Although my journey home was a three and a half day journey, I loved every second of it. After spending every moment of 7 weeks either responsible for children or under the jurisdiction of a host family, having a few days of complete independence and alone time was heaven.
During my last week at camp in Malo, I booked a ticket to see Verdi’s “Aida” at the Arena di Verona for Saturday night. So upon departing from my host family on Saturday, I was excited to see yet another famed Italian city and of course to see an opera at one of the best summer festivals in the world. Once in Verona, I found my way to my hostel, which was actually university housing that had been converted into a hostel for the summer. I was halfway around the world and still couldn’t get away from dorm life! It was small and cheap, but adequate… the only problem was that I found a few tiny black bugs jumping on my legs (maybe fleas?!?). Anyway, Verona turned out to be one of my favorite cities I have seen in Italy. It’s fairly small, but has the feeling of a large city. The main piazzas are really touristy (so many Germans!!), but the locale around my hostel seemed strictly Italian. Also in Verona are the houses of Romeo and Giulietta (Juliet). Giulietta’s house has been preserved beautifully, including the famous Giulietta’s balcony—which is thought to be made from half of a sarcophagus. Below the balcony is a fairly new statue of Giuliette that is supposed to bring good luck to those who place their hand on her breast. So naturally, there were tons of tourists lined up to take pictures of eachother touching this statue’s breast. I didn’t feel like fighting the crowd to cop a feel myself, but it was quite the sight!
My ticket for the opera was the cheapest one available, meaning that I would be sitting high up in the unnumbered seats section. In fact, there weren’t seats at all—the ‘cheap seats’ were just spots on the original stone steps of the arena. The arena was fascinating in every way; it was so cool to know that I was seeing an opera from the same stone steps where people gathered for entertainment centuries ago. Since my section was general admission, I arrived two and a half hours early to get in line for a good seat within that section. What I found was that the seats were actually really good. I could see and hear everything perfectly, just from an angle instead of straight-on. The performance itself was the most amazing production I’ve ever seen. The sheer size of the cast blew my mind: there were over 150 people on the stage at one point... it was just crazy. I can’t imagine how much it must cost just to have costumes on all of them. The set was also extremely impressive, with a giant rotating pyramid and huge Egyptian statues everywhere. Because the festival has five or six operas rotating in the schedule, several of the large set pieces for the other productions were just sitting outside the arena for all to see.
The audience of the opera was as diverse as one could imagine, but there was definitely a clear distinction between those who had seats on the arena floor and those of us sitting on the arena steps. The arena floor had a separate entrance, which was visible from my seat. I watched as men in suits and women in ball gowns paraded themselves to their red velvet chairs as those of us in the stands just wore whatever we had on from earlier that day. It was definitely one of the most obvious ‘separation of the classes’ events that I’ve been to. But as the opera started, it didn’t matter what I was wearing or where I was sitting; I was experiencing the same music and splendor of the atmosphere that every other person in the arena was…and it was magnificent. As an Arena di Verona tradition, people in the audience lit candles to mark the start of the opera as the conductor took his stand. Seeing an enormous Roman Arena filled with candlelight from hundreds of people was truly a sight to behold! And of course, the singers were world-class. The soprano playing Aida was absolutely incredible… my jaw was dropped after each one of her arias. It would make sense, as a singer, to become discouraged after hearing singers who are leagues better than one could ever hope to be… but oddly, it just encouraged me more than ever to keep singing. The beauty of art is that it is subjective and can therefore never be “perfect”. And as an artist, there is this pull to keep training and get better and better; to strive to reach one’s full potential, as imperfect as it may be.
The rough part about seeing operas in Italy (particularly the outdoor sort) is that they can’t begin until the sun is completely down… which, in the summer, means about 9:15. So a 4 –act opera such as “Aida” runs until about 12:45am, followed by the half-hour walk back to my hostel. The next morning, I made my way to Milano by train. A bit too ambitious, I decided to save a few euro and walk to the station instead of taking the bus. An hour later, I arrived at the station with all my luggage still on my back and completely exhausted… but the walk was beautiful. I got to see what Verona looks like in the morning. And being Sunday at 10:30am, there were countless church bells tolling all around me, assuring me that I was getting a full European morning experience. My stay in Milan was quite uneventful. I walked around Piazza Duomo for a while, comfortable with its familiar and home-like feel, having stood in the same piazza about six or seven different times over the past two summers. I made my way to the hotel where I relaxed until my flight to Atlanta the next morning.
As I checked-in at the Milano Airport, I was told that my flight was filled to capacity and they had bumped me up to first-class free of charge: SCORE!! I always thought that first class just meant you get a bigger seat and more leg room, but boy was I wrong—it was a whole different world!! I felt like a king (and I also made sure I appreciated every second, knowing that this might be the only time I ever fly first-class). It must have been so obvious to the other passengers that I had never flown in such style before. I reveled at all the free stuff, took a picture of each of the four courses they served me for lunch, complete with unlimited free wine and champagne (I can’t imagine what the dinner must have been like!). The seat could recline almost to a horizontal position, complete with a footrest. The pillows were huge and fluffy, and there were nice quilted comforters on our seats instead of those puny blue blankets I’m used to. In the pocket in front of me, was a free pair of huge headphones, as well as a bag of complimentary toiletries (lotion, lip balm, toothbrush, toothpaste, etc). I couldn’t believe it! I suddenly felt like one of those suited men in the floor seats of the Arena, receiving amenities far beyond my needs. And just as the separation of the classes was apparent at the opera, here too it was quite obvious. Not only were we seated in the front of the plane, but there were closed curtains separating us from the coach class, making it easy to forget that there were others on the plane who were receiving a lesser service than we were. I suppose that’s kind of a good reflection of how classism works in society as well. We build ‘curtain’ dividers in the form of district zoning and, therefore, in education and housing that allows the higher classes to go about their lives without much interaction with the lower classes. It’s easy to ignore the things you don’t see.
My luxury continued as I arrived at my Atlanta hotel. My father had booked me a hotel room because I had an overnight layover… but little did I know that he reserved it with his diamond status honors points (thanks to all his company traveling for business). So once again, my stay was quite luxurious!
As I now await my departing flight from Atlanta to Springfield (which is delayed…ugh!), I am planning what song to listen to on my iPod as the plane prepares to land. (I always like to heighten exciting experiences by finding a song that matches my emotion at that time and jamming out to it.) My choice this time is “When You’re Home” from the musical “In the Heights”. The most fitting lyrics are: “Everything is easier when you’re home; The street’s a little kinder when you’re home.”
Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-Bits
1.) I’ve been contemplating lately what defines a tourist. This probably sounds like I have a superiority complex or something, but when I’m in Italy I don’t feel like a tourist. No, I’m not a citizen. Yes, I’m taking lots of pictures. Yes, I’m buying souvenirs for family. But no, I’m not staying in hotels; I’m living with families. I’ve seen villages and countryside that no tourist has. I’m working there. I’m teaching the children of the country. I’ve sang in the bars and streets. I have friends there. And yes, I will return. I can’t help feeling like more than just another tourist. I’ve invested more of myself there than that. When I see American tourists in the piazzas of the major cities, I feel qualitatively different from them. I know this probably just sounds like I’m being pompous, but I think this feeling is a good thing. I feel connected to Italy in a way that will always remain within me… and I’m so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to create that feeling.
2.) I’m worried that graduating from college is going to bring a particular challenge to the forefront of my life: eating. For all the years I lived at home, my parents provided me with unlimited food and always prepared it for me. Now, as an RA at WashU, I will have had a full meal plan for all four years of college. And my summers in Italy consist of host families cooking me/paying for every meal. I’m beginning to realize that sometime in the near future I am going to be responsible for feeding myself… and I am NOT looking forward to it! Spending the time and money to shop for and prepare meals is going to come as a real slap in the face… But, unless someone would like to point me in the direction of Neverland, I guess I have to become a full-fledged adult at some point or another.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Malo
Fortunately, my final week working for ACLE this summer was one of my favorite experiences and made me forget that I was actually burnt out with the job. It was the largest camp I had ever been to (15 tutors, 150 children), and it was in fact the second largest ACLE English camp in the entire country. It was a blast to work with so many other tutors. One of the best parts of this job is meeting other young people from all over the world, all of us headed in different directions in life, but all joined together for a short time for the same cause. Most of the tutors were British or American, with some Canada and Scotland sprinkled in the mix. We also varied widely in age, from 18 to 39. When we arrived at the local train station, there was nothing short of a parade waiting for us—it was the most amazing welcoming I’ve ever received. The camp director had organized all the host families to arrive before our train, and she handed out all the City Camp and English-speaking countries’ flags to them. So as soon as we stepped out of the train, this huge mass of people was cheering and clapping and waving flags at us… I felt like such a celebrity!
