Highlights

So, yet again there has been all kinds of craziness (good and bad) that has made me too lazy to ever come and write about it here. I'm bad at keeping a blog. Sorry.

I continue to be too lazy to write about things properly, so instead I'm going to record the highlights of the past couple of months in photos. Yay for laziness!

So. We teachers returned from winter break all full of energy and ready to start the million new courses we had planned for January, and, when they had finally started, Reggio dumped a million tons of snow on our heads. This made it difficult to get to the abovementioned courses, because the school cars are just barely more powerful than golf carts, and possess neither snow tires nor snow chains... nor really anything to help them operate in the snow. It's very difficult to make them start moving, and equally difficult to brake once you've managed that.

Thus commenced a three week period of quasi-constant anxiety about cancelling courses, hoping colleagues were managing to avoid car accidents, etc.

As evidenced by the above photo, though, the snow was aesthetically pretty nice. Reggio, congratulations on being photogenic even under a ton of snow.


Then it was decided that we should use the snow to go skiing in. I had never been skiing before (aside from one experience when I was a young-ish child, in which I was clipped into a pair of skis, but, lacking both any kind of initiative and a teacher, did not actually manage to go anywhere on them except by stepping sideways; fail) so this involved my ever-patient colleague skiing backwards in front of me so that he could hold my hands and drag me down the mountain. And by mountain I mean "hill with the gentlest incline you've ever seen".

Nonetheless, by the end of the day, I was pleasantly sunburnt and had managed to ski down the baby slope several times without killing myself. Not pictured: the part where I nearly fell off the ski lift and was dragged up the mountain holding on with only one arm. (Mountain still refers to the hill that is just barely a hill.)

Then some good weather came. We explored the castles of Canossa (above) and Rossena (below). Canossa is lovely because you can climb all over it like a little kid and imagine that your are defending it from invaders or whatever. If my brother had been there, we would totally have been making arrow-shooting noises (whatever those are) and reinacting an epic battle.



The castle of Rossena (above) is more difficult to get into, so we just admired it from afar.

On another fine day, we climbed up the Pietra di Bismantova (weirdest-shaped rock ever? I think possibly), which involved some scrambling on a slippery still-snowy path (we miscalculated the season just a little, and discovered when we got there that the paths were still snowy... oops) and then a lovely picnic lunch on the top.

Scossa

I've just managed to blow-dry my hair and am gathering a few last things before leaving for work when a big truck drives by my apartment building, rattling the windows.

Before they can stop, a high-speed frecciarossa train goes down the Via Emilia...

Just kidding. (No trains go down the Via Emilia, and while trucks make themselves felt when they go by, they usually do not actually rattle the windows.)

No, an earthquake has come to Reggio Emilia.

Never having felt one before, it takes me a few heart-stopping seconds to figure out what it is, and another few to figure out what to do: run outside! no, would probably fall down the stairs. hide under the bed? no, full of suitcases under there, and doesn't seem that sturdy anyway. equally, the kitchen table is pretty small and rickety looking. doorways, then? saw that in a movie once.

And so I stand in the doorway of my bedroom while my building shakes back and forth, the old windows rattle loudly, and I wonder how long it's going to last.

I suppose it doesn't last that long, really - under a minute for sure, but certainly among the longest minutes of my life thus far.

I call my boss, the first responsible adult that comes to mind and also the last person in my recent calls log, as soon as the house is standing still enough for me to retrieve my phone. I sputter into the phone for a bit, and she mentions that earthquakes are not typically dangerous in this region.

Yeah. Except that they possibly have the capacity to induce heart failure in previously healthy 25-year-olds, but whatever.

I finish dressing and head to work, passing one of the local high schools on my way. It has evidently been evacuated, and all of the children have crossed the street so as not to be standing in the shadow of their five-story high school. They are now standing in the shadow of the equally large municipal theater. This seems like dubious logic to me, but whatever.

I am always searching for good conversation topics in my first lesson on Wednesdays, but today I am in luck:

"Did you feel the terremoto?" one of my five students asks me, grinning.

"Earthquake," I correct automatically before starting to splutter about it again. I ask them for advice about what exactly one is supposed to do in the case of an earthquake. (Run down three flights of stairs to get outside? Under a table? Doorway?) There is a slight difference of opinion. Two votes for "run outside asap" because it's the official company protocol; three votes for "stay at your desk and continue working unless the building is actively collapsing" because... well. Unofficial company protocol, I guess.

Hm. Not very helpful. We discuss the relative merits of this plan as it pertains to me in my house rather than them at their all-important desks, and it is concluded that I should avoid running down the stairs, but rather hide under a table in my apartment.

I reflect that all of my tables are from Ikea, and thus of dubious strength. Particularly in the context of the fourth floor collapsing on them.

Most other students throughout the rest of the week are in the "run outside if you possibly can" camp, recommending that I keep my keys, phone, and shoes near the door. Except for one person who tells me that I should not under any circumstances go on the stairs, because they are less stable. So we're back to the Ikea tables.

My last student of the week has the best news so far.

"No, no, your house won't collapse," he reassures me in his best paternal tone. "Houses in this region are built to be safe even in earthquakes." He spends some time discussing the various architectural precautions that were taken in the building of his particular place of work. At the end of this discourse, though, he is apparently in doubt of something:

"Wait... where do you live, again?"

I describe the location of my house. He is a native Reggiano and thus knows every inch of the city, including the exact street number of my house. A cheeky grin spreads across his face.

"Okay, your house... maybe collapse," he concedes.

I narrow my eyes at him and torture him with the present perfect for the remaining forty minutes of the lesson. As he is leaving:

"Straniera," he tells me seriously, "your house probably not collapse." We're back to reassuringly paternal. "But, if it does... you call me. I help you. Ok?" Cheeky grin.

Don't you wish you had my job?

Still here!

"So, then you should probably email the head of HR and see if we can push the start date up one week..." my phone is wedged between my shoulder and my head, and I am half listening to my boss and half struggling to pull a pair of tights on without injuring myself.

"Uh-huh," I agree eloquently.

I grab the nearest pen and scrap of paper (a theater ticket from six months ago; I'm not sure why I still have it) and scribble down 'email - head - date', which will make exactly zero sense to me in about five minutes.

"Then also that thing with the invoices... you know, from Teresa? With the big summary thing?"

Interestingly, this actually makes sense to me. I'm unsure at this point whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I switch my phone to the other shoulder, dutifully add 'Teresa, summary' to the back of my defaced theater ticket, and move on to zipping up my boots.

Moments later, the boss and I have finished our morning update session, my theater ticket contains a list of seven things to accomplish, and I am fully dressed. All there is left to do is blow dry my hair, and I'm good to go.

8.02

I stride to school, pondering the issue of the invoices. It's a nice enough day, which, in Reggio from November to about March means 'light fog - you can still see the buildings on either side of the street as you walk down it', rather than fog like 'wait, where did the other side of the street go?'

8.22

I arrive at school. Only the cleaner is there, which is nice: this means almost forty minutes of quiet, un-interrupted time in which to get some stuff done before the secretary and potentially the other teachers arrive. I could even sort out the problem of the invoices!

Just kidding. While I was walking to school, one teacher has messaged me to say her son is ill, so she can't make it in today (four lessons to find subs for... ready, set, go!) and another teacher to say that his student is MIA and can I please find out where he is and why he isn't in his office, ready to have a lesson?

Never mind about the invoices.

