Un Giorno Normale

I thought this whole moving to Italy thing was going to be a piece of cake...that most of my days would be spent sitting in a piazza with my journal and a cappuccino. Not the case. Everyday, we wake up at 8:30am, which you might think is late by American standards but you would be surprised how hard it is to get out of bed at that time, when we were just up until 2 in the morning doing homework. So, we get up, fight our way through the crowds of locals going to work, or tourists getting lost in the subway. These aren't just ordinary crowds either...you virtually cannot move when getting to or on the subway. There is no such thing as personal space anymore and you get used to a perfect stranger leaning up against you, or feel comfortable standing on someone's feet. We stop at our favorite cafe, where our favorite barista, Federico, starts our drinks before we even order. The foam on my cappuccino is such perfection every morning, I have honestly considered naming my first born Federico. We head to class, which starts at 10. We wouldn’t dare be late for our first grammar lesson of the day. Our teacher, who is a seriously strict Irish woman, with white skin and jet black hair just looks at you and you want to crawl out of the room in tears. She starts out the day, with something like this, “OK, give me a sentence using a subject pronoun, auxiliary verb in the base form and a main verb in past participle form….ummm, Andrea.” I seriously feel like vomiting every time she says my name. She has been affectionately referred to as “The grammar Nazi” by our classmates. And I am convinced she has it in for me. Believe me…I learned grammar that I didn’t know existed, faster than I would have thought possible. Then we have teaching methodology class, with an Italian woman, who speaks English uhh pretty well. If you ever ask her a question she doesn’t know the answer to, which is most of the time, she says in her heavy accent, “it is that way just because it is…I don’t know why, it just is. I cannot help you.” She is teaching us the phonetic alphabet, however, is teaching us British phonetic spelling. So there are a bunch of Americans in our class pretending to have British accents so we can spell the words correctly and don’t fail the exam. It is pretty funny and odd at the same time. Then after class we prepare our lessons, and in the evenings we teach hilarious Italian students English. My favorite students to teach are the teenagers. They are pure entertainment and say things like, “I will only date a boy if he pays.” Or, “everyone wants to be with our clique”. Or, “if I met Brad Pitt, I would make him come home with me.” I am just happy they are using the grammar and vocabulary I taught. We head home around 8pm, make a fast meal, and lots of coffee and do loads of homework. We are both exhausted, but hanging in there. Final exams start on Monday, so we are in for a long weekend cramming as much grammar and phonetics that will fit into our brains…one more week to go!

Amore.

Napoli.

I woke up Saturday morning to the sun shining brightly in my face from Sean opening the window shades. I have to note that with the windows and shades closed you could pretty much sleep for days with no interruption. They black out the light and silence the loud city. Good thing for sleeping in late, but also a little dangerous. After another rainy Friday night, we were happy to see a sunny Saturday morning. With tons of homework in our school bags, and finals right around the corner, we decided to avoid it all and go on a day trip to Napoli. So, we got in gear, downed our cappuccino, crossed the street to Termini and hopped on the next train out of town. When we arrived in Napoli, it almost felt like walking into TJ. Overbearing, shady street vendors lined the sidewalk selling useless nick nacks. Garbage was blowing everywhere, as if trash cans never existed. And if anything looked like it may have been remotely interesting at one time, graffiti now covered it. It was really a sad site to see. A lot of homeless begging for money...a lot of sad souls. However, as we continued walking, we found Napoli to be a pretty cool city. We found a bustling, crowded area with trendy shops and some amazing architecture. We made it to the waterfront to see some ancient castles sitting upon the water along with a breathtaking view of mountains in the distance. Napoli is known for being the birthplace of pizza...and therefore having the best pizza in the world! We were actually really excited to be apart of this, and got a couple slices. The pizza was good, but lacking in mozzarella. I guess thats how its done there. Lots of sauce, little cheese. After we ate, we passed a couple more pizzarias with huge crowds of Italians lined out the door, and regretted our hasty choice for dinner. We just figure we will have to go back for another slice at one of the popular places in town. Another thing we saw were some unreal looking pastries. Every time we passed a pasticcerie, the cakes, the canolli, the chocolate, the colorful, glazed fruit made us salivate and stare in a trance at the lovely deserts. The sweets were everywhere, and definitely calling us back for another visit to Napoli. We did indulge in a torrone, a white, nuggetty bar with hazelnuts and chocolate in the center. We ate the whole bar throughout the day, no problem. We saw the ugliest dog in the world. I am not kidding. I love pets just as much as the next person, but this was truly a dog only a mother could love. It was HUGE! As we walked by wondering if it was even a dog, it slowly picked its head up and looked up at us, and I ran in horror. Sean thought it was a boar and tried to pet it. I can only be glad we passed it again, so I could take a picture. Napoli is also full of librerie (book stores), which were all packed. Guess thats a good thing, but it was just strange to see millions of packed bookstores one after another. Maybe a new book was launching and we were missing out or something. Anyway, at least everyone is literate in Naples. After a full day we nearly got run over by about 40 motos on our way back to the station. Sean bought us the wrong train tickets and it took us about 3 hours to get home (it should have been only 1 hr. 40 min)...I wont go into details about how I got us fined 13 euro each on the way there for buying the wrong tickets...thats another blog entry. Anyway, Napoli was an interesting place. It could use to be cleaned up, but we appreciated the realness of the city. It was very Italian, and under the thick layer of roughness and garbage, it was actually very bello.