Because of our size, we split the camp into three groups (2 elementary, 1 middle school) for most of the activities, warm-up circles, etc. My class of nine year-olds was really great, albeit their level of English was far below what it normally is for that age. Our final show was SpongeBob Square Pants, and they were so enthusiastic about it and wanted it to be perfect (which is good, since I’m the same way). For the ending song, my girls even came up with a gymnastics routine complete with one-handed cartwheels and splits. We performed the final show in the town’s cinema on a huge stage—it was so cool!
The town of Malo was small, but a very supportive and enthusiastic community. The sense of unity and town pride reminded me a lot of my own hometown of Nixa. The best part was that the lunches at the school were managed by the local parents’ council, meaning they were really well organized and the food was really good! The town rests in a valley, surrounded on three sides by mountains. It made the climate much cooler than I would have expected, and also very few mosquitoes (YAYYY!!).
My host family provided me with quite an interesting experience, to say the least. First of all, none of them spoke a word of English, which I was actually very thankful for because it meant that I got a lot of practice on my Italian (which is markedly better now than it was last summer!). Secondly, they have a 4 year-old child who is the closest thing to Satanic that I have ever seen. Within the first 24 hours of being with the family, I had already been scratched, pinched, punched in the groin, spat on, and he hurled an English-Italian dictionary at my head. He also cried and screamed non-stop every day. One night at dinner, he noticed that I had a green cup and he had a yellow one… well, who would guess that something so small could almost cause WW3 to occur!! By Saturday morning, I was so sick of all his crap that when he asked me to play Dragonball Z with him, I relished at the opportunity to seek vengeance, at least virtually. So instead of going easy on him as I would have done with any other child, I relentlessly beat the shit out of him… and loved every second of it!! He started yelling at me to stop punching/shooting him, but I didn’t. I had a week’s worth of frustration and hostility built up inside me, and there was no way I was gonna stop until I saw “KO” across the screen!
The first day of being with the family, they took me to a family feast (over 30 people) on the side of one of the mountains. The view was incredible and they had huge picnic tables lined up in front of an outdoor roasting pit. The father took me by the shoulder and walked me over to the roaster. From a distance it looked like enormous shish kabobs of meat… but as I got closer I realized that the pieces of meat were actually entire birds. I asked what kind of birds they were (assuming some type of tiny game fowl), and he said they were birds that he shot from the sky, like sparrows and the like. Although slightly shocked, my “I’m in a foreign country—I want to try everything” attitude was intrigued. When we sat down, the father noticed me watching other people pick the birds up to see how it’s done and he told me to just eat it. I asked, “What about the bones?” He told me not to worry, they’re only small birds. He proceeded to eat one of his as an example. Quite ravenously he separated the head from the body and put the head/neck in his mouth, biting the skull in such a way that only the beak remained uneaten. Then he tore the wings off and ate them one after the other. Then he ate the body in two more bites. I was fascinated, having never seen a bird eaten in this way: skull, bones, everything! So I quickly followed suite, starting with the head as he had done. The bones were crunchy, but definitely edible… unfortunately, I thought they were also the best tasting part. The meat was so dark and just tasted nasty; but at least now I know!
After lunch, we went for a hike through the mountains. At one point we reached this tiny church, out in the middle of nowhere. And from the church, we could see in the distance—between two mountains—some sort of monument. The father told me that it was a monument built following WW2, and inside were the bones of the Italian soldiers who had been killed by the Germans there. Apparently, it is the only monument of its kind in the entire country. After the hike, I laid in the grass playing Uno with the other ‘kids’ in the family, which included Ginny. Ginny was 17 years-old and studying psychology at her high school. Somehow the father took this to mean that she would be a perfect match for me. So Ginny and I both spent the entire afternoon slightly embarrassed at his suggestive statements, including one about marriage. At the conclusion of the family feast, it was decided that Ginny and I would go out to a bar together on Thursday night. And the father reminded me every day that, come Thursday evening, I have a date with this 17 year-old girl who barely speaks any English. The father also added that I should sing for them that night too.
Little did I know that Thursday would be the second of three consecutive nights of singing. Wednesday was chosen as the night that the camp director would take all the tutors out for dinner. We went to a pizzeria that was well-known in the area for its “pizza non-stop”. Our entire group of about 25 people could have all-you-can-eat pizza for one price. The only rule was that we had to completely finish all of our current pizzas before receiving another batch, which would eventually include a dessert pizza with Nutella and sliced pears. And like any good Italian, she insisted on ordering us plenty of wine to share. Well, let’s just say I ended up drinking more than plenty that night. It was my last week of working and all the tutors were having a great time at dinner… so before I knew it, I was drunker than I had ever been before (but not wasted, mind you). At one point, I stumbled into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, telling myself out-loud to pull it together… but all I could do was laugh at the thought of being drunk on ACLE’s budget.
As soon as I got back to the table, everyone started asking me to sing for them. I told them that I wanted to wait until we were in the parking lot, but really I just said that so that I could maybe sober-up a bit before trying to sing an aria. Unfortunately, I then noticed that we were leaving at that moment and I was going to be singing drunk… really drunk. We got to the parking lot, me stumbling along with a few other tutors. When everyone got quiet for me to start, I took four or five deep breathes in an attempt to center myself and remember the words. And then the most remarkable thing happened: as soon as I started singing, I felt as though I wasn’t drunk at all. I was fully aware of my voice as usual, perhaps just feeling a bit freer than normal. It was almost like all the time I had spent practicing that song and all the training my voice has gone through was able to override the effects of the alcohol. It was a remarkable feeling.
Fortunately, teenagers in Italy can’t drive until they turn 18… meaning that the family had to come with Ginny and I on Thursday night. She also brought a few friends. I felt kind of bad when she got to the house looking all trendy with her hair and make-up carefully done and there I stood in shorts, flip-flops, and an already-been-worn t-shirt. When we were leaving, the father said, “Tonight we will hear you sing.” I said that would be fine, having no qualms about giving yet another performance for another host family. Then when we got to the bar, there was a huge sign that said “Karaoke Night” and they shoved a song list into my face. I tried thinking of something to say in Italian that politely meant “Hell no! I told you I’m a lyric singer, not Justin Timberlake. I’m not gonna sound good on this.” Not only did I not want to sing karaoke (which I would have totally done in America… but not there), but I also didn’t know any of the songs on the list well enough to sing. The international section was full of late 80’s early 90’s stuff and a lot of artists I hadn’t even heard of before. After several attempts to dissuade them, I heard “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas come on, and some guy shoved a microphone in my face. I didn’t really know what was going on; all I knew was that I didn’t really have any choice but to sing at that point. So I sang. For the first time all week, I was so thankful that the devil-child was there. He started screaming that he was tired, so we went home early, cutting the date short after just one mojito and a botched pop song.
My next adventure of public performance came the following evening, after the final show was over. A few of the other families invited to take a group of tutors out to eat with them. I accepted, happy to get an evening away from the devil-child and a chance to spend more time with the tutors before we all said our goodbyes. After dinner at the restaurant, one of the tutors mentioned to her host father that I am an opera singer and that I sang for them on Wednesday. So again, I was asked to sing in the middle of a restaurant. I happily obliged, and afterword the manager gave free shots of grappa to all of us tutors… needless to say, I was the man of the hour (although I thought grappa was disgusting—I felt like I was drinking fire).
I think it’s just wonderful how open and appreciative Italians are of art and music. I’ve been asked hundreds of times in America what I am studying. When I mention singing, nobody ever asks to hear me… and understandably not. When was the last time you saw someone singing or doing something artistic out in public if they weren’t hired to do so? I would feel so strange singing at a restaurant in America, most likely getting “What the hell are you doing? You’re disturbing my conversation.” kind of looks. But when I sing in Italy, the people don’t just hear me, they listen to me. They put their forks down, nobody talks, some people even stop and dismount their bikes. It’s one of the most blatant cultural differences I’ve experienced in all my time here, and certainly some of the greatest joys of the past seven weeks.
After leaving the restaurant, we tutors decided to go to a bar and share one last bottle of wine together before parting ways. Because the final show ran so late, we were all still wearing our bright red English Camp t-shirts and generally not looking our best. It was late, so when we spotted a bar that was still open, we parked our bikes outside and walked in. Little did we know that we were creating one of those moments you see on TV. As soon as we walked in, everyone in the bar fell completely silent and stared directly at us. They were all dressed very fashionably, and although we hadn’t even spoken yet, they clearly knew we were not Italians. We all looked at each other with those “oh shit, this is awkward” glances, and we walked right back out the door. Luckily, we found another bar (more suitable for us) a little further down the street. After a bottle of wine, we knew it was getting really late and we needed to say goodbye and get back to our families.