8.47

Subs found for three of the four lessons. Apologetic email to cancel the forth composed and awaiting the secretary's excellent Italian proof-reading skills. Missing student located (he's apparently in Prague, and forgot to cancel his lesson, che bello) and missing student's teacher somewhat pacified with the assurance that he will indeed be paid for the lesson.

Invoices still not sorted out.

9.12

Secretary and two of the teachers arrived. The secretary knows nothing about the invoices. The teachers both want to know when the new courses will be starting. The head of HR of the company where the courses in question will be taking place has not yet answered. A third teacher calls in and wants to know if she can move her Monday morning lesson to Thursday, her Thursday lesson to Friday, and her Friday morning lesson to Monday afternoon in order to have Monday mornings off so she can go swimming. The head of HR of a different company calls to ask when we can email him the results of all the students' (there are 80-ish of them) progress tests. I cup my hand over the receiver in order to ask the teacher in charge of monitoring progress reports about this, and it transpires he forgot to send the email reminding everyone to give progress tests. So there are no scores to email to anyone, because there aren't even any tests yet.

I tell the HR guy I'll call him back later.

9.27

My first student walks in.

"Today, we talk about string theory!" he declares happily, waving a sheaf of papers at me.

"Great!" I muster as much enthusiasm as I possibly can for string theory at 9.27 in the morning, scribble down a bunch of stuff onto a series of three post-it notes, paste them into my Sacred Notebook of Everything Ever Related to the School (volume 5) to be dealt with later, and accompany Mr. String Theory into a classroom.

10.32

"Okay, have a good day!" I wave physics guy out of the door and try to gauge from the secretary's face if we have made any progress on the invoice situation (of which I apprised her via post-it when I first got in).

My student thanks me again for a great explanation of string theory, and I manage not to laugh. (NB: Lest there be confusion - we are still a language school, teaching mostly English, sometimes some other languages. None of us are experts in string theory.) However, he knows all about math and physics. I know all about the meaning of "nevertheless", "amenities", "concede", and most of the other words that trouble him in his research articles. So between the two of us, we can muddle through whatever he wants to read on any given morning. (I still know nothing about String Theory, despite having spent an entire hour "explaining" it to him.)

5.57

Three lessons and two (super fun!) hours in the office later, I'm gulping down a piece of erbazzone in the first two seconds of down time I have managed to achieve since getting dressed this morning, and surveying the situation.

The invoice problem is well on its way to being solved. A million emails have been sent. It's looking like the courses at Company #1 will be able to start on time after all. The teachers have all been notified that they are to give progress tests this week at Company #2 and get the scores to us as quickly as possible. Some missing books have been found. We have tested another potential private student and managed to wedge them into the timetable. This evening's children's lessons are just wrapping up, the parents stuffing their kids into coats and dragging them out of the school and the teachers sinking down onto the chairs recently vacated by the parents for a few moments of well-deserved respite.

"Anyone up for pizza tonight?" says one of them. A chorus of enthusiastic assent goes around the office.

"What time does everyone finish?"

"7.30"
"8"
"7"
"now"

We take a moment to glare good-naturedly at whoever is already finished with lessons for the day before assessing the earliest time we can possibly be stuffing pizza in our mouths (probably around 8.30 for today - not bad) and decide where to meet. I head off to a nearby industrial company for my last lesson of the day - a middle-aged man who speaks pretty good English but tends to use it mostly to make inappropriate commentary about his female colleagues. And English teachers.

8.07

Length of lesson: 1 and a half hours
Number of sentences uttered by student using the present perfect correctly: 3
Number of sentences uttered by student using the present perfect incorrectly: I lost count
Number of inappropriate comments on part of student: 13
Number of times teacher laughed agreeably at inappropriate comments: 12

Which means if we cover the present perfect again for the next eighty-billion lessons, he might actually learn it, and meanwhile, I mostly managed to refrain from getting all eyebrow-raising on him. All in all, a success.

8.46

Pizza with rucola and pomodorini. A birra piccola. Animated discussion of Jon Stewart's latest antics.

10.04

We all have to be up early tomorrow and really it's too cold for gelato, but we're stranieri, so whatever. We all crowd around a table in the one gelateria with inside seating, and discuss the relative merits of pistacchio and nocciola (hazelnut) gelato. (Conclusion of this debate still pending, stay tuned.)

11.53

In bed. Barely have the energy to set the alarm for the next day. Colleague with sick kid sends another text to say kid is still sick, please cancel all lessons tomorrow as well. Vague impression that I should be irritated, but no energy to actually carry it out, let alone answer the text.

- - - - - - -

All this to say that I've been a little busy the past few... months. But then eventually I got tired of seeing such a somber post at the top of the page every time I happened to think of it, so here I am. Also, having only about 6 months left in Italy, I feel like eventually I might enjoy having a somewhat more complete record of... things. So here I am.

Ten

It was a beautiful morning at the end of the summer, with just the barest hints of fall beginning to flicker into the air. The sky was blue with those puffy white clouds like in a child's drawing, and the air was still warm, though you could tell autumn would be on its way in a few weeks.

I was in art class, gamely attempting to carve a flower shape out of a small square of copper sheeting with a wooden tool. I am (and was) terrifically awful at most artistic things, but was soldiering on anyway, chatting with the three other people in my Tuesday morning class, probably faintly worried about my "advanced placement" history class (this was a Big Deal in sophomore year of high school), but generally enjoying a relatively peaceful morning.

It was, really, the kind of morning that you picture when you get nostalgic about your childhood. Filled with back-to-school feelings and those oh-so-typically high school concerns. Will I pass that history test? Will I ever be good at the multiple choice? Geometry is a nice surprise, but what if my writing isn't good enough for the AP? Blue sky, and the smell of new notebooks, and the feel of concentrating exclusively, in that way that you can when you're a child but is so much more elusive as an adult, on what is happening under your carefully focused hands. Because we were children then, for all that we felt so grown-up in our second year of high school, with our skirts trimmed higher and shirts defiantly un-tucked.

It was a lovely morning. And then the loudspeaker came on, and it wasn't.

A casa

I'm deliberately leaving the title open to interpretation. I've just returned to Reggio: am I back home, or back from home? It's increasingly difficult to tell. This is kind of a satisfying sensation, in that I can be all 'yeah, I've made a foreign country feel like home!' but on the other hand, does not particularly bode well for eventually leaving here and going... home. Other home. Gli stati uniti. Whatever.

(Deadline for said return to the States has been set for July 2012. If I am showing no signs of packing up and heading out by then, I give you full permission to take action and intervene.)

Whoever you may be. Um... or not.

Anyway.

So, the highlights of this summer started off with a couple of days in London with a little side trip to Oxford, all of which were delightful. First time in the UK = complete success.

Next, four weeks at home (NJ home) with the parents and the brother, working in ye daycare of olde (olde meaning two years ago). This time, little little people - ages 2-12 months. Adorable! This meant spending my days rocking other people's children to sleep, aiming very small amounts of food into very small mouths, and strapping very small people into very small diapers. I suppose it depends what sort of person you are, but I always find it delightful. Think about it: paid to sit in a rocking chair with a warm little blob gurgling and smiling in your lap. Win! Also, very ego-boosting: you will rarely get smiled at so enthusiastically as when you rescue an infant from their crib, post-nap, and also I am declaring myself the Nap Whisperer. I will sell my secrets to tired parents for a goodly sum. (NB My secrets do not involve drugs of any kind, don't worry.)

Other notable things from time in NJ:

1. Ethnic food is delicious and I don't understand why Italy can't just get some. I'm willing to travel to Bologna for it, but I'd rather not trek all the way to Milan. Can someone make this happen please? In particular, Indian, Mexican and Thai. Thanks!

