I am back & hopefully this time I can do all those things above & come back speaking Italish!? Wishful thinking? Spero che no.
Anyway... although I have done the Italy thing before (oh yeah! Did I not mention that I am in Italy? Well I was hoping you got that from the part where I talked about "PIZZA, PASTA & PANINI!!"), this time it is a little bit different.
There are no "Beverage Appreciation" courses where I can drink wine & there is no "Beginning Italian" course where I can pretend there's some "study" in my "abroad." There are no friends from school with me, who will casually hop on a train to Pisa or accompany me at all hours of the day (aka there is no comfort of familiarity). There are no spoon-fed field trips to Venice & Rome. There are no 4-day weekends & student discounts at museums. There is no fancy apartment on the river with a sweet exit straight into the city center... This kinda feels like real life.
Oh wait, it is?!
I've got my tiny apartment in the outskirts. I've got the directions to the laundromat saved in my phone. I've got the blue metro line just waiting for me a few blocks away. I've got my random locations of wifi throughout the city at my disposal. I've got my 5-day a week language school. & I've got the strangest set of 47853635345 keys that leave me baffled every time I look at them... (Yes, I did stand outside my building for 20 minutes fussing with my keys, unable to unlock my door. Yes, I did feel like an idiot. Yes, I am an idiot. Any more questions? ...). So there you have it...
Wait did I forget to tell you about all the good stuff? Because there are some good things! I promise. TONS OF GOOD THINGS! & I have also learned a few things in my time here as well...First of all, I really like Rome. I love how the streets are small & the road names change every other foot. I love the random spots of ruins that just seem to pop out of the earth to say hello. I love the street signs & the small alleys. I love the smell of pizzas cooking. I love the salamis hanging from the windows & the blocks of cheese calling my name. I love the weather during the winter!!!! I love the way the ambulances sound as they wake me from my restful slumber. I love how the people divert their eyes as much as possible from your smile, but are actually the friendliest when you force them into conversation. I love the strange looks I get when I speak my broken Italian. I love walking past everything & knowing it's older than most things ever. I love that there are random cat sanctuaries/colonies (& to be honest they live in pretty nice real estate if you ask me...). I love that a cappuccino is like the cheapest thing ever... even though their size chart differs a bit from the Starbucks scale. I love the screeching noise the metro makes as it comes to a jerky halt. I love that I can walk around aimlessly, feeling no pressure & finding the best gelato shop by accident & then casually seeing a fortress... nbd. I love that I am forced to make friends since I don't know anyone!!! & with that, I also love how almost everyone I have met in my class is foreign, but barely any are from the United States.
There is some major diverCITY going on here (see what I did there?). It's so hard to forget sometimes that I am foreign, that I have an accent & that the United States is not the center of the world. But it's true. I now have friends from Barcelona & Brazil, Milan & Croatia, Germany & Switzerland, Columbia & France, China & Peru. I walk around with these friends & we all speak Italian (in our broken ways) & are excited to learn! Everyone is at different speaking & grammatical levels, everyone has a different mother tongue, everyone is staying for different lengths of time, but we all are here for the same reason: We all just really love pizza. Just kidding... we just want to learn Italian!!! It's pretty darn cool!
It is difficult at times... knowing I have 3 months here can sound daunting when I say it loud enough for myself to hear. The idea of knowing no one from home can be kind of scary. & living in a strange city, while doing laundry in a laundromat seems kind of out of my league. But hey... I've gotta learn sometime, & now is better than never!
Ci vediamo!