Saying goodbye to Franzi, with whom I had been working and had spent the majority of almost every day for six weeks, the goodbye was especially hard. She had been with me since my second week, and my best memories of the summer all include her. We spent that amazing day together lost in the middle of Tuscany without a care in the world. She had heard me sing my Italian aria about 7 different times. And we had laughed together more times than would be possible to count. The next time I am in London, I know I have a friend who I will be more than happy to visit.
The next morning I boarded the train out of Malo, waving goodbye to my host-family as they drifted out of sight. And as soon as I couldn’t see them anymore, I began to cry. If you know me well, you know that I don’t cry very often, but for some reason I did that morning. I think it was my exhaustion from working combined with the excitement of going home, the sadness of leaving Italy, and the remaining emotions from the previous night’s goodbyes. Regardless of the tears, I was so happy during that train ride, contented with the job I had done, the experiences I had had, and the people I had met. I also couldn’t stop thinking about nine year-old Giovanni who was in my class that week and who approached me on Friday with a hug and said “I sad perche English Camp e fine.” In that moment, I had never been so glad to be doing what I was doing. Not only could I see how much being at English Camp meant to this little boy, but he had also used English I had taught him to say so. I had taught emotions on Tuesday, and although he forgot “am” in the phrase, it made me feel so proud to hear him speak those two words to me in context three days after I had taught that lesson. Teachers always talk about those moments when they see their students’ progress shine and it makes all the trouble worth it. I think that was definitely a small glimpse of that feeling.
Saying goodbye is always tough with ACLE. It’s the nature of the program that you form really strong connections to the people you meet and work with, and then you are torn apart… every week. Maybe I will see some of those people again someday; maybe I never will. But more important than the relationships I’ve built during the last two summers in Italy is the confidence that wherever I go in life, I know there will be people there who fascinate me and with whom I can connect. I think a lot of times people are scared to move to different places because they are worried that they will feel alone. Sometimes our current friends are so amazing that we forget the world is filled with an innumerable amount of other people who have the potential to also amaze us, show us love, and make us laugh. Thanks to my experience with ACLE, I know this. And I hope to put this knowledge to good use in the years to come.
Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-Bits
1.) I’ve noticed that a lot of light switches in Italian homes are on the outside of the room. This just doesn’t make any sense to me. Last week, I had to walk out into the hallway to turn my bedroom light off when I was ready for bed… I don’t understand the point of this.
2.) I’ve always thought it kind of nit-picky of society to have such strict rules for proper eating, one of which being that you should hold the knife in your right hand and fork in the left. I’ve always done it the other way around and been perfectly fine. But after seven weeks of Italian fathers ‘correcting’ me, I now consciously use my knife with my right hand.
3.) I can tell that there is more of a cultural emphasis on family in Italy by looking at my last four host families. Three of the four families lived either in the same house as or in the same apartment complex as the grandparents. In my last family, the father was a construction worker and had built a big house, divided in half by a wall. They lived on one side, the grandparents on the other. I wonder if they watch “Everybody Loves Raymond” in Italy… I’m sure the majority of the people could relate to it!
4.) Earlier this week, my class was getting rowdy and I had some ACLE paperwork to complete. I decided I would try playing the silent game with them, with the incentive of the winner getting a sticker… Worked like a charm! Why did I not discover this until my last week of having a class!?! Not only did I enjoy the peace and quiet, but the kids loved the game too. They asked me to play it again with them every day following. SCORE!!
Because of our size, we split the camp into three groups (2 elementary, 1 middle school) for most of the activities, warm-up circles, etc. My class of nine year-olds was really great, albeit their level of English was far below what it normally is for that age. Our final show was SpongeBob Square Pants, and they were so enthusiastic about it and wanted it to be perfect (which is good, since I’m the same way). For the ending song, my girls even came up with a gymnastics routine complete with one-handed cartwheels and splits. We performed the final show in the town’s cinema on a huge stage—it was so cool!
The town of Malo was small, but a very supportive and enthusiastic community. The sense of unity and town pride reminded me a lot of my own hometown of Nixa. The best part was that the lunches at the school were managed by the local parents’ council, meaning they were really well organized and the food was really good! The town rests in a valley, surrounded on three sides by mountains. It made the climate much cooler than I would have expected, and also very few mosquitoes (YAYYY!!).
My host family provided me with quite an interesting experience, to say the least. First of all, none of them spoke a word of English, which I was actually very thankful for because it meant that I got a lot of practice on my Italian (which is markedly better now than it was last summer!). Secondly, they have a 4 year-old child who is the closest thing to Satanic that I have ever seen. Within the first 24 hours of being with the family, I had already been scratched, pinched, punched in the groin, spat on, and he hurled an English-Italian dictionary at my head. He also cried and screamed non-stop every day. One night at dinner, he noticed that I had a green cup and he had a yellow one… well, who would guess that something so small could almost cause WW3 to occur!! By Saturday morning, I was so sick of all his crap that when he asked me to play Dragonball Z with him, I relished at the opportunity to seek vengeance, at least virtually. So instead of going easy on him as I would have done with any other child, I relentlessly beat the shit out of him… and loved every second of it!! He started yelling at me to stop punching/shooting him, but I didn’t. I had a week’s worth of frustration and hostility built up inside me, and there was no way I was gonna stop until I saw “KO” across the screen!
The first day of being with the family, they took me to a family feast (over 30 people) on the side of one of the mountains. The view was incredible and they had huge picnic tables lined up in front of an outdoor roasting pit. The father took me by the shoulder and walked me over to the roaster. From a distance it looked like enormous shish kabobs of meat… but as I got closer I realized that the pieces of meat were actually entire birds. I asked what kind of birds they were (assuming some type of tiny game fowl), and he said they were birds that he shot from the sky, like sparrows and the like. Although slightly shocked, my “I’m in a foreign country—I want to try everything” attitude was intrigued. When we sat down, the father noticed me watching other people pick the birds up to see how it’s done and he told me to just eat it. I asked, “What about the bones?” He told me not to worry, they’re only small birds. He proceeded to eat one of his as an example. Quite ravenously he separated the head from the body and put the head/neck in his mouth, biting the skull in such a way that only the beak remained uneaten. Then he tore the wings off and ate them one after the other. Then he ate the body in two more bites. I was fascinated, having never seen a bird eaten in this way: skull, bones, everything! So I quickly followed suite, starting with the head as he had done. The bones were crunchy, but definitely edible… unfortunately, I thought they were also the best tasting part. The meat was so dark and just tasted nasty; but at least now I know!
After lunch, we went for a hike through the mountains. At one point we reached this tiny church, out in the middle of nowhere. And from the church, we could see in the distance—between two mountains—some sort of monument. The father told me that it was a monument built following WW2, and inside were the bones of the Italian soldiers who had been killed by the Germans there. Apparently, it is the only monument of its kind in the entire country. After the hike, I laid in the grass playing Uno with the other ‘kids’ in the family, which included Ginny. Ginny was 17 years-old and studying psychology at her high school. Somehow the father took this to mean that she would be a perfect match for me. So Ginny and I both spent the entire afternoon slightly embarrassed at his suggestive statements, including one about marriage. At the conclusion of the family feast, it was decided that Ginny and I would go out to a bar together on Thursday night. And the father reminded me every day that, come Thursday evening, I have a date with this 17 year-old girl who barely speaks any English. The father also added that I should sing for them that night too.
Little did I know that Thursday would be the second of three consecutive nights of singing. Wednesday was chosen as the night that the camp director would take all the tutors out for dinner. We went to a pizzeria that was well-known in the area for its “pizza non-stop”. Our entire group of about 25 people could have all-you-can-eat pizza for one price. The only rule was that we had to completely finish all of our current pizzas before receiving another batch, which would eventually include a dessert pizza with Nutella and sliced pears. And like any good Italian, she insisted on ordering us plenty of wine to share. Well, let’s just say I ended up drinking more than plenty that night. It was my last week of working and all the tutors were having a great time at dinner… so before I knew it, I was drunker than I had ever been before (but not wasted, mind you). At one point, I stumbled into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, telling myself out-loud to pull it together… but all I could do was laugh at the thought of being drunk on ACLE’s budget.
As soon as I got back to the table, everyone started asking me to sing for them. I told them that I wanted to wait until we were in the parking lot, but really I just said that so that I could maybe sober-up a bit before trying to sing an aria. Unfortunately, I then noticed that we were leaving at that moment and I was going to be singing drunk… really drunk. We got to the parking lot, me stumbling along with a few other tutors. When everyone got quiet for me to start, I took four or five deep breathes in an attempt to center myself and remember the words. And then the most remarkable thing happened: as soon as I started singing, I felt as though I wasn’t drunk at all. I was fully aware of my voice as usual, perhaps just feeling a bit freer than normal. It was almost like all the time I had spent practicing that song and all the training my voice has gone through was able to override the effects of the alcohol. It was a remarkable feeling.