2. Borders has gone/is going out of business. Epic fail, America. This is a tragedy of such proportions that I am unable to speak about it, eloquently or otherwise, except to say that I have spent so many excellent hours in Borders' stores all over the place that I do not know how I will fill my time when I return to the US permanently.

3. Apparently you can now order food in movie theaters. No, seriously. You push a little button and a person comes to take your order, and then they bring you food. You put the food on the little table next to you, which is conveniently housing your very own bottle of ketchup. That way, you can spend your time squirting ketchup on your food instead of watching the movie, and thus promote both obesity and the creation of sub-par films at the same time! Another fail there, I'm afraid, America. Sigh.

4. This list is a bit depressing, so I will move on to the rest of the summer now without adding to it...

Next stop: south of France for some quality time with the mother. Highlights include the beach at Argeles (where a complex system of ratings including water clarity and fineness vs. prickliness of sand was devised in order to select beaches to return to in the future), the old walled city of Carcassonne (amaaazing!), and a brief trip into Spain to check out the beach there, and the fact that they speak Catalan. Did you know that if you speak French and Spanish you can just about read Catalan? Excellent discovery.

Finally: a day or two in Paris to say hello to the grandmere and Paris itself, before returning to Reggio to get back to life as usual. In Reggio, it appears to still be summery, despite today's downpour. Good work, Reggio. I'm proud of you. If you could maintain these toasty temperatures for another couple of weeks, it would be very helpful in allowing me to pretend it's still summer and thus much appreciated.

Grumpy face

Reggio. Really. We need to figure something out with the heat/mosquitoes situation.

Yesterday, I finished work at 10.26. That's pm, y'all. (I am such a mess that I just said y'all. I'm not from the south. I can't even tell whether I meant it ironically or not. That is not right.) In any case, that is sad in and of itself. Then I dragged myself home, managed to make a salad (read: throw some stuff in a bowl and pour too much vinegar on it, thus making it not at all appealing). By 1am I was in bed. I considered this not too bad, because, really, a couple of hours between finishing work and getting to bed seems like a reasonable thing.

Yeah, well. You'd think.

Then I waited a very long time to fall asleep. It was hot, and there were mosquitoes and possibly also imaginary mosquitoes, and also my tummy is currently an awkward shade of sunburnt. Sad times all around.

That's how I found myself sitting at the computer at 3.30am, having decided that the thing to do to induce sleep would be to get cracking on a translation I have to do and also eat cookies.

Advice: do not try to translate contracts at 3.30 in the morning. Does not work well. Also, the cookies were perhaps not such a good idea. Back to bed circa 4.00, with a mild stomachache, trying to figure out the correct form of "please find attached" for a contract.

I think I fell asleep shortly after that (yay contracts! this is why law school and I would not have worked out at all, probably), but then it was 6.15 and I had to wake up again.

Two hours of sleep on a Tuesday morning? Not so good. My students had better be alert and fascinating this morning, or else I will probably kill them. I do not have the energy to muster anything even resembling patience.

Reggio, tonight can you please just cooperate a little? A tiny bit more air and a tiny bit less mosquito craziness? Thanks.

Al mare

A few weekends ago I went to the sea with one my Italian friends. You should try to go to the sea with Italian friends sometimes, because they have done it many times before, and are experts. They can help you find the perfect place to go to the sea, and then the perfect place to eat, to put your beach towel, to go swimming, etc. Also, they can teach you some important life lessons. For example:

1. Don't go swimming after eating. Seriously, don't let the water get you if you have food in your tummy. I still haven't ascertained exactly what would happen to you, but it's definitely bad.

We have arrived in our charming Ligurian village after a bit over two hours of driving, and have had a coffee and then wandered around, and finally chosen the island opposite as our sunbathing destination, and have therefore acquired some focaccia to eat once we are over there, and have made our way over to the island and snagged some beach chairs. It has been fun, but also we left early-ish for a Sunday morning and I didn't really eat breakfast, and now we have chairs and also focaccia. In my mind, the situation is perfect.

"Wait!" says my friend. "Don't you want to go swimming?"

"Um... sure," I say, unsure what the obstacle to that is.

"Well, then, we can't eat yet! Then we'd have to wait three hours."

Oh, right. I had heard something about that. I grew up thinking it was 30 minutes, but whatever. My friend takes pity on me.

"Are you hungry?" she asks.

"Well, a little," I say, thinking I'm about to get a reprieve, "I mean, I didn't really eat breakfast or anything."

"That's perfect, then!" exclaims she, "this is the perfect time to go swimming. Your stomach is empty. We'll eat after. It's better."

I wrap the focaccia back up.

2. The sun chair must always be facing the sun, exactly. I suppose because otherwise you will get a crooked tan. Either way, you must make this happen, even if it means getting up and shifting them around in a dance-y little circle every hour and a half or so.

3. Thou shalt not stand still in the water. Because then you'll get cold. From standing in the water. Even if the sun is beating down on your back and the water is warm like bathwater.

4. Thou shalt dry thy entire self off immediately upon exiting the water. Otherwise, the sea breeze will get you when you are still wet, and then god knows what might happen. This is particularly applicable for the back of your neck.

5. Thou shalt not let the sea breeze get you past a certain time of day, for the same reason. I suppose at that point, sea breeze becomes night air and then it attacks the back of your neck and all manner of badness happens to you.

On the other hand, you may be surprised to learn of a few things that are completely fine:

For instance, it is considered absolutely safe to jump off of boulders into the sea, even if there appear to be other boulders lurking below the surface. Similarly, you are welcome to slide down a steep-ish slope of rocks and pebbles mixed together and occasionally splashed by water so that some weird kind of scum grows on them and they become ridiculously slippery. This is fine.

Additionally, if you want to let your elementary-school-aged children monkey around on a playground that is sandwiched between a main road and the sea while you hang out on your boat ten minutes away, that's fine too.

And, my favorite: do not worry about the sun. The sun will not hurt you. All it will do is make your skin a beautiful shade of brown. Or possibly lobster red, but whatever. No one will think anything of it if you vaguely dab on a droplet of spf 15 (good luck finding anything stronger than spf 20, by the way) and then spend the entire day roasting under the midday sun on your chaise longue, rolling over periodically so that all sides of you get done equally.

Just as long as the back of your neck isn't touched simultaneously by the evening breeze and any kind of moisture.

Above - bottom left: ridiculously slippery rocks; middle right: San Pietro in Porto Venere.

You can tell...

You can tell you've been living in Italy for a bit when...

• you have a definite opinion re the Adriatic coast vs. the Mediterranean coast and can defend it intelligibly

• you have several "regular" cafes staked out where you have a solito and the people greet you (sometimes even by name)

• the woman in the bakery feels enough confidenza with you to tell you that you should put a sweater on (in June)

• you have strong opinions on where to get the best gelato in your town

• you can not only recognize and differentiate various types of cheese, but you also have preferences as to which ones are best and when and why

• with regards to cappuccino, you've passed through the various stages of "tourist: drink it mid-afternoon, because why not" to "omg, Italians never drink it after 10am so I can't either or else people will know I'm straniera!" (pro tip: they will know anyway) and finally to "I don't give a crap who sees me drinking cappuccino and when, but now I would usually rather have normal espresso anyway..."

• you can use direct and indirect object pronouns in everyday speech without thinking about it

• similarly, most verbs. In fact, sometimes you can get whole sentences out without too much effort, and occasionally even without mistakes.

