funny bones, funny poses, and other happenings

So much has happened in the past week. It has honestly been one of the longest weeks I can ever remember. I’ll try to focus mostly on hitting the high notes.

We have one week left in Lido de Camiaore, the town where we’re having orientation, before FINALLY heading to Florence on Saturday the 4th. I am so incredibly ready to get there. Like…SO READY. I don’t think I could be more anxious to get there. You get the point.

Every day we have Italian language class from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. I love learning and hearing the language, and I’m really hoping to at least be able to have a semi-coherent conversation in Italian in the next month or so. But let me tell you…four straight hours of a foreign language is absolutely brutal. Especially when you’re a total beginner and your teacher doesn’t speak any English. Our teacher’s name is Giovanna and she’s only 25. She told us she spoke English on the first day, but we quickly found out that her English pretty much consists of “Hello,” “Thank you,” and “Why yes, I can speak some English!” If I had not studied Spanish before, I’d literally have no clue what was going on in our class. We jumped right into conjugating verbs the very first hour. There are some people in our class who have never taken a language, period, and they must be completely lost.

I can’t help but wish that the phrases we’re learning could be more pertinent to what we’re doing right now. Lido de Camiaore is a tiny beach town where Italian families come to vacation, so we’re the only Americans around. Pretty much no one speaks English, so it’s the perfect place to practice our Italian before we get to Florence. Florence is obviously really touristy and we won’t be forced to speak Italian, but I really want to. I’ll be living in a homestay anyway, and I found out yesterday that the woman hosting me , Franca, speaks English about like Giovanna does, so I’m excited about speaking Italian with her and improving. But I just wish that our class focused on more practical and polite phrases to use. I want to be able to tell waiters things like “I’m enjoying my food. Thank you for being patient with me,” not things like “No, I am not Irish, but thank you for asking.” We spent an hour in class learning how to say things like “Is Jorge from Spain?” and “We are in Italy, not Germany” and “What is your address?” Not to be snobby, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that I won’t be asking many Italians I meet around town for their home addresses. And yesterday at lunch I accidentally ordered a whole margherita pizza for myself. Point is, I know how to ask for the address and phone number of any Tom, Dick or Giuseppe who’s willing to share theirs, but I can’t make it clear that all I want is two slices of pizza. Oh well…I’ll learn.

Yesterday in class the girls who sit behind me, Kristin and Meghan, were hitting the point of delirium and were just sitting there doing little dances at their desks to keep themselves entertained, trying to avoid Giovanna’s eye. Meghan eventually hit her funnybone (literally, she accidentally whacked her funnybone on her desk…I’m not just using the corny phrase.) So she and Kristin started cracking up and then Giovanna came over to ask what was going on. Kristin tried explaining what had happened and then asking if there was an Italian equivalent for “funnybone.” Giovanna wasn’t picking up on it, so Meghan, Kristin, Lauren and I all started demonstrating what had happened, gesturing toward our funnybones and saying the word, then bumping them against the table to explain why we were laughing. Giovanna nodded along as if she understood, saying, “Si, si,” smiling, and repeating the word “Funnybone.” As we kept pointing to our funnybones, Giovanna stopped, gave a little shrug and a knowing look, then said, “Don’t worry. I am a good girl.”
At first we all sat there with blank looks on our faces, and after about 3 seconds of letting what she’d said register, we just burst out laughing. We were trying to be discreet about it, but my face was red and I think tears were forming in all of our eyes. We felt bad for laughing, especially since all of us have pretty nonexistent Italian skills-it’s not like Giovanna is obligated to be good at English. It was just SO funny because we were wondering what she might have imagined we were talking about. Maybe we were making some awkward or obscene gesture with our arms…maybe that prompted her to say “I am a good girl.” Or maybe she meant that she was understanding what we were saying and that we “didn’t need to worry” because she was able to understand…whatever the misunderstanding was, it was pretty funny. Especially combined with the fact that we were all completely mentally drained and trying to conquer the language barrier, which added up to goofy deliriousness.