Fortunately, teenagers in Italy can’t drive until they turn 18… meaning that the family had to come with Ginny and I on Thursday night. She also brought a few friends. I felt kind of bad when she got to the house looking all trendy with her hair and make-up carefully done and there I stood in shorts, flip-flops, and an already-been-worn t-shirt. When we were leaving, the father said, “Tonight we will hear you sing.” I said that would be fine, having no qualms about giving yet another performance for another host family. Then when we got to the bar, there was a huge sign that said “Karaoke Night” and they shoved a song list into my face. I tried thinking of something to say in Italian that politely meant “Hell no! I told you I’m a lyric singer, not Justin Timberlake. I’m not gonna sound good on this.” Not only did I not want to sing karaoke (which I would have totally done in America… but not there), but I also didn’t know any of the songs on the list well enough to sing. The international section was full of late 80’s early 90’s stuff and a lot of artists I hadn’t even heard of before. After several attempts to dissuade them, I heard “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas come on, and some guy shoved a microphone in my face. I didn’t really know what was going on; all I knew was that I didn’t really have any choice but to sing at that point. So I sang. For the first time all week, I was so thankful that the devil-child was there. He started screaming that he was tired, so we went home early, cutting the date short after just one mojito and a botched pop song.
My next adventure of public performance came the following evening, after the final show was over. A few of the other families invited to take a group of tutors out to eat with them. I accepted, happy to get an evening away from the devil-child and a chance to spend more time with the tutors before we all said our goodbyes. After dinner at the restaurant, one of the tutors mentioned to her host father that I am an opera singer and that I sang for them on Wednesday. So again, I was asked to sing in the middle of a restaurant. I happily obliged, and afterword the manager gave free shots of grappa to all of us tutors… needless to say, I was the man of the hour (although I thought grappa was disgusting—I felt like I was drinking fire).
I think it’s just wonderful how open and appreciative Italians are of art and music. I’ve been asked hundreds of times in America what I am studying. When I mention singing, nobody ever asks to hear me… and understandably not. When was the last time you saw someone singing or doing something artistic out in public if they weren’t hired to do so? I would feel so strange singing at a restaurant in America, most likely getting “What the hell are you doing? You’re disturbing my conversation.” kind of looks. But when I sing in Italy, the people don’t just hear me, they listen to me. They put their forks down, nobody talks, some people even stop and dismount their bikes. It’s one of the most blatant cultural differences I’ve experienced in all my time here, and certainly some of the greatest joys of the past seven weeks.
After leaving the restaurant, we tutors decided to go to a bar and share one last bottle of wine together before parting ways. Because the final show ran so late, we were all still wearing our bright red English Camp t-shirts and generally not looking our best. It was late, so when we spotted a bar that was still open, we parked our bikes outside and walked in. Little did we know that we were creating one of those moments you see on TV. As soon as we walked in, everyone in the bar fell completely silent and stared directly at us. They were all dressed very fashionably, and although we hadn’t even spoken yet, they clearly knew we were not Italians. We all looked at each other with those “oh shit, this is awkward” glances, and we walked right back out the door. Luckily, we found another bar (more suitable for us) a little further down the street. After a bottle of wine, we knew it was getting really late and we needed to say goodbye and get back to our families.
Saying goodbye to Franzi, with whom I had been working and had spent the majority of almost every day for six weeks, the goodbye was especially hard. She had been with me since my second week, and my best memories of the summer all include her. We spent that amazing day together lost in the middle of Tuscany without a care in the world. She had heard me sing my Italian aria about 7 different times. And we had laughed together more times than would be possible to count. The next time I am in London, I know I have a friend who I will be more than happy to visit.
The next morning I boarded the train out of Malo, waving goodbye to my host-family as they drifted out of sight. And as soon as I couldn’t see them anymore, I began to cry. If you know me well, you know that I don’t cry very often, but for some reason I did that morning. I think it was my exhaustion from working combined with the excitement of going home, the sadness of leaving Italy, and the remaining emotions from the previous night’s goodbyes. Regardless of the tears, I was so happy during that train ride, contented with the job I had done, the experiences I had had, and the people I had met. I also couldn’t stop thinking about nine year-old Giovanni who was in my class that week and who approached me on Friday with a hug and said “I sad perche English Camp e fine.” In that moment, I had never been so glad to be doing what I was doing. Not only could I see how much being at English Camp meant to this little boy, but he had also used English I had taught him to say so. I had taught emotions on Tuesday, and although he forgot “am” in the phrase, it made me feel so proud to hear him speak those two words to me in context three days after I had taught that lesson. Teachers always talk about those moments when they see their students’ progress shine and it makes all the trouble worth it. I think that was definitely a small glimpse of that feeling.
Saying goodbye is always tough with ACLE. It’s the nature of the program that you form really strong connections to the people you meet and work with, and then you are torn apart… every week. Maybe I will see some of those people again someday; maybe I never will. But more important than the relationships I’ve built during the last two summers in Italy is the confidence that wherever I go in life, I know there will be people there who fascinate me and with whom I can connect. I think a lot of times people are scared to move to different places because they are worried that they will feel alone. Sometimes our current friends are so amazing that we forget the world is filled with an innumerable amount of other people who have the potential to also amaze us, show us love, and make us laugh. Thanks to my experience with ACLE, I know this. And I hope to put this knowledge to good use in the years to come.
Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-Bits
1.) I’ve noticed that a lot of light switches in Italian homes are on the outside of the room. This just doesn’t make any sense to me. Last week, I had to walk out into the hallway to turn my bedroom light off when I was ready for bed… I don’t understand the point of this.
2.) I’ve always thought it kind of nit-picky of society to have such strict rules for proper eating, one of which being that you should hold the knife in your right hand and fork in the left. I’ve always done it the other way around and been perfectly fine. But after seven weeks of Italian fathers ‘correcting’ me, I now consciously use my knife with my right hand.
3.) I can tell that there is more of a cultural emphasis on family in Italy by looking at my last four host families. Three of the four families lived either in the same house as or in the same apartment complex as the grandparents. In my last family, the father was a construction worker and had built a big house, divided in half by a wall. They lived on one side, the grandparents on the other. I wonder if they watch “Everybody Loves Raymond” in Italy… I’m sure the majority of the people could relate to it!
4.) Earlier this week, my class was getting rowdy and I had some ACLE paperwork to complete. I decided I would try playing the silent game with them, with the incentive of the winner getting a sticker… Worked like a charm! Why did I not discover this until my last week of having a class!?! Not only did I enjoy the peace and quiet, but the kids loved the game too. They asked me to play it again with them every day following. SCORE!!
Monday, July 26, 2010
Offanengo
As expected, this past week has seemed much less thrilling than usual following my incredible weekend in the Tuscan countryside. None the less, it was perhaps the most relaxing week I’ve had thus far. I had an older group of kids (12 year old) who were very well behaved, which makes a huge difference. And I was also with a host family that was very low-key and not so active.
I lived with a single mother and her son (who was hardly ever there because he stayed with his dad a lot). They lived in a small apartment flat in a neighborhood surrounded by cornfields. I think there must have also been some kind of horse or pig pasture nearby, because the air constantly smelled of manure. The first night I was there, we ate raw meat for dinner… not just raw prosciutto (which I’m used to by now), but thick slices of RAW meat. As my father can attest to, I have trouble eating meat even if there is the slightest trace of it being under-cooked. But not wanting to be rude (and not wanting to starve), I ate it all. Luckily, I had a pounding headache that night, so I just focused on the pain and I was almost able to forget what I wa eating.
In reality, the mother wasn’t a very good host: didn’t take much of an interest in conversing with me, didn’t offer me food or drink other than at mealtimes, and didn’t get off work until late at night. However, it was a welcome change to have two hours in a flat each day without anyone else there. I didn’t feel obligated to play with the son or really to come out of my room at all. They also had internet, so I can’t really complain too much.
On Thursday evening, we went into Cremona to see the shops and walk around. Cremona is most famous for building violins. In a lot of the shops they sold violin-shaped candy and postcards and the like. My host mom also mentioned that Giuseppe Verdi’s childhood home is nearby, but it was too late to go see it. Many cities in Italy have one night each week (in the summer) when the shops stay opened really late at night, and there are street vendors and live music… one can just feel the culture permeating through one’s skin. This particular night, there was a street performer who was blowing fire and walking on broken glass, with a fireworks show beaming in the background.
Oddly, seeing fireworks reminded me of home more than anything else ever has. Perhaps because it seems like such an American tradition—tied to celebrations of Independence Day and usually accompanied by dads grilling hotdogs and hamburgers, paper plates with pictures of watermelon and American flags, and children chasing each other around the neighborhood with sparklers. Whatever it was about the fireworks that reminded me of home, I was grateful. It gave me a greater sense of connection to Italy.