• running out of olive oil provokes a brief flutter of mild panic

• you've finally taken to salting the water before boiling your pasta in it

• you agree that over-cooking pasta is akin to sacrilege, or, at the very least, kind of gross

• people speaking dialect don't faze you anymore; in fact, you sometimes understand them

• you answer the phone of an evening and hold a coherent conversation (in Italian) with the person all while stirring stuff that you're cooking

• the thought of the frozen "Lean Cuisine" meals you used to eat in college makes you feel mildly ill

• your ability to tell people off has evolved from "angry spluttering in a mix of English and Italian" through "crappy, grammatically horrifying Italian that may or may not get your point across" and "markedly un-eloquent due to lack of grammar finesse" to finish with "able to politely but effectively tell someone where they can shove it - even by phone, and even in the context of work"

• all the other expats are British, so you've started saying things like "car park" when you mean "parking lot", and "brilliant!" has become your go-to exclamatory expression

• you don't get freaked out when suddenly everyone starts speeding around the circonvallazione beeping and screaming; you just look outside and have a glance at the flags - and indeed, Inter/Milan/Juve/whatever have won again...

• similarly, you are no longer surprised to wake up to the sound of people singing "Bella, Ciao" at a so-left-it's-borderline-communist rally in the square near your house

• speaking of hearing things from your house, you don't feel that you've woken up properly on a Sunday until you've heard the church bells reminding you what day it is

• you browse through the newspapers for fun and actually understand what's going on - both in terms of the words and the social context

• the view from your bedroom window feels like home

• you know the smell of the sun-heated cobblestones intimately, and love it

And...

• you are just as excited about the results of the referendum today as you were three years ago when Obama was elected.
Brava, Italia! Today you've made me proud to live here and happy to have witnessed this.

In montagna, part 3: the back of your neck

As part of this whole climb-frigging-mountains-in-really-clompy-shoes extravaganza, we are staying overnight in a hostel. This is an exciting experience, because I've never stayed in a hostel with a bunch of strangers before. (Well, okay, my friend is there too... but also a bunch of strangers). Despite concerns over whether or not it will be a disgusting filthy hole where I will be scared to shower, I am game. It will be exciting.

It turns out to be kind of a field study on how Italians operate. First of all, you know those Havaianas flip-flops? I have two pairs, and have happily worn them out to do my grocery shopping and other stuff casual stuff here in Italy... or to do pretty much anything, really, in America. You should know that Italians use them as house shoes. We get into the room, and people start unpacking. I'm in the room with my friend and three other ladies and one man, and five pairs of Havaianas in various colors plop down onto the floor, one after the other. I watch them out of the corner of my eye and carefully unpack a towel to pass the time. I have packed only my (new! sexy!) hiking boots and a pair of decent-looking flip-flops for all other purposes. I have not packed another pair to use as house shoes. Oops.

We go on our hike around the distinclty non-flat island, scrabbling up what seem like kilometers and kilometers up vertically oriented rock, only to rest on another big rock that slopes gently down into nothingness. Okay, full disclosure: it actually slopes gently down into nothingness and then the sea is about three hundred meters below that. But it might as well just be nothingness. With rocks at the bottom.

Then we sit in a piazzetta and eat focaccia and drink lambrusco and listen to one of the group leaders singing in dialect. This is vastly entertaining, and if I could remember all the words to this one song, I'm pretty sure that I could swear quite crudely in Bolognese. Sadly, I can't remember the words to the song, and I'm not sure just humming the tune would have the same effect. Pity.

Next, it is time for bed. I politely let everyone else use the bathroom before me, sitting on the edge of my bed, which creaks but seems clean and contains no bugs (I checked). They all slip on their specially designated pair of flip-flops, and shuffle into the bathroom and run the water for a while and then come back out and climb into bed. I sit and listen to the guy whose singing can still be heard from the piazzetta, floating in through the open window.

Finally, after my turn, we are all ready and in bed. I am about to start wishing people a good night and get on with the business of trying to sleep, but it is a good thing that my words come out slowly because we are not actually ready for sleeping. There is one more problem to resolve.

"Ma, come facciamo per la finestra?" (What are we going to do about the window?) says one of the Italians. We all turn our eyes to the window. I can't quite tell what's wrong with it - it's open about three inches and a nice breeze is coming through it, along with that guy's singing. For a moment, I wonder if they are offended by the singing, and consider saying that he will probably stop soon. I mean, he has to get up tomorrow, too, just like the rest of us.

Again, it is a good thing I keep my mouth shut, because that is not the problem, either.

"You're right. If we leave it like that, the breeze will come in, and then... the back of your neck..." one woman trails off uncertainly and another one picks up where she left off.

"Yes, if it gets the back of your neck in the wrong way...."

"Yes. We're definitely not wearing warm enough pajamas for that," finishes off another. She's wearing long pants that look fleecy, and a sweatshirt.

All five of them look warily at the window, as if it they had caught it conspiring against them on purpose. No, seriously, though. I wish I had videotaped this scene. It's like the facial expression that people do in scary movies for kids when a door creaks open and everyone suspects a ghost or whatever will come through. Except this was an innocent window with the pleasant warmth of Liguria in mid-May on the other side.

In the end, after a few long moments of staring significantly at the window, someone does the brave thing and closes it. Then they comment for a while on how that is a good decision, and can you imagine what state we would have been in the next day if we had left it open?!

Thank goodness we dodged that one.

The next morning, it is a little grey and window out, and threatens rain.

"But will it be safe to hike?" I ask, somewhat intimidated by the big storm clouds rolling determinedly across the sky. I'm picturing those vertical-ish and gently-sloping-into-nothingness rocks from yesterday, except now slippery with rain. It is not a pretty picture. I'm clumsy to start with. I do not want to break an ankle. Or my spine. Or fall off altogether and die in the nothingness.

"Yes, of course!" says one guy heartily. "You just need some good shoes and your sticks!"

I don't have sticks.

In the end, it isn't actually that slippery. So, we climb up and up and up and up and then across those gently-sloping rocks (more of them, and still pretty much into nothingness) and it is as I am holding my breath to get across one, hoping that this will either help me balance and not fall off, or otherwise just avoid nervous breakdown, that I notice the two women in front of me are gamely trotting across the thing while hurriedly pulling their jackets on.

"Yes, now that we're sweating..." says one of them.

"Definitely. If the breeze hits the back of our necks while we're sweating..."

I don't roll my eyes, because then I would probably fall of the rock. But... really?

In Montagna, part 2: Practically Flat

The island in question, it transpires, is not flat. In fact, it is kind of hill-ish. With rocks and stuff.

Nonetheless, after a fortifying and delicious dinner of fish (fish that is both fresh and well prepared: so. good.), veggies, foccacia, and farinata, we cross over to the island on a ferry and commence climbing.

I am still busy admiring the view when I practically bump into a thigh-high rock. I look at the rock. I locate the sounds of the voices of the people in front of me. They are on top of the rock, and climbing still more rocks. In fact, there appears to be a series of such rocks. I can't even see where it ends. Right, then.

I climb the rocks too. And you know what? I almost don't dare say it, but... it's not actually so exceedingly hard. It's just hard enough that it's a nice challenge and the muscles in your thighs sometimes go "hey, we're climbing rocks!" and you definitely have to pay attention to where you're putting your feet (in the interest of not falling off the rocks in question) but it's not impossible. Win.

Also, this is the view from atop the rocks. Win and win, no?