Follow up on teaching

Just had my review with the senior teacher who was observing my lesson. She said I did great! AND I didnt say "like" once! Yay! I stepped in dog poop today....maybe that was a good sign.

e quando piove...

I walked out of class tonight to another storm! It doesnt just rain, it comes down and is accompanied with thunder and lightening. I cant believe that it really did change seasons over night. I love the rain, dont get me wrong. Living in a city where foot is my main mean of transportation might be a different story. So much for the cute new sandals and beach towel I bought when it was 100 degrees a week ago. My first teaching experience was "eeeehhh"...I taught Italian adults in an intermediate level English class. It is hard to teach concepts to students that I myself am trying to grasp. I mean, I know English because I speak it, but to answer why we say things certain ways, is much harder. I just wanted to say " because we do", when asked why, but I couldnt. Another obstacle was that their accents were so strong I struggled to understand them. I can only imagine how I sound to them. Lastly, as we all know, I need to drop "like" and "um" from my vocabulary immediately. Anyway, I teach new students tomorrow (Wednesday), and hopefully I feel more confident. After all, they dont really care who is in front of them, as long as they learn something. Off for pizza now. Mmmm!

A few more things to note from the weekend.

Some other things we discovered this weekend, in a nutshell...

Sean has officially witnessed me eat a whole pizza. Thats right...when I got back from my last trip, no one believed I could do it. Well, now I have a witness. It was a whole pie, and yes, I ate the whole thing and felt completely satisfied.

While on the subject of pizza, I saw a woman eating a pizza with egg on it. It was a normal looking pizza with whole, hard boiled eggs on top. Enough said. It looked totally odd, and I am not sure if I will try it. But, hey, when in Rome...so maybe....

We went to Piazza Navona, which was very cool. Something I missed the first time I was in Rome. It was bustling with people, street performers and music. Sean almost lost it when I nearly paid 5 euro for a coke though. That is equivilant to about 8 dollars, for a regular can of coke. Needless to say, he wouldnt let me buy it.

We stumbled upon the Jewish ghetto. Something else I missed during my first trip to Rome. It was very interesting, and a kind of runned down part of town. Very cool to see though.

We also stumbled upon a cat sanctuary. This was as gross as it sounds. Its called Torre Argentina - it is an area of ancient ruins where millions of wild cats have made their home. It smelled like a giant litter box. Ick.

Well, those were just a few highlights of the weekend!! Overall it was nice and relaxing. Sean and I are so happy here. Well, today is another day at school. I am teaching tonight for my first time! More to come on that!

Sunday...

It has literally turned to fall over night. The weather is now cool and breezy and crisp and all the reasons I love this time of year. Sunday feels like Sunday anywhere in the world. There is a calm in the air, a lazy feel, a day you want to just be comfortable and with someone you love. We woke up slowly, had our cappuccinos at a local bar and sat in the park, bundled in cool-weather clothes. We read Italian and observed the way everyone else moved slowly and had the same lazy presense that we did. We hand washed our clothes, which was much harder than it sounds. It actually took a good 2 hours to finish. We worked in shifts, and I ran to the store when it was Seans turn and got us lunch. It felt like any other Sunday, just a million miles from home. It is obvious we are slowly establishing this foriegn land as home. It is becoming less foriegn.