The camp itself wasn’t so great this week. Nothing was bad about it… just kinda blah. The kids were good, but not very enthusiastic. The camp director was nice, but not very helpful (and horrible at English!). The plus side is that the final show was really low-stress for me. My show was “The Offanengo Animal Documentary” and it went really well. The show was divided in three segments: South America, Australia, and Africa; with a reporter, cameraperson, and two animals in each segment. It was also low-stress because my many weeks of experience are starting to provide me with some wisdom about these final shows. Most notably is the fact that if you just ask the kids to provide their own costumes (instead of me trying to make them all myself), their mothers and nonnas (grandmothers) will stay up all night if they have to in order to ensure that their child has an exceptional hand-made costume. My kangaroo in this week’s show, came to class on Friday with a hand-sewn costume that looked like it had been made for a Broadway show. There were stuffed ears attached to a headband, and then a kangaroo-looking jumpsuit complete with a stuffed tail, a pouch, and even a hand-made plush baby kangaroo (aren’t those called joeys?) poking out of it. I couldn’t believe it! I just wish I had learned this trick earlier in the summer!!
Next week will be my final week working with ACLE this summer. I will be at a camp in Malo (a far suburb of Vicenza) in the north-east of Italy, not far from Venice or Verona. It is the largest camp I’ve ever heard of with ACLE, including 12 tutors and 120 kids in total. Since I’m a bit burnt out with this job, I’m hoping that such a large camp will serve as a bit of a refreshing change.
Topsy-Turvy Itlaian Tid-Bits
(Nothing notably awkward or funny happened this week (sorry!), so I’ll just focus on food this time.)
1.) There are a few foods in Italy that just aren’t as good as in America. One of them is salad. It’s not uncommon for a ‘salad’ in Italy to consist of nothing but lettuce tossed with salt and olive oil. I miss those huge American salads that include at least a few ingredients from each major food group on them! They also don’t really have a variety of salad dressings like in America. It’s always olive oil, and then (if you’re lucky) the choice of vinegar. The beverage I miss the most is freshly brewed iced tea. Iced tea is common here, but only the flavored bottled varieties. Even if you order iced tea in a fancy restaurant, you will probably be asked if you prefer the lemon or the peach Nestea.
2.) One night, all the tutors went to a big family dinner with one of the host families and the mother explained that she had prepared a special pasta dish, called tortelli, that you can only find in the tiny region around Crema. It’s a stuffed pasta (like tortellini), but the filling isn’t the typical meat or cheese. Instead, it is filled with a pasty mixture of cheese, chocolate, almond, mint, grapefruit, and citron. It was obviously sweet and rich… and delicious, but it was also incredible knowing that I was eating something that probably only a handful of Americans ever had!
3.) There are a two food items that Italians are completely obsessed with… as in, no matter where you are, you will always find these items in every home: apricots and Nutella. I’ve eaten so much of each in the last few months that I can’t even begin to estimate an amount. Not only are these things wildly popular, but every single snack is available in these flavors. Apricot jam, apricot tarts, apricot juice, apricot cake, apricot cookies—I’ve had them all! And thanks to the Nutella craze, there are countless types of chocolate and hazelnut flavored cereal, granola bars, gelato, biscotti, etc.
4.) For a country where everyone separates their trash into the different recycling categories, the massive amounts of plastic bottles and cups that Italians use comes as a huge surprise to me. At many camps, each child is given a bottle of water plus a plastic cup for lunch (because Italians don’t drink out of bottles). I also don’t think I’ve seen a single Nalgene or reusable water bottle since I’ve been here. One would think that if the people care enough to recycle, they would care enough to limit their plastic usage as well. I suppose I have WashU to thank for this environmental awareness!
I lived with a single mother and her son (who was hardly ever there because he stayed with his dad a lot). They lived in a small apartment flat in a neighborhood surrounded by cornfields. I think there must have also been some kind of horse or pig pasture nearby, because the air constantly smelled of manure. The first night I was there, we ate raw meat for dinner… not just raw prosciutto (which I’m used to by now), but thick slices of RAW meat. As my father can attest to, I have trouble eating meat even if there is the slightest trace of it being under-cooked. But not wanting to be rude (and not wanting to starve), I ate it all. Luckily, I had a pounding headache that night, so I just focused on the pain and I was almost able to forget what I wa eating.
In reality, the mother wasn’t a very good host: didn’t take much of an interest in conversing with me, didn’t offer me food or drink other than at mealtimes, and didn’t get off work until late at night. However, it was a welcome change to have two hours in a flat each day without anyone else there. I didn’t feel obligated to play with the son or really to come out of my room at all. They also had internet, so I can’t really complain too much.
On Thursday evening, we went into Cremona to see the shops and walk around. Cremona is most famous for building violins. In a lot of the shops they sold violin-shaped candy and postcards and the like. My host mom also mentioned that Giuseppe Verdi’s childhood home is nearby, but it was too late to go see it. Many cities in Italy have one night each week (in the summer) when the shops stay opened really late at night, and there are street vendors and live music… one can just feel the culture permeating through one’s skin. This particular night, there was a street performer who was blowing fire and walking on broken glass, with a fireworks show beaming in the background.
Oddly, seeing fireworks reminded me of home more than anything else ever has. Perhaps because it seems like such an American tradition—tied to celebrations of Independence Day and usually accompanied by dads grilling hotdogs and hamburgers, paper plates with pictures of watermelon and American flags, and children chasing each other around the neighborhood with sparklers. Whatever it was about the fireworks that reminded me of home, I was grateful. It gave me a greater sense of connection to Italy.
The camp itself wasn’t so great this week. Nothing was bad about it… just kinda blah. The kids were good, but not very enthusiastic. The camp director was nice, but not very helpful (and horrible at English!). The plus side is that the final show was really low-stress for me. My show was “The Offanengo Animal Documentary” and it went really well. The show was divided in three segments: South America, Australia, and Africa; with a reporter, cameraperson, and two animals in each segment. It was also low-stress because my many weeks of experience are starting to provide me with some wisdom about these final shows. Most notably is the fact that if you just ask the kids to provide their own costumes (instead of me trying to make them all myself), their mothers and nonnas (grandmothers) will stay up all night if they have to in order to ensure that their child has an exceptional hand-made costume. My kangaroo in this week’s show, came to class on Friday with a hand-sewn costume that looked like it had been made for a Broadway show. There were stuffed ears attached to a headband, and then a kangaroo-looking jumpsuit complete with a stuffed tail, a pouch, and even a hand-made plush baby kangaroo (aren’t those called joeys?) poking out of it. I couldn’t believe it! I just wish I had learned this trick earlier in the summer!!
Next week will be my final week working with ACLE this summer. I will be at a camp in Malo (a far suburb of Vicenza) in the north-east of Italy, not far from Venice or Verona. It is the largest camp I’ve ever heard of with ACLE, including 12 tutors and 120 kids in total. Since I’m a bit burnt out with this job, I’m hoping that such a large camp will serve as a bit of a refreshing change.
Topsy-Turvy Itlaian Tid-Bits
(Nothing notably awkward or funny happened this week (sorry!), so I’ll just focus on food this time.)
1.) There are a few foods in Italy that just aren’t as good as in America. One of them is salad. It’s not uncommon for a ‘salad’ in Italy to consist of nothing but lettuce tossed with salt and olive oil. I miss those huge American salads that include at least a few ingredients from each major food group on them! They also don’t really have a variety of salad dressings like in America. It’s always olive oil, and then (if you’re lucky) the choice of vinegar. The beverage I miss the most is freshly brewed iced tea. Iced tea is common here, but only the flavored bottled varieties. Even if you order iced tea in a fancy restaurant, you will probably be asked if you prefer the lemon or the peach Nestea.
2.) One night, all the tutors went to a big family dinner with one of the host families and the mother explained that she had prepared a special pasta dish, called tortelli, that you can only find in the tiny region around Crema. It’s a stuffed pasta (like tortellini), but the filling isn’t the typical meat or cheese. Instead, it is filled with a pasty mixture of cheese, chocolate, almond, mint, grapefruit, and citron. It was obviously sweet and rich… and delicious, but it was also incredible knowing that I was eating something that probably only a handful of Americans ever had!
3.) There are a two food items that Italians are completely obsessed with… as in, no matter where you are, you will always find these items in every home: apricots and Nutella. I’ve eaten so much of each in the last few months that I can’t even begin to estimate an amount. Not only are these things wildly popular, but every single snack is available in these flavors. Apricot jam, apricot tarts, apricot juice, apricot cake, apricot cookies—I’ve had them all! And thanks to the Nutella craze, there are countless types of chocolate and hazelnut flavored cereal, granola bars, gelato, biscotti, etc.