Also, wearing a lamp on your head is like being a little car with headlights. Or having a glow-in-the-dark forehead. Or being Rudolph. Or something. It's pretty spiffy. At one point, we all sit down and turn the lights off and listen to the waves crashing on the rocks below and the seagulls calling to one another. Some of the Italians call wisecracks back to the seagulls, in that way that only Italians can. (Not that I've surveyed the whole world, but so far, no one does it quite like Italians. Or maybe it's the language that works really well for it...) Anyway, it's near-on blissful.

Back on the mainland, after descending from the island and the ferry ride home, I plop myself down on a low wall around the mini-piazza in front of the hostel where we are staying, suddenly feeling all of that scaling-of-rocks in my legs. Someone hands me a glass of prosecco and a piece of focaccia and the group leader whips out a guitar. First they sing a toast. (No, really. It was brilliant. Like in a cheesy movie about happy mandolin-wielding Italians.) Then they sing a song in Bolognese dialect. Then in Genovese (in honor of us being in Liguria, see). Then a whole slew of them in Reggiano. Apparently they are songs of the slightly-less-than-tasteful variety, because everyone is in stitches. I can't understand more than half of it, but I'm more than happy just to hang out in a rock-scaling-and-prosecco-induced haze and lesson to the tune of it.

After some time, one of the other group leaders sits down next to me.

"So, did you like it?"

Me (enthusiastically): "Yeah, definitely! That was great! And the view was so beautiful!"

Him: "Yeah, that was a pretty good climb. Definitely a good view, but I guess it usually is, if you go 180 meters off the ground, right?"

Me (having no concept of how tall 180 meters is): "Yeah, definitely." (I have a quick glance back over at the island - specifically, at the top of it. Guess that's 180 meters.)

Him: "Well, tomorrow will be even better!"

Me (casually, to belie the thought that's just occurred to me): "Yeah? So how high up will it be tomorrow?"

Him: "Oh, about 600 meters. You did great today for your first climb, by the way!"

"Mm-hm," I murmur vaguely.

I have another glance at that island, and picture those "not so hard" rocks we just climbed. Then I attempt to conceive of how high 600 meters might be, and fail.

"It'll be awesome!" he adds, slipping off the wall and bidding me good night.

I'm sure it will.

In Montagna, part one

If you ask Italians (or maybe it's just Emiliani, I'm not sure) about their weekend plans, they will frequently tell you that they're going "in montagna". I never really understood this, and I also never really understood the point of the question "do you prefer the mountains or the sea?" with regards to vacationing, because the area in America where I grew up is pretty similar to what some Italians mean when they say "mountains". (They seem to use "montagna" to refer to both actual mountains (e.g. the Dolomiti) and just kind of hilly areas (e.g. the parts of the province of Reggio near to the Appennini, where it isn't quite so flat). I grew up in a kind of hilly, forest-y area, and running around in the trees and fresh air was an every-day-after-school kind of thing, not a take-all-your-camping-stuff-up-to-the-mountains kind of thing. So I've always said "sea" in answer to the preference question, and never really gave the "montagna" or even the very possessive "nostre colline" (hills) any further thought.

I don't even have a very specific idea of what it is that Italians do up there in the mountains. Have picnics? (Probably not - I can't imagine eating out of doors and not at a table would be considered good for digestion.) Wear fancy Moncler* jackets and sip mulled wine while watching the snow fall? Play some sort of vertically-oriented soccer? I do know that some of them go hunting, and others go mushroom picking, but surely not all of them? And not all year round? Boh. I always thought it was too stupid a question to ask anyone. (Probably this is one thing I was actually right about, come to think of it.)

It transpires that some of them go hiking. (Probably this was obvious, but since when have I ever been observant enough for the obvious?) Adorably, they call it going "camminare" (walking), as in "io cammino da quando avevo 10 anni" - I've been walking (hiking) since I was 10.

And this is how I was introduced to it. Or, should I say, to the official version. (In my backyard, hiking involved grabbing a granola bar and some water and seeing if you've got your shoes tied, and then wandering down the hill and up the other hill and trying not to get wet in the river, and if you come out the other side of the forest in a part of town you know, so much the better! If not, just come back the way you came. In retrospect, I have no idea how this was considered safe, unless the forest is actually a lot smaller than I thought and you couldn't possibly have come out wrong... hm... something to ask the parents...)

Anyway, my friend and I are sitting in a cafe in Reggio enjoying a delightful insalata di farro and catching one fine Sunday when she remembers that she had something cool to tell me. It is that she has discovered a hiking group through some other friends of hers, and that they are planning a very cool weekend trip to Portovenere to hike around the island opposite (name: Palmaria) in the moonilght and then another hike to Riomaggiore the next morning. I nod. Portovenere, the beginning of the Cinque Terre (where I have somehow never been yet) and some hiking around an island thrown in? Yes. Good plan.

"So, d'you want to do it?" she asks.

"Yeah, why not?" I say.

We go to get some more information in the hiking shop sponsoring the trip.

The man is speaking dialect, which makes things tricky, but I somehow more or less manage to grasp that we will need hiking shoes. I can't tell if he is just trying to sell us hiking shoes or if we will really need hiking shoes, but whatever. Hiking shoes are probably good to have, and also they can double as snow boots. Win. We allow him to plop us down onto benches and start putting enormous boots onto our feet. (Note to women who wish they had dainty feet: there is nothing that makes you feel like your feet are small and dainty than looking at them next to huge hiking boots. Just don't look at them once you actually have the shoes on.)

"So, is it a difficult hike, then?" I ask casually. I am standing rather precariously on a weird slanty thing which seems to be meant to pitch you forward, flat onto your face, but apparently is really meant to allow you test whether your toes touch the front of the shoes when you're going downhill. Apparently that is not favorable. I am trying to appear carefree and confident, but really I am mostly focused on not falling off the weird slanty thing.

"No, no," the man reassures us, "it'll be easy, even for beginners! The island, for one, is practically flat!" I do not notice that he has not commented on the other part of the hike. The Portovenere to Riomaggiore one. I am not very slick, clearly.

The man hands me a pair of socks that seem thick enough that you practically wouldn't even need actual shoes, and tells me that they will protect my wimpy amateur feet from blisters and moisture and rocks and god knows what else. Excellent.

"Right then, you're all set," he says (I think - he's switched back to dialect, so it's hard to be sure). "Unless... you've got some sort of light, right?" he asks us. My friend and I look at each other. I re-adjust my grip on the huge cardboard box containing my huge new hiking shoes in it.

"Well, a flashlight," she says.

"You sure you don't want a headlamp?" he asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Oh. Um..." I say graciously. It seems my brain is unable to both conceive of myself with a headlamp on and speak coherent Italian at the same time.

"Why - is it better to have a headlamp?" my friend clearly does not have similar difficulties. (I want to be a little defensive and say this might be because she is actually Italian, but really it is probably because I don't actually speak that coherently under normal circumstances anyway...)

"Well," says the man, "yeah, because then you can have both hands free."

We both nod, and say we'll take headlamps as well, and it doesn't occur to me until we're outside of the store to ask why, if the island is so flat and the hike is so easy, we would need both hands free.


*Just fyi I had to google "Moncler" to check that I was spelling it right (it seems like there would be a 't' in there, but apparently not) and the website describes them as French and the quintessence of down jackets. Quintessence is an excellent word, definitely, but.... really? The quintessence of down jackets?

Fun with bureaucracy, part the first

All expats have stories about bureaucracy in Italy, right? And an expat-living-in-Italy blog wouldn't be complete without one, right? Well, no need to worry any longer. Requisite Italian bureaucracy story, part the first, below.

