Remembering

So... I suck at blogging when I'm busy. So instead of an entry (post? whatever.) I'm going to mash up a bunch of things together so that it makes even less sense than usual. Good plan? Yes? No? Well, no one's being forced to read it, so whatever. I am grouchy because it is Sunday night and I have to get up not at but *before* the crack of dawn tomorrow and also because the world of medical education is irritating and I've just about had it with that.

Anyway. Watching the dates go by on the calendar brings back memories of this time last year (actually, more like a month ago last year, but let's not be picky). I was lazy and didn't record them at the time, so I figure I might as well write down the few bits and pieces that come back.

Walking up the Via Emilia for the first time, in the company of the other young new teacher, and the surge of feeling: eeeeeeee, I'm really in Italy. To live.

That first little supermarket on via Melato, where there were mostly fruits and vegetables and they were all so beautiful and fresh-looking. Not to mention ridiculously cheap, compared to, say, Paris. We bought tomatoes and mozzarella and bread and made sandwiches in the temporary apartment we were sharing. Buying San Benedetto water in packs of 6 and learning that the pink caps are naturale and the dark blue ones are frizzante. (Also true of the fior di spesa water that they sell in Standa. Or now it's Billa or something. The one under Oviesse, anyway.)

Drinks in piazza Fontanesi with the boss and the supervisor and the aforementioned other young new teacher, and me being all omg omg I'm socializing with people from work! Like a grown-up! In a piazza! In Italy! (Excitable much, younger Self?)

Looking for an apartment. That very first one where I stood all jet-lagged on the stairs and listened to my boss and the landlady blathering on about 'spese condominiali', wondering through the haze what that meant and why they had taught us all about Dante's effects on the vulgarization of Italian but not what 'le spese' are or what a SIM card is. The second one, where the other new teacher and I took turns calling the landlady for directions because she was a fiery Napoletana and neither of us could understand her.

The Apartment of No Hot Water and... yeah, never mind. That whole experience is best left in the past.

Signing up for library cards for la Panizzi, and having to explain that we weren't residents of Reggio; yes, we spoke English but no, we weren't both English because one of us is American; yes, we had an address, but both of us would be moving soon; no, not to the same address... and so on. The girl there was very nice and it was a whole adventure and we emerged with library cards, proud of our ability to conduct daily life business in Italian and reassured that there was a small stock of English-language books should we ever feel irrepressibly homesick.

That very first student, a woman who was moving to America to do a Master's degree and needed to use up her last two hours of lessons. "Just talk to her," they told me, "it'll be good for her to hear an American accent." Yes, well, you'd think, but actually it's not so easy. Particularly because she didn't seem to remember the name of the city she was meant to go to, or even what the university was called. This did not seem to unnerve her - in fact, I think I was more worried than she was. Actually, it's been a year now. I kind of wonder how things went...

The second student, a gregarious business guy who promptly treated me to a lecture on why Audis are the best cars. I only understood about 10% of what he was saying, and I never really was sure whether this was due to my lack of knowledge about cars or to the quality of his spoken English. In any case, he was very personable and at the end he informed me: "you are good teacher. I learn 12 new words today." Me: "oh, um, good..."

Walking all the way to Petali from the center in search of sheets (actually, I think I already wrote an entry about this) and getting sidetracked by clothes in Zara. (We will be fashionable! Classy! Italian-looking! cried the young English teachers*).

Meeting the gaggle of cousins + their friends + acquaintances of this one teacher who had family in Reggio. Enjoying the heady swirl of Reggiana dialect and Italian and aperol spritz and animated discussion about where to go for aperitivo.

Going to a movie in Italian (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and being so happy that I could understand most of it. Being disoriented by the fact that they sometimes switched to Spanish and the difference didn't always register in my head. Also, we had just taught some slang to one of my colleagues who showed up in Reggio not knowing a word of Italian. At the end of the movie: "che c****...?" said he. We laughed a lot.

The Palio dei formaggi. You have heard of the Palio in Siena, yes? It involves horses running around in a big piazza or some such? Yeah, that's pretty much all I remembered about it at the time, too, so I was all 'wait, how could you possibly incorporate cheese into that?' Oh, but they managed. There were men jogging around the piazza del duomo with 5kg wheels of cheese on their backs. I felt like I'd been dropped into a scene from that "Tuscan sun" movie with Diane Lane. Yes, yes, I thought. Moving to Italy was indeed a good plan. Where else would I get to see a palio of cheese?

*You know what's interesting about that sentence? When you (or I, rather) write "English teachers" you can't really tell whether they are generic teachers who hail from England, or teachers of English of undefined nationality. And I can't figure out a way to make the distinction clear. Grammar, you have failed me.

Aaaand with that, back to life in America. I found a place that sells gelato. It wasn't half bad, except that even if you ask for a small they give you a tub, like the size that would cost about 4euro in Italy. I miss the little coppetta da 1,50.