4.) For a country where everyone separates their trash into the different recycling categories, the massive amounts of plastic bottles and cups that Italians use comes as a huge surprise to me. At many camps, each child is given a bottle of water plus a plastic cup for lunch (because Italians don’t drink out of bottles). I also don’t think I’ve seen a single Nalgene or reusable water bottle since I’ve been here. One would think that if the people care enough to recycle, they would care enough to limit their plastic usage as well. I suppose I have WashU to thank for this environmental awareness!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
For the Love of Opera
As mentioned in my previous entry, this past weekend requires a separate blog entry of its own. I apologize if you find this story too long and laborious to read, but I want to make sure I have a sufficient account of the events of this past weekend as it was one of the best times imaginable. Uhh, where to begin, where to begin??
It was simply the most amazing time I’ve ever had in one weekend. To explain it fully, I must start with Thursday afternoon. All week we had seen ads all over Florence for “Opera Festival”, which was featuring Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” among other operas. I wanted to see it so badly, but knew that time would not permit it because I had to travel to my new destination on Saturday. But then on Thursday afternoon, our camp director informed the four of us tutors (Jessica, Gabrielle, Franzi, and myself) that we could travel to our new camp locations on Sunday. I immediately blurted out that we should book tickets to see “Don Giovanni” on Saturday night. We got online 10 minutes later and purchased our four tickets for 60 euro each (not a bad price!) with one of the girls’ credit cards. The location on the ticket was an abbey. So we went to the camp director to ask where in Florence the abbey is located. Upon seeing the ticket, a look of horror swept across her face and she informed us that this abbey was 3 hours away by car, in the middle of nowhere.
I thought she was kidding because it was advertised as a Florentine opera festival. After researching on the internet, I learned that each opera in the festival is performed at two different locations; sometimes in the center of Florence, and sometimes in this abbey in San Galgano. We also learned that it would be near impossible to get there. Obviously nobody wanted to drive us because the opera was from 9pm until midnight. We also learned that there is only one bus that goes to San Galgano (from Siena) each day. It arrives in San Galgano at 2:45pm. So we decided that although the situation really sucked, we should call and cancel the purchase. Well, although we had made the purchase less than an hour earlier, we were told (after calling 3 different numbers) that no cancellations or refunds are possible. So now we’re really screwed.
Over the course of the afternoon/evening, we stress out about it way too much and configure plans of trying to sell the tickets to parents at the camps’ final show. By the end of the night, we were so sick of stressing over it and worrying about it that we all just threw our hands in the air and said “F**k it, we’re going to see this opera no matter how we have to get there!”
That meant that Friday, our camp director, assistant, and my host mother were on the phone and internet literally all day trying to figure out how we could get there and where we could stay the night. There was only one hotel in San Galgano and it was full, so we would have to sleep at a hostel in Siena (35 km away). Because there is only one bus to San Galgano in the early afternoon, we would have to wake up pretty early (7am) to start our journey. The plan was to take a train from Sesto Fiorentino to Florence, a bus from Florence to Siena, another bus from Siena to San Galgano, kill 6 hours in San Galgano until the opera, see the opera, then take a taxi back to our hostel in Siena, wake-up at the crack of dawn again (6:30am) to catch the bus back to Florence in time to catch the noon train to Milan that Franzi and I already had tickets for to get to the next camp. (…complicated, I know!)
Our amazing camp director was able to figure out exactly which trains/buses we needed to catch at what time, she found us a hostel in Siena, and she even called a taxi company to ensure that we could get one that late and in such a remote area. We could. Plan set. Well, as any truly amazing story follows, things did not exactly go as planned… and I wouldn’t want it any other way!
Early Saturday morning, we start on our truly epic adventure across Tuscany. We take the train to Florence, then get on the bus to Siena. It was crowded, so we had to separate to get seats. I sat next to a really nice Swiss woman who was in Tuscany for a few weeks to take an Italian course. Anyway, we arrive in Siena (which was beautiful, but we didn’t have time to monkey around). We had planned to walk to our hostel to drop our things off, but a man at the tabacchi told us that it was a 35 minute walk. So we have to get on a city bus to take us across town to the hostel. We only had an hour before the bus to San Glagano (which we couldn’t miss because it was the only one).
Arriving at the hostel, we are informed that the rooms aren’t ready yet and we will have to wait half an hour. So we sat in the lobby, eating our packed lunches and packing our day bags with a change of clothes for the opera. Finally, we were allowed to drop off our things in our rooms. Franzi and I shared a room that made my university dorm room seem like a spacious villa. We were told that the bus to San Galgano was to leave from the train station (which is far from the bus station), but that we must buy our tickets at the bus station. Deciding that a taxi was the only way to make the stops in time, we called one. It was about this time when I realized that this little excursion was going to cost me a lot more money than I anticipated!
Once on the bus, I understood why it only went to San Galgano once per day. There were only two other people on the bus, and the nauseating sharp turns and swerves through the narrow roads of Tuscany were far from pleasant… but the view was stunning! I watched the time closely to make sure we got off at the correct stop (which was supposed to be at 2:45pm). We got nervous when the bus stopped at 2:50pm and it wasn’t San Galgano. I asked the driver in my simple Italian if the San Galgano stop was next. He said that San Galgano was the previous stop, about 5-6 km back (although I think it was much further). I asked if he could turn around for extra money, but he said the bus is too big to turn around on the tiny road. He told us we would have to walk. After staring at each other in disbelief for a brief moment, we filed off the bus. As it rolled past us and out of sight, we realized that we were in the middle of nowhere Tuscany… esentially lost. We only had basic directions from the driver that we were hoping our brains had translated correctly.
We also realized at that moment how beautiful our mistake could become. We had six hours (until the opera started) to wander through the Tuscan countryside, our only goal being to enjoy ourselves… and that is exactly what we did! We marveled at the thought of being masters of ourselves for a day, no camp directors or host families to answer to, no children for which we were responsible. We were completely alone in paradise. Halfway through our walk, we were nearing the end of our water bottles and very thirsty. When we crossed a house on the side of the road, we asked the woman in the driveway (who must have wondered why on earth these foreigners were here, of all places) for water. She pointed to a spicket near the garage where she allowed us to refill our bottles.
During the three hours of walking that it took us to reach San Galgano, we took in as much of the beautiful view as we could (both with our eyes and with our cameras). We ran through a field of grass on a hill and spun ourselves around, pretending to be in “The Sound of Music”. We climbed atop massive hay bales and sat there for half an hour, talking about how fortunate our misfortune had turned out to be. And we laughed more than I thought possible in one day. We laughed at our predicament, we laughed at each other, we laughed at ourselves, we laughed at bad jokes, good jokes, everything. The whole time we were walking, I just kept thinking that it was the kind of experience that only happens in movies, not in real life. And the true beauty of it was that it was completely unplanned and unexpected. Even if I tried, I don’t think I could replicate the experience and the feeling of those three hours.
When we finally reached San Galgano, we saw for ourselves why this place was chosen as the location for an opera. The abbey is an enormous building (obviously centuries old) that had been preserved without the roof or glass windows, making it open-air. It was surrounded on three sides by massive fields of the most yellow sunflowers I have ever seen. The sight was the epitome of a scene on one of those greeting cards that one would buy for a grandmother. To the right of the abbey was a hill, on top of which was an ancient church that was erected in the twelfth century as the quarters of a knight who renounced his worldly life to become a hermit. Upon doing so, he thrust his sword into a stone to symbolize giving up his lifestyle. The sword in the stone remains there today, where people like me can peer through the glass case and wonder if a human being could actually have the power to create such a symbol.
Having arrived at our destination, we now had about three more hours to kill before the opera. We decided we should first rest a bit at the only bar/restaurant, eating the best popsicle (or ice-lolly, as my British colleagues call it) that I think I’ve ever had. Then Jessica and I walked around the abbey and the old church, exploring every room that we could while Franzi and Gabrielle took a nap on a picnic table. We decided to call the taxi company again to confirm our late-night request, but the man on the phone said that it was too early to call and that we should call back during intermission of the opera.
By about 8pm, the whole place was abuzz with opera buffs who had undoubtedly not had near as much fun as we had getting there. We ordered the cheapest dishes we could for dinner at the restaurant so that we wouldn’t feel as bad spending money on a bottle of wine. Since the restaurant was full, we took or food and wine outside and ate in the grass adjacent to the sunflower fields. The sun began to set, turning the sky into brilliant shades of pink, orange, and yellow. Once again, while enjoying our meal and laughing even more, we reveled at our movie-like, picture-perfect situation.