I’ve been getting gelato almost every day that I’ve been here. That’s one perk of living in Hotel Colombo: gelato shops are absolutely EVERYWHERE. The downside to living in Hotel Colombo? All 90 of the American students enrolled in the program are staying here. For two weeks. It’s been kind of embarrassing-I’ve been really surprised by the students in this program. What has surprised me so far on this trip is what’s turned out to be most difficult for me. I expected that I’d have to deal with mild culture shock, difficulties with learning the language, missing friends from school/camp/home, pickpockets and other American victimizers, etc. I never expected that the hardest thing about my program would be dealing with the other American students enrolled.

Ok…don’t get me wrong, I’ve met some cool people. But overall, the students in this program have really disappointed me. I thought the majority of people would be cool and inspiring, with lots of interests and stories and goals. But instead, the majority of people are really self-absorbed and reckless and SO many people seem COMPLETELY disinterested in the culture. It just sucks because I know of so many friends of mine (and college students in general) who would kill for an opportunity like this, and I’m having to watch some of these kids just squander it. Two people have already been sent home. I’m trying hard to stay positive about the people around me, but I really am eager to get to Florence next week and have my independence. We all live together and eat all our meals together, so right now it feels like I’m on a field trip with the cast of Girls Gone Wild. And most of the guys on this trip don’t really say anything other than “Bro,” “Siiiick,” “Gnarly” (yes, gnarly) and “Waaaaassstteeedd.” How old are we again? It’s just frustrating. I'm in the lobby of the hotel right now and some of the bro-skis are sitting near me, and I just overheard the sentence "Have you seen that movie The Holiday, or some s%*#? It's with f$@$^ing Cameron Diaz or some s#%&*, and you can do this gnarly MFing switch thing where you switch houses with some siiiiiick MFer. Bro, we should do that S#%*." Seriously. SeRiOuSlY. When I get to Florence I won’t be in such a bubble, and I’ll be able to choose who I see outside of class, so that’ll be nice. And judging by the behavior during orientation, there are a lot of people that I probably won’t ever be seeing in class. I used this analogy with one friend already: you know how on trashy reality shows, the casting people always tend to choose the most EXTREME people to represent a certain ethnic/social/religious group? Well, if this were a globally televised reality show, many of the people on this program would have been deliberately chosen by MTV to represent the stereotypical rude and disinterested Americans.

Okay. Sorry for all the negativity. I just wanted to be honest and put that out there. I’ll be able to grin and bear it for one more week. ANYWAY: I’ve gone on some trips during orientation that have gotten me even more pumped for Florence. A few days ago, some of us went to Pietra Santa, which is apparently one of Tuscany’s “best-kept secrets” and is known as “Little Athens” because of all the artists it attracts. We got to go inside a mosaic studio that was tucked away on this shaded road and it was amazing. There were three men inside hard at work. All of them were very old, very Italian, and very bearded. Watching them pay such careful attention to detail and just pour themselves into their work was so incredible. They were working on mosaics commissioned by people from all corners of the world. Some of the mosaics were completely original creations, while others were recreations of famous paintings like Klimt’s The Kiss and Munch’s The Scream. One of the men showed us pictures of him presenting mosaics to everyone from Giorgio Armani to President Obama. His current project is an icon of Saint Peter that he’s creating for a cemetery in Hollywood.

We also went to Pisa, and people-watching there was fantastic. It was so funny watching everyone struggle to find the perfect place where they should take their pictures posing with the leaning tower. I got a ton of creeper pics of people doing the classic pose. I’m tempted to make a Facebook album of just those pictures, but I guess that might be a little much. I’ll post some of the highlights here, though.

I just tried for about 10 minutes to upload some of my pictures on here, but the Internet connection here is terrible and it's just not working. I'll try to add them in later because the pictures from Pisa are hilarious and the ones from Pietra Santa are really cool. Sorry I have no visuals to go along with this marathon post. Miss all of you...keep in touch!!