"Si, buongiorno, vorrei cambiare l'intestazione delle bollette dell'internet," I say brightly. I have just mumbled this sentence to myself a few times to work out all the kinks (do you see all those double L's? Not so simple to pronounce, you know, especially in conjunction with the R of 'internet').

The fact that I get the whole thing out succesfully puts me in a good mood and I smile into the phone, despite the fact that, really, I am meant to be annoyed. All I'm trying to do is change the name on our internet bill from my ex-flatmate's to mine, and make it so that we get the bill by mail rather than having it be automatically deducted from her bank account. Okay, so, maybe it's a little complicated, but we filled out a form and faxed it in.

Last June.

Now it is mid-October (or was, when this all took place).

"Un attimo," says the other guy. I am clutching the paper with my information on it in one hand and pressing the receiver to my ear with the other, as if that will help me understand the guy. Half of my brain is thinking 'please don't let him have a weird accent, like from Puglia or something'. The other half is reciting my codice fiscale to itself.

Italian bureaucracy, I am so ready for you.

"Si, let me put you through to the commercial department," says the man on the other end. A crappy, tinny-sounding version of Vivaldi starts up. I sigh and put the paper with my codice fiscale on it back on the table, flexing my fingers. I roll my eyes across the room at the secretary, who is playing solitaire on the computer. Sometimes we are very productive, mid-morning on a Thursday. And sometimes not. She smiles encouragingly.

"Pronto, Michele speaking, come posso aiutarLa?"

I spring back up to the ready, and repeat my spiel. It is getting better with practice. Excellent.

"Ah, si?" says Michele, not sounding particularly interested, "why do you want to do that?"

The explanation is tricky, and I am hesitant to give it, because the more I talk, the more likely they are to figure out that I am a foreigner. This gave us problems with ENEL (the electricity people). But whatever. I do the best I can ("well, then my flatmate went off to spend a year somewhere else on a job placement and I decided to stay in Reggio even though I was really supposed to go back to America so what I really want is for us to have some electricity/internet/gas/water/etc. in the apartment, and...").

"You should send a fax," comments Michele absently.

"Yes, I know. We have," I tell him. "However, if you look at the bills for September and October, you'll notice they've still been taken from [flatmate's name]'s bank account." I give him the account number and the code thingy from the bottom of the bill, impressing myself with my ability to say numbers. (I can count! Yay! Uh.... anyway.)

"Hm. Let me put you through to customer service," he says, apparently having had enough of my reading numbers to him. I kind of vaguely feel like customer service is where I was before, but whatever. I check my email with Vivaldi jingling along in the background.

"Pronto, this is Antonella, how can I help you?"

I am getting so good at this that I don't even take my eyes off my email while I give her the spiel.

"Oh, you should talk to the commercial department for that," she says. "Let me put you through."

I frown at my email. Wasn't I just talking to Michele in the...?

"Hello, this is Francesco in the commercial department, what can I do for you? ... Yes, let me put you through to accounts."

"Wait, but I-"

I go through three or four more departments, interspersed with recommendations to send a fax, before some kind soul finally takes pity on me and emails me a document to send the fax again.

I painstakingly fill it out.

They need a photocopy of my passport, which I forget to bring to school for the ensuing week, until one weekend we come back from a trip to Paris and it happens to still be in my purse. Happy coincidence.

I politely ask our secretary to send the fax for me, as I do not know how to operate the fax machine.

"Still fixing that thing with Tiscali, huh?" she comments.

Indeed.

Also, the fax machine doesn't work. The people in the office across the hall (who are sometimes friendly and helpful and let us use their fax machine and/or steal their wireless connection) are not there.

Three weeks later, there is another happy coincidence and I remember about sending the fax during one of the rare moments when the machine is working.

I feel very productive and happy. Surely from now on, our internet will work swimmingly (not true) and the bills will come to our house (I have yet to see one) and then we will pay them at the post office (in theory) and the world will be a happy place.

"Ciao, Cri!" says my ex-flatmate one day when she calls.

"Ciao!" I say, "how's life?"

We chat for a few moments.

"Hey, by the way, do you know why they're still getting the internet out from my bank account?"

What?

No.

I explain that I sent the fax (again) and spent a whole morning on the phone with the people from Tiscali, but apparently it has not resolved the problem. Which means that I get to spend another morning on the phone with the people from Tiscali tomorrow.

Yay.

On the bright side, I have my codice fiscale totally memorized now.

Sometimes

Sometimes, your boss is all "oh, so, there's this translation of some dialogue that you should do, if you have time. It's a good opportunity."

Sometimes, you say yes. (Uh, actually, if you're me, you almost always say yes. This is how you end up with lots of crap to do in your life.)

Sometimes, you translate it and unthinkingly send it off, pleased to have done a good job.

Sometimes, it turns out that you were translating what would become the subtitles of a documentary about a [local charity medical place] owned by some very important people, for whose company (not the medical place) you also do a lot of teaching.

Sometimes, the next thing you know, you and your boss are all skyping with the documentary producer in the middle of the night to work out the last little dialogue issues and the secretary of the very important person knows you by name and frequently calls you at work to ask about comma placement on the documentary's DVD jacket cover.

Sometimes, you somehow end up invited to the premiere. This is traumatic, because what the hell does one wear to a premiere when the producer also owns a fashion house? All black, it seems. This requires the finding of a black skirt (because, naturally, mine is in America) and shoes to replace the Thesis Shoes of Awesomeness.

In the end, though, sometimes you totter up to the theater with your boss in heels that are rather too high. "Oh, yeah, the girl who did the translation. Brava," says a dapper looking man. Sometimes dapper looking men turn out to be the owners of major fashion houses and/or the producers of documentaries.

You shake hands and continue on, past directors of hospitals and owners of this and such, and mayors of towns. You sit and watch the thing, surrounded by what would probably be the nobility of Reggio, if there were one.

Sometimes it says your name in the credits under traduzioni. Way down past all the other weird stuff (what's a gaffer?), but still. It's probably the closest you'll ever come to fame. The lights come back on and you stand and walk out and shake hands with various people and smile and try to keep up with who's who and why they're important while a small part of your mind is also dedicated to hoping your skirt is still straight and your hair is still decent.

It's pretty weird.

Sometimes.

Sometimes it's good to be a girl

Did you know that you can keep supermarkets in Italy open past their closing times just by being a girl? Me either, but apparently you can. Even all disheveled after a day's work (a 13 hour day, might I add). I did it just the other day. Very odd.

"... so then, the other thing we should do is create an Excel file... maybe you can get [other teacher] to do that... or otherwise maybe you can do it... or the secretary... anyway, what we should do is..."

I nod into the phone, staring into space. Usually I read and answer emails while I talk to my boss on the phone, especially during the end-of-the-day rundown. It saves time. She can expound at length on semi-relevant topics, and I can get some work done. Today, however, it is 8.52, the supermarket closes in precisely 8 minutes, I have no food in my house, and, having been at work since 7.20 this morning, I have just about lost the will to live.

"Uh-huh," I agree in a rather unenthusiastic monotone. Perhaps she takes this hint as my having lost interest in our conversation (and also the school and our students and really anything not immediately related to getting food in my belly and myself into my bed) because she finally releases me with a cheerful, "okay, thanks! Talk to you tomorrow!"

8.54.

I grab some car keys, hoping no one needs this particular car (the school owns three) tomorrow morning before I do, and hop into the elevator.