We found our seats in the abbey as the opera was preparing to start. Our seats were about halfway back, but the stage was elevated higher than usual to ensure that all could see the spectacle. When pointed out that there was no screen on which English supertitles could be projected, the girls were extremely grateful that I had printed out the opera’s synopsis and read it to them on the bus ride earlier that day. As soon as the conductor waved his arms, signaling the orchestra to begin the overture, a gust of wind rushed through the abbey—as if moved by the music, blowing just hard enough to give me goose bumps. It seemed magical. Predictably, the opera was an exceptional production with excellent singers (the soprano playing Donna Anna was particularly incredible). I breathed a sigh of relief at the end, having finally seen an opera in Italy—in Tuscany—the birthplace of the art form itself!
Unfortunately, my sense of relief and satisfaction was short-lived. During intermission, we had called the taxi company, as we were instructed to do. This time, the man said that he wasn’t sure he would be able to send a taxi that late in the night and that we should have called earlier. Franzi, with her no-fear/no bullshit British attitude, made it quite clear that we had called three hours ago in addition to the phone call that had been made two days ago to ensure we could get a taxi. Unrelenting, the man told us that a taxi to San Galgano at that time was impossible. With no taxi, no form of public transportation available, and no vacant hotel rooms, we would either need to hitchhike back to Siena or sleep in the grass. I wasn’t opposed to sleeping in the grass there, but that would mean that we would get to Siena too late the next morning to catch the bus we needed back to Florence. The next morning was Sunday, after all, and not as many buses/trains run on Sunday.
We devised a plan: Franzi and Gabrielle would go into the restaurant and ask them for names/numbers of other taxi companies (if there were any) while Jessica and I would beg for rides back to Siena from the other opera-goers.
I began by asking people walking by if they spoke English. If they did, I would ease into the question by asking if they knew of a bus back to Siena (even though I already knew the answer). Then Jessica and I would get a really concerned look on our faces and ask if they knew of any way for us to get back that night. The first two groups of people we asked, one Italian and one French, both said they were driving back to the seaside, not to Siena. Then I spotted a group of the orchestra musicians walking by. I asked them if they were going to Siena. They said they were sorry, but they weren’t. As everyone got into their cars and drove out of San Galgano, leaving it once again like a ghost-town, Jessica and I realized that our plan was failing.
We went back to the restaurant, where Franzi and Gabrielle were having better luck. Apparently, a waiter named Andrea (who we nick-named ‘Angel Andrea’) had come out of the kitchen and asked if they needed help. They explained our situation, and Andrea was on the phone for 20 minutes, persisting until he found a taxi that would drive there so late. HALLELUJAH!! The taxi from San Galgano back to our hostel in Siena was a hefty fee of 80 euro for the four of us, but beggars (literally beggars!) can’t be choosers.
We arrived back in our hostel at about 2am, only to discover that our room had flooded… I guess from a leak in the sink?? All of Franzi’s luggage was completely wet. For no apparent reason other than luck, I had left all of my luggage on my bed, so it was fine. We were too tired to call and try to get a different room, so we just waded to our beds and collapsed. Then all of the sudden, as we were attempting to fall asleep, Franzi and I started bursting out laughing about how crazy everything about our day had been. Coming back to a flooded room was just the cherry on top of a series of extraordinarily unusual and unexpected events.
The next morning, we woke up at 6:30am (meaning we were only able to sleep for about four hours) to walk to the bus stop where we would board our bus back to Florence. The hostel didn’t serve breakfast until 7:30am, so again we found ourselves begging—this time for food. The best the man at the front desk could do was crackers and jelly, but that was good enough for us. We still had a few snacks left to eat as well.
Upon arriving in Florence, Franzi and I awaited our train to Milan for our next camp and Jessica and Gabrielle were going to spend the day in Florence. (They were put on hold for the next week, so they had nowhere they needed to go.) We went to McDonald’s where we spent over an hour eating lunch… and oddly, it tasted sooo good. Then we walked back to the train station where Franzi and I had to say our goodbyes to Jessica and Gabrielle. It was the most genuinely sad ACLE goodbye that I’ve had to do. We had gotten quite close over the course of the three weeks that we had all four been working together, and overcoming so many obstacles over our unforgettable weekend really allowed us to bond. I will miss them dearly, but I know that we will all remember our adventure together for the rest of our lives.
…So this concludes the story of the best adventure of my life. It took us 4 trains, 4 buses, 2 taxis, and 3 hours of walking in a matter of 36 hours—all because we made a 1 second decision to see “Don Giovanni”. I think it’s safe to say that we are capable of making it to any opera in the world, no matter how remote the location may be. If there is any way to get there, we can figure it out! Seeing “Don Giovanni” also cost us about 800 euro in total (about 200 euro each).
In case you’re curious, here’s the price breakdown:
60.00- opera ticket
01.10- train (3 trains paid for by ACLE: 120 euro)
18.40- buses
22.50- taxis
20.00- hostel room
19.00- souvenirs
20.70- food
11.00- wine
TOTAL = 172.70 euro (In US dollars, this equates to well over $200!)
…but the experience = PRICELESS!
It was simply the most amazing time I’ve ever had in one weekend. To explain it fully, I must start with Thursday afternoon. All week we had seen ads all over Florence for “Opera Festival”, which was featuring Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” among other operas. I wanted to see it so badly, but knew that time would not permit it because I had to travel to my new destination on Saturday. But then on Thursday afternoon, our camp director informed the four of us tutors (Jessica, Gabrielle, Franzi, and myself) that we could travel to our new camp locations on Sunday. I immediately blurted out that we should book tickets to see “Don Giovanni” on Saturday night. We got online 10 minutes later and purchased our four tickets for 60 euro each (not a bad price!) with one of the girls’ credit cards. The location on the ticket was an abbey. So we went to the camp director to ask where in Florence the abbey is located. Upon seeing the ticket, a look of horror swept across her face and she informed us that this abbey was 3 hours away by car, in the middle of nowhere.
I thought she was kidding because it was advertised as a Florentine opera festival. After researching on the internet, I learned that each opera in the festival is performed at two different locations; sometimes in the center of Florence, and sometimes in this abbey in San Galgano. We also learned that it would be near impossible to get there. Obviously nobody wanted to drive us because the opera was from 9pm until midnight. We also learned that there is only one bus that goes to San Galgano (from Siena) each day. It arrives in San Galgano at 2:45pm. So we decided that although the situation really sucked, we should call and cancel the purchase. Well, although we had made the purchase less than an hour earlier, we were told (after calling 3 different numbers) that no cancellations or refunds are possible. So now we’re really screwed.
Over the course of the afternoon/evening, we stress out about it way too much and configure plans of trying to sell the tickets to parents at the camps’ final show. By the end of the night, we were so sick of stressing over it and worrying about it that we all just threw our hands in the air and said “F**k it, we’re going to see this opera no matter how we have to get there!”
That meant that Friday, our camp director, assistant, and my host mother were on the phone and internet literally all day trying to figure out how we could get there and where we could stay the night. There was only one hotel in San Galgano and it was full, so we would have to sleep at a hostel in Siena (35 km away). Because there is only one bus to San Galgano in the early afternoon, we would have to wake up pretty early (7am) to start our journey. The plan was to take a train from Sesto Fiorentino to Florence, a bus from Florence to Siena, another bus from Siena to San Galgano, kill 6 hours in San Galgano until the opera, see the opera, then take a taxi back to our hostel in Siena, wake-up at the crack of dawn again (6:30am) to catch the bus back to Florence in time to catch the noon train to Milan that Franzi and I already had tickets for to get to the next camp. (…complicated, I know!)
Our amazing camp director was able to figure out exactly which trains/buses we needed to catch at what time, she found us a hostel in Siena, and she even called a taxi company to ensure that we could get one that late and in such a remote area. We could. Plan set. Well, as any truly amazing story follows, things did not exactly go as planned… and I wouldn’t want it any other way!
Early Saturday morning, we start on our truly epic adventure across Tuscany. We take the train to Florence, then get on the bus to Siena. It was crowded, so we had to separate to get seats. I sat next to a really nice Swiss woman who was in Tuscany for a few weeks to take an Italian course. Anyway, we arrive in Siena (which was beautiful, but we didn’t have time to monkey around). We had planned to walk to our hostel to drop our things off, but a man at the tabacchi told us that it was a 35 minute walk. So we have to get on a city bus to take us across town to the hostel. We only had an hour before the bus to San Glagano (which we couldn’t miss because it was the only one).
Arriving at the hostel, we are informed that the rooms aren’t ready yet and we will have to wait half an hour. So we sat in the lobby, eating our packed lunches and packing our day bags with a change of clothes for the opera. Finally, we were allowed to drop off our things in our rooms. Franzi and I shared a room that made my university dorm room seem like a spacious villa. We were told that the bus to San Galgano was to leave from the train station (which is far from the bus station), but that we must buy our tickets at the bus station. Deciding that a taxi was the only way to make the stops in time, we called one. It was about this time when I realized that this little excursion was going to cost me a lot more money than I anticipated!
