feeling up to adding the pancetta today, and shove it back in the fridge. Good thing it's vacuum sealed or something, and apparently good for another month.

10. Turn off the gas before things get out of hand. Fleetingly wonder if they have smoke alarms in Italy. Open the window just in case. Tentatively shove some of the mixture onto a plate, hoping to taste it and dispose of the evidence before anyone gets home.

11. Taste. If you've followed the instructions correctly, you will be able to enjoy the texture of not-quite-done potatoes coated in a slimy layer of olive oil. You will note that a mouthful of leek is similar to a mouthful of onion, and about as pleasant. You will wonder what the appropriate way to cook leek is, anyway. Despite the overabundance of taste-filled things, like onions and leeks, in the dish, the whole thing will taste a bit bland.

Note that, usually, things that are full of fat and onion taste delicious, so how you have managed to create such a not-particularly-balanced and truly unappetizing dish out of such innocent ingredients is really quite remarkable.

12. Clean up the kitchen meticulously, pour the rest of the stuff into the garbage, and wash the dishes carefully. If the chilly breeze coming in from the open window is being cooperative, no one will ever know.

Productivity

Or lack thereof.

I am a sloth.

So far today, I have:

1. Taught the bimbi. A class of prima elementare, for one hour. I spent most of my time shouting "sit down! listen! repeat!" and it was not particularly effective. As I emerged from the class with the beginnings of a headache and a handful of rushed, pencilled drawings, another teacher whose class I have taught in greeted me in the hall: "Why, hello! You teach in the prima?" Me: "Yes." (holding in an exhausted sigh with difficulty). Him: "My daughter's in that class!" Me: what I hope at least vaguely resembled a smile.

2. Bought some potatoes with the intention of cooking them with leeks and pancetta. I don't know why I happen to think this would be a good combination, but... whatever. Probably it's because there are leeks and pancetta in my fridge. Have not yet made a move to cook the potatoes.

3. Looked for a job for next year. My strategy so far has been to cleverly bypass the conventional route of job search websites, and instead go straight to the source of research jobs: faculty lab listings on university websites. However, this does not appear to be an efficient strategy. So far I have trawled through the various departmental webpages of one single university, and come up with rather slim pickings (one potential job, requiring qualifications that I don't really have). This took three hours. I am now reading phdcomics.com, which is a lot more entertaining, and makes me wonder whether grad school is really any less pressure-ful than med school. Hm. Overall opinion on job search: not so fun.

Now I am contemplating getting up and eating some taralli (because they are delicious and were on sale and I'm still too lazy to do the thing with the potatoes), but then, that would require me actually getting up. It's also getting kind of dark in here, so maybe that will swing it: I will get up and return with taralli, and more brightness in the room. Sighh.

Aglio e olio

The other day, I cooked something. For real. With ingredients and tomatoes and things. It was pretty exciting, despite a few minor hiccups.

For instance, my grasp of the recipe was not so firm. I had it explained to me by an Italian Friend, but she is from down south and generally lops off the last syllable (or more) of most of her words, which makes her a bit of a challenge to follow at times. So all I really retained from the conversation was that it was called 'pasta aglio e olio'. Which kind of leads you to believe that you need pasta, aglio (garlic), and olio (oil). But no. It is all a nasty practical joke.

I googled it and it turns out you also need peperoncino. I don't even know what that is, but the point is, I didn't have any. It's okay, though. I kept my cool and decided to substitute with tomatoes. Because they were in the fridge, and, anyway, tomatoes are red, peperoncino kind of sounds like it might be red... so, yeah. Whatever.

Another issue is that spaghetti-shaped pasta (bucatini, if you're really interested) is difficult to cook. Because unless you own a pot the size of my entire kitchen, there is no obvious way to get the suckers actually into the pot. I called my mother for advice. I don't generally call my parents to be bailed out of whatever difficulties I get myself into, so I figured it would be permissible on a one-off basis. She was silent for a moment. "Well, you just put them in. The end inside the water will go soft and the rest will fall in."

Oh.

So, anyway, it all worked out charmingly. The result wasn't actually delicious or anything, but it was edible. Which, all things considered (namely, my history with cooking), is quite a nice surprise.

My roommate arrived home just as I was sitting down to eat. This was actually optimal timing, because the pasta was still steaming impressively and all manner of cooking instruments were lying about attesting to my efforts, but I hadn't actually started tackling the awkward issue of how to eat the pasta with at least a minimal amount of grace.

"Ciao!" said I as she poked her head into the kitchen.

"Ah! Ma... you made the sauce with fresh tomatoes? Ah. Brava! Ti stai italianizzando." ('Ah' is meant to denote a breathy little sound of surprise and shock, presumably due to the fact that the apartment was still standing and nothing was even the least bit burnt.) She retreated, perhaps not trusting her luck any further.

I glanced down at my pasta. And then at my boots (which are sexy and Italian and black and make very satisfying clacking sounds at work), my more or less reasonably ironed shirt, and obligatory black sweater (because in winter you wear black, period). For a very brief instant, I felt cool and capable and smooth and un pochino italianizzata.

I smiled.

There goes another week...

Pardon the absence. See earlier reference to sweatshop-like work schedule. Also I caught some form of cold/cough/congestion business off the bimbi. Whether it was the asilo nido ones, the materna ones, or the scuola elementare ones is hard to say, but nonetheless...

Probably there are more interesting things to talk about than that, though. For instance, last weekend, on Sunday, I went to Venice for the day, to check out the carnevale business. That was interesting. There was un sacco di gente there. But seriously, a huge sacco. In fact, you know how people tell you Venice is sinking? I bet this is why. Because once a year, all these people come and stand on it all at once, for a whole week.

I don't recommend it if you're claustrophobic, because we squeezed through small alleys at times, completely squished up with the other people. But the interesting thing is that no one complained. Had it been in America, everyone would've been whining and being generally irritated/irritating. But here everyone was all laughing and jovial. This could have something to do with the fact even swearing sounds jovial to me, in Italian. (I giggle, without fail, every time one of my students mumbles the ca--- word in class. Then they turn red and apologize, sometimes, and I continue to giggle on the inside.)

Anyway, yeah. We squished through the alleys and over the bridges, had a cursory look at the Bridge of Sighs for those who hadn't seen it before (it's all surrounded by this wonky wrapping paper or something now, though; what's up with that?), ate a mediocre panino, waited half an hour in line for the use of a bathroom (okay, the people were a little less jovial there, but they were still amusing), tried fritelle (I'm confused, though - there they were some kind of pastry with raisins in it, but I'm almost positive I've had something here called that, but involving fried cheese), and generally absorbed the atmosphere of Venice in carnevale.

Then they brought out the riot police at the train station because everyone wanted to get on the regionale back to Bologna, and that was fun, too. Especially because, for an all too brief half hour, we thought we might have to call in at work tomorrow and inform them that their entire teaching staff was stuck in Venice. That would've been so incredibly satisfying (see earlier references to sweatshop-like work schedule, and, anyway, ogni scherzo vale, right?). But then we got on the next train and watched the riot police hold hands to keep the crowd from pushing each other onto (and then off of, perhaps) the platform, and that was vastly entertaining. As were the drummers that were strolling around during the whole thing, and the people who sprinted down the platform to get on the train, despite the cries of "piano! piano! fermi!!" We did a little sprinting of our own, just to get into the spirit of things and all.

Now I am back in Reggio. I ate pizza twice this weekend and decided I will really, REALLY miss the ritual of the Friday night pizza when I go home. I suppose I could learn how to make pizza... but I lack a wood-burning oven, and anyway, it just wouldn't be the same.