8.59.

I pull into the parking lot of the supermarket, where only three other cars are parked, and stride up to the doors, where the security man is ushering someone out.

"Siete chiusi?" I ask. All I really want out of life right now is some pasta, some salad, and my bed. This makes me brave enough to actually talk to the security guy.

"Quasi," he says. He is young and cute. I am at least young-ish, if nothing else. And apparently that's enough. "Cosa devi prendere?" he asks me. (What do you need to get?)

"Some lettuce!" I say, the first thing that springs to mind. What I really want is also some pasta (there is a delicious kind that is stuffed with gorgonzola and honey, by Giovanni Rana, whose numerous commercials on the radio have apparently brainwashed me into buying his stuff.... well, his commercials and my utter laziness and inability to cook). But whatever. If I even just got some lettuce, I could cook some pasta or rice or whatever that I have at home, slap some olive oil and cheese on it, and call it a meal. With both veggies and grains. Which is, you know, lots of the food groups. Right? Or at least two. Whatever.

"Just lettuce?" he says in what sounds suspisciously like a flirty sort of tone. Really? Flirting? Lettuce?

"Yeah, just some lettuce," I say, more because I don't really have any other response. He shouts something at the last open cashier and she rolls her eyes and says yes. He ushers me in.

"Just lettuce!" he says. I nod in agreement, and sprint off to get the lettuce. I do not dare get any pasta as well, because the cashier is a girl and probably not so susceptible to my... uh, just being female, apparently. I will just eat my rice. With some cheese mixed in. And vinegar. Because vinegar makes anything else taste like vinegar, which tastes good. Yes. (See what happens to me when I work 13 hour days begging people not to say things like "yesterday, I am going to Milano"?)

As I sprint off, I catch bits and pieces of the conversation between the guard guy and the cashier.

" .... .... .... ragazza," says he.

"You and the ragazze," says she.

There it is. Sigh.

"Ciao, bella!" he says as I leave.

"Ciao, grazie," I say. It's 9.12.

It's a funny thing, being a girl in Italy. It takes a lot of getting used to, for a foreigner. Especially one of the Anglo-Saxon variety. You get here, and suddenly people are staring at you and whistling at you and shouting "ciao, bella! complimenti!" at you as you walk down the street. People look you up and down and you're all keep your eyes to yourself, dude!

You wonder why they don't have any respect for women. Why do they seem to feel it's okay to completely treat women like objects to be stared at and commented on at will, as if we couldn't hear, or didn't care? I care. I want people to be interested in me for my intelligence, or because they think I'm a good person (whether or not I actually am is a different story, but still). Not because I'm shaped like a girl or have lighter hair than them. (Apparently medium brown = bionda, in Italy.)

But then, women are apparently allowed to retire five years earlier than men because "la mamma e sacra". They hold doors open for you and ask for permission before taking off their suit jackets in your presence. They walk you home at night. And they'll keep the supermarket open 12 minutes past closing time on a Thursday night if you tell them that you just got out of work and want some lettuce.

Weird, no?

Fonzies

My life these days is pretty much consumed by the slave-driver people at work. Except... these days, I kind of am one of the slave drivers. Hm. Odd. In any case, while you're waiting (pfft) for me to come up with something actually interesting and worth reading (it might be a while)... here is an entry about weird crackers.

"Abbiamo comprato i fonzies!" says the girl with whom we have been wandering around Venice. She is half Venetian and half Spanish, from a town near Barcelona. She switches from Catalan to Italian to communicate this to my friend. My friend is in the Bologna Erasmus program, and this girl is a friend of one of her cohorts. A friend thrice removed. This is how you end up knowing some really random people when you live in a foreign country. Anyway. We've all met up in Venice for the Biennale of modern art, and the Festa del Redentore fireworks tonight, and we're taking a break before marching around the rest of the Arsenale.

I look over at her and smile politely. (What the hell are fonzies?)

"You've never had fonzies?!" says my fellow American, switching into English to get things straight.

Fonzies, it transpires, are like cheese curls (or whatever those orange things are called in America) except they're white, maybe a bit less greasy and nasty, and have a weird kind of taste. Probably because they lack Cheddar in Italy, so I don't know what kind of cheese they're made with...

Anyway, though, I thought that you, too, should be educated about fonzies, just in case you don't have a Spanish/Italian/Catalan/Venetian-dialect-speaking girl in your life to do it for you.

I shall even include a photograph.



The best part of that day, though? The fireworks? The Biennale? Venice? Well, Venice was pretty cool because I always love Venice, and Venice in the summertime (the Festa del Redentore is on July 18th, I believe) is even nicer. But the best thing: definitely listening to Ms. Barcelona and her friends speaking Catalan all day.

I'm an irretrievable language nerd.

Of meetings and shoes

Anything else to get ready for tomorrow?
No... just look charming and professional. See you at 8.

My boss and I are texting back and forth at 10pm the day prior to an uber-important business meeting. (Uber-important because it is with potential new clients who may possibly give us lots and lots of work, and we like potential new clients. They are good for things like earning a paycheck and not being bankrupt.)

Right, I think, charming and professional. Excellent. I'll wear a skirt and that will be that. I check one more time that all my oh-so-important documents are perfectly aligned in their plastic folder-cover-thing and then go merrily off to bed.

Not so very many hours later, I am standing in the middle of my bedroom wearing the skirt and not much else, mildly panicked. The throwing together of a charming and professional outfit... it is just a little trickier than originally anticipated.

I calmly sip my cold coffee (made by pouring room temperature water over instant coffee and a sugar cube - don't ask) while the following runs through my head: dark grey skirt would go well with white shirt... long-sleeved white shirt dirty... too cold for short sleeves... maybe with cardigan? or maybe resuscitate long sleeved one with ironing... try... shit, where's the adaptor plug? Or black pants... but are a little tight... what shirt with black pants? Or grey pants? Why are all the shirts dirty??? Why do I never do laundry?? Am stupid! And not professional! And not charming!

Okay, never mind, just try not to burn self with iron... shirt looks so-so... also has shirt-tails so needs to be tucked in but I hate tucking shirts into skirts... blahhhhh. Short sleeves after all? How is it already 7:45 and my hair is still wet?!?!

Is cold, for sure need cardigan (because I'm not organized enough to have a suit jacket that matches my favorite skirt, or to have purchased a coat or jacket for this winter yet). I straighten my short-sleeved shirt (just ironed enough so that I don't look completely like a homeless person) and pull the cardigan on over it. My boss texts me and I text back with one hand, aiming the hair dryer more or less at my head with the other.

Be there in 5. We are meeting for coffee prior to the actual meeting. Ostensibly to go over our battle plan. I don't even know why I am supposed to come with her to this meeting, as usually she takes care of the selling aspect of things herself. Perhaps she just wants moral support. Which is kind of laughable, given that I haven't even left my house yet and am already a mess.

I slip my shoes on and they slip themselves back off. Shit!!! I swear to myself (silently, because it is the arse-crack of dawn and my roommates are still sleeping, beate loro). I had forgotten that the Thesis Shoes of Awesomeness are now kind of broken and falling apart and don't really stay on so well anymore. Happily, though, I seem to be having a somewhat resourceful sort of morning, and I quickly come up with a solution: sticky stuff. Like tape. So I make some little loops of tape, affix them to both the inside of my shoes and the outside of my nylons, and voila! I am (somewhat tenuously) taped into my shoes. (So classy. Ahem.)

Seven minutes later, I am picking my way across the cobblestones of the piazza, trying not to get my heels stuck in them (this is exceedingly tricky under the best of circumstances, and slightly more so when you've had to stick your shoes on your feet with Scotch tape).

"You look nice," comments my boss vaguely, punching buttons on her blackberry like her life depends on it. We head towards the meeting.

And that is how I came to be sauntering (read: hobbling) up to my first important business meeting as an English teacher attired in a skirt (decent) and nylons (possibly weird color), a short-sleeved shirt (despite rain, fog and general chill), a black cardigan (possibly complete with blobs of lint still stuck on the back where I can't reach with the lint roller), and an aging pair of black heels Scotch-taped to my feet.

I sit across from two all-important bank people, listening and nodding and smiling officiously as appropriate (I hope), and all the while wondering whether my shoes will fall off on the way out. Leaving shoes in the client's office building and walking out in your nylons: probably not the best way to convince new clients of our professionalism and charm.

Uh, however. May I point out: we got the contract. Big old contract with lots of work. And my shoes didn't fall off until I got home. Sweeeet.

Monday evening

So. Then what you can do is go on to have a thirteen-hour day. Always a grand old time. Of which, somehow, only four and a half hours were teaching? Huh.

And then a lot of administrative stuff... and some translating... etc.

But, you know what? Somehow, I'm happy. This morning, Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer" came on the radio randomly, as I was pulling out of Uber-Fancy Local Fashion Thing Headquarters, and that was delightful. Then, this afternoon, a charming email from a student... and that's all it takes.

Even with 13-hour days... this life is so delightfully simple, sometimes.

Monday morning

So, yesterday, I was quietly productive. First I got up late and decided not to actually get up, and stayed in bed to watch tv shows online. (This is productive with regards to relaxing, by the way, and pretending to nurse a vague sore throat... why do I always seem to have a vague sore throat?)

Then I actually got up, and answered some emails that I really did not feel like answering, and by, like, 5pm, sat my arse down to work on the Translation of Death (uh, yes, still... but I swear I'm finishing it this week, if it kills me). Actually got a few pages done (thank Christ!), caught up with the parents on Skype (yay!), pondered the booking of tickets home for Christmas (yay!) but did not actually book them (must, though, asap), and decided to clean the apartment circa midnight.

Then remembered that had wanted to mark one of my students' final exams, and also plan a bit for the one I'm giving in class today... and then finally went to bed, all happy because my apartment was clean, the Translation of Death had made some slight progress, and my flannel sheets are delightfully warm.

Now it is Monday morning and I can't decide whether to be residually satisfied with myself (from the productivity, you know) or cranky because it is the crack of dawn (well, before it, actually) and I am sleepy. On the other hand... classes today from 8 to 3.30. Do you know what that is? That is, like, a normal school schedule. Even if I get stuck at work for a few hours after, I could still leave by a normal time! Before the 12-hour mark! And cook myself a healthy dinner! And continue the Translation of Death! Yay!

Okay, decided: I'm going to be in a good mood. Despite the mosquito (mosquitoes? really? in the second week in November? basta!!) that is sitting on the wall just above my computer, taunting me. Bastardo.

Little blue car strikes again!

"We should stop on the way back to school and put some petrol in the car," says my fellow teacher as we exit the Uber-Fancy Local Fashion Thing (UFLFT). I nod, still smiling about something hilarious one of my students said. It's nice when your Friday lunchtime three-hours-back-to-back students make you smile. Also it's nice when you finish and the sun is out and you know you only have one more lesson later today, and plenty of time to plan it, and even time for a coffee.

The other teacher is recounting something hilarious that one of her students said as we start the car and head out of the parking lot. (Her students, evidently, are hilarious, too.)

It is not until we are out of the parking lot and trundling along the main, tree-lined driveway of the UFLFT (the UFLFT is quite big) that Fellow Teacher stops mid-sentence to say "we have no petrol left." I find this to be an odd sort of statement, given that we have just established our plan to go and get some on the way back from school.

"No, I mean, really none left," she says, apparently using her mind-reading capabilities to discern my skepticism. I realize over the next few seconds that this means we will have to actually stop the car. Right here in the tree-lined driveway of the UFLFT.

Crap.

Once the poor little blue car (yeah, still the same one, thanks for asking) has ground to a halt (uh, literally), I am surprisingly efficient. I call the secretary to ask her to come and retrieve us, preferrably with some gas. I pull out a book and swiftly plan my next lesson. Conveniently, it is located right here at the UFLFT in two hours' time, so I could easily just walk back up the driveway and teach it, if I have to.

We pass the time exclaiming repeatedly how ridiculous a situation this is to be in, and imagining what our students would say if they could see us. We are happy that it is no longer lunch hour, so hopefully they are all safely ensconced in their offices, and not within view of the driveway. (Yay trees.)

When the secretary gets here, it transpires that the gas station was unwilling to sell her any gas without the proper receptacle. Like a car. Or a gas tank. Yes, well.

"Can we just leave the car there in the driveway?" we ask the man in the little guardhouse. "It's not really blocking anything much. And it's not broken or anything. It's just that we ran out of gas, you know." He looks hesitant, but we promise to come right back and he finally agrees. Probably months of rolling down our windows just enough to shout "lezioni d'Inglese!!" in his general direction, using more volume than correct pronunciation, have convinced him that we are well and truly mad.

We elect to go to the biggest gas station we can find, and are happy to discover that they do, indeed, have receptacles specially designed for idiots who have run out of gas somewhere and also do not happen to own portable gas tanks, or whatever the proper thing is to resolve such a situation. The specially designed receptacles are massive bags of thick-ish but clear plastic. This allows you to hold 5 liters of gas in your hands and also be able to see it! Fun! (Did you know that gas is a weird turquoise greenish-blue? I did not know this, but now I do! Yay!)

It's also a bit unnerving. I mean, what if it spontaneously combusts while it's sitting in your lap? I feel like I am inept enough, when it comes to cars, to cause spontaneous combustion of gas, particularly if the only thing between it and us is a plastic bag. Hm.

We arrive back at the UFLFT, having rather miraculously avoided combustion, and discover that the fun is not over yet. Now we need to maneuver 5 liters of bright bluish-greenish gas into the tank of the little blue car, all while standing in the middle of the driveway.

"What do you want to bet one of our students drives by?" I say to the other teacher. I have a knack for making it rain on a perfectly sunny day by saying things like this, and, indeed, not five minutes passes before a lovely light-grey Audi rolls calmly past, bearing one of my students. He's only the head of the Technical department or something like that. You know. Whatever. He cranes his neck to look at us as he drives by, looking confused. Happily, I am on the other side of the car at this point, so to this day we reassure ourselves that he didn't recognize us.

This is good, because I am at this moment standing next to the gas tank with my arms wrapped around the bag of gas, attempting to aim it into the tank rather than spill it all over my feet. It's going reasonably well (not easy when you're wearing spindly heels - for the teaching of the fashion people, you see - but are significantly taller than the car even without heels) but it is far from graceful.

A few minutes later, we are on our way back to school with yet another ridiculous story to tell.

"Okay, so, we need to not tell our students about this, ever, okay?" we promise each other.

"Yes, definitely."

They all know within the week. Naturally. I still occasionally get teased about it. Sigh.

Zucca

So, the K2 in Reggio has zucca-flavored ice cream. (Zucca, by the way, means pumpkin.) I had some tonight and it tastes kind of like apricot, which is a bit odd. Pretty good, though. And very very orange.

That is all.


(You totally thought I was going to talk about tortelli, didn't you?)