Once on the bus, I understood why it only went to San Galgano once per day. There were only two other people on the bus, and the nauseating sharp turns and swerves through the narrow roads of Tuscany were far from pleasant… but the view was stunning! I watched the time closely to make sure we got off at the correct stop (which was supposed to be at 2:45pm). We got nervous when the bus stopped at 2:50pm and it wasn’t San Galgano. I asked the driver in my simple Italian if the San Galgano stop was next. He said that San Galgano was the previous stop, about 5-6 km back (although I think it was much further). I asked if he could turn around for extra money, but he said the bus is too big to turn around on the tiny road. He told us we would have to walk. After staring at each other in disbelief for a brief moment, we filed off the bus. As it rolled past us and out of sight, we realized that we were in the middle of nowhere Tuscany… esentially lost. We only had basic directions from the driver that we were hoping our brains had translated correctly.
We also realized at that moment how beautiful our mistake could become. We had six hours (until the opera started) to wander through the Tuscan countryside, our only goal being to enjoy ourselves… and that is exactly what we did! We marveled at the thought of being masters of ourselves for a day, no camp directors or host families to answer to, no children for which we were responsible. We were completely alone in paradise. Halfway through our walk, we were nearing the end of our water bottles and very thirsty. When we crossed a house on the side of the road, we asked the woman in the driveway (who must have wondered why on earth these foreigners were here, of all places) for water. She pointed to a spicket near the garage where she allowed us to refill our bottles.
During the three hours of walking that it took us to reach San Galgano, we took in as much of the beautiful view as we could (both with our eyes and with our cameras). We ran through a field of grass on a hill and spun ourselves around, pretending to be in “The Sound of Music”. We climbed atop massive hay bales and sat there for half an hour, talking about how fortunate our misfortune had turned out to be. And we laughed more than I thought possible in one day. We laughed at our predicament, we laughed at each other, we laughed at ourselves, we laughed at bad jokes, good jokes, everything. The whole time we were walking, I just kept thinking that it was the kind of experience that only happens in movies, not in real life. And the true beauty of it was that it was completely unplanned and unexpected. Even if I tried, I don’t think I could replicate the experience and the feeling of those three hours.
When we finally reached San Galgano, we saw for ourselves why this place was chosen as the location for an opera. The abbey is an enormous building (obviously centuries old) that had been preserved without the roof or glass windows, making it open-air. It was surrounded on three sides by massive fields of the most yellow sunflowers I have ever seen. The sight was the epitome of a scene on one of those greeting cards that one would buy for a grandmother. To the right of the abbey was a hill, on top of which was an ancient church that was erected in the twelfth century as the quarters of a knight who renounced his worldly life to become a hermit. Upon doing so, he thrust his sword into a stone to symbolize giving up his lifestyle. The sword in the stone remains there today, where people like me can peer through the glass case and wonder if a human being could actually have the power to create such a symbol.
Having arrived at our destination, we now had about three more hours to kill before the opera. We decided we should first rest a bit at the only bar/restaurant, eating the best popsicle (or ice-lolly, as my British colleagues call it) that I think I’ve ever had. Then Jessica and I walked around the abbey and the old church, exploring every room that we could while Franzi and Gabrielle took a nap on a picnic table. We decided to call the taxi company again to confirm our late-night request, but the man on the phone said that it was too early to call and that we should call back during intermission of the opera.
By about 8pm, the whole place was abuzz with opera buffs who had undoubtedly not had near as much fun as we had getting there. We ordered the cheapest dishes we could for dinner at the restaurant so that we wouldn’t feel as bad spending money on a bottle of wine. Since the restaurant was full, we took or food and wine outside and ate in the grass adjacent to the sunflower fields. The sun began to set, turning the sky into brilliant shades of pink, orange, and yellow. Once again, while enjoying our meal and laughing even more, we reveled at our movie-like, picture-perfect situation.
We found our seats in the abbey as the opera was preparing to start. Our seats were about halfway back, but the stage was elevated higher than usual to ensure that all could see the spectacle. When pointed out that there was no screen on which English supertitles could be projected, the girls were extremely grateful that I had printed out the opera’s synopsis and read it to them on the bus ride earlier that day. As soon as the conductor waved his arms, signaling the orchestra to begin the overture, a gust of wind rushed through the abbey—as if moved by the music, blowing just hard enough to give me goose bumps. It seemed magical. Predictably, the opera was an exceptional production with excellent singers (the soprano playing Donna Anna was particularly incredible). I breathed a sigh of relief at the end, having finally seen an opera in Italy—in Tuscany—the birthplace of the art form itself!
Unfortunately, my sense of relief and satisfaction was short-lived. During intermission, we had called the taxi company, as we were instructed to do. This time, the man said that he wasn’t sure he would be able to send a taxi that late in the night and that we should have called earlier. Franzi, with her no-fear/no bullshit British attitude, made it quite clear that we had called three hours ago in addition to the phone call that had been made two days ago to ensure we could get a taxi. Unrelenting, the man told us that a taxi to San Galgano at that time was impossible. With no taxi, no form of public transportation available, and no vacant hotel rooms, we would either need to hitchhike back to Siena or sleep in the grass. I wasn’t opposed to sleeping in the grass there, but that would mean that we would get to Siena too late the next morning to catch the bus we needed back to Florence. The next morning was Sunday, after all, and not as many buses/trains run on Sunday.
We devised a plan: Franzi and Gabrielle would go into the restaurant and ask them for names/numbers of other taxi companies (if there were any) while Jessica and I would beg for rides back to Siena from the other opera-goers.
I began by asking people walking by if they spoke English. If they did, I would ease into the question by asking if they knew of a bus back to Siena (even though I already knew the answer). Then Jessica and I would get a really concerned look on our faces and ask if they knew of any way for us to get back that night. The first two groups of people we asked, one Italian and one French, both said they were driving back to the seaside, not to Siena. Then I spotted a group of the orchestra musicians walking by. I asked them if they were going to Siena. They said they were sorry, but they weren’t. As everyone got into their cars and drove out of San Galgano, leaving it once again like a ghost-town, Jessica and I realized that our plan was failing.
We went back to the restaurant, where Franzi and Gabrielle were having better luck. Apparently, a waiter named Andrea (who we nick-named ‘Angel Andrea’) had come out of the kitchen and asked if they needed help. They explained our situation, and Andrea was on the phone for 20 minutes, persisting until he found a taxi that would drive there so late. HALLELUJAH!! The taxi from San Galgano back to our hostel in Siena was a hefty fee of 80 euro for the four of us, but beggars (literally beggars!) can’t be choosers.
We arrived back in our hostel at about 2am, only to discover that our room had flooded… I guess from a leak in the sink?? All of Franzi’s luggage was completely wet. For no apparent reason other than luck, I had left all of my luggage on my bed, so it was fine. We were too tired to call and try to get a different room, so we just waded to our beds and collapsed. Then all of the sudden, as we were attempting to fall asleep, Franzi and I started bursting out laughing about how crazy everything about our day had been. Coming back to a flooded room was just the cherry on top of a series of extraordinarily unusual and unexpected events.
The next morning, we woke up at 6:30am (meaning we were only able to sleep for about four hours) to walk to the bus stop where we would board our bus back to Florence. The hostel didn’t serve breakfast until 7:30am, so again we found ourselves begging—this time for food. The best the man at the front desk could do was crackers and jelly, but that was good enough for us. We still had a few snacks left to eat as well.
Upon arriving in Florence, Franzi and I awaited our train to Milan for our next camp and Jessica and Gabrielle were going to spend the day in Florence. (They were put on hold for the next week, so they had nowhere they needed to go.) We went to McDonald’s where we spent over an hour eating lunch… and oddly, it tasted sooo good. Then we walked back to the train station where Franzi and I had to say our goodbyes to Jessica and Gabrielle. It was the most genuinely sad ACLE goodbye that I’ve had to do. We had gotten quite close over the course of the three weeks that we had all four been working together, and overcoming so many obstacles over our unforgettable weekend really allowed us to bond. I will miss them dearly, but I know that we will all remember our adventure together for the rest of our lives.
…So this concludes the story of the best adventure of my life. It took us 4 trains, 4 buses, 2 taxis, and 3 hours of walking in a matter of 36 hours—all because we made a 1 second decision to see “Don Giovanni”. I think it’s safe to say that we are capable of making it to any opera in the world, no matter how remote the location may be. If there is any way to get there, we can figure it out! Seeing “Don Giovanni” also cost us about 800 euro in total (about 200 euro each).
In case you’re curious, here’s the price breakdown:
60.00- opera ticket
01.10- train (3 trains paid for by ACLE: 120 euro)
18.40- buses
22.50- taxis
20.00- hostel room
19.00- souvenirs
20.70- food
11.00- wine
TOTAL = 172.70 euro (In US dollars, this equates to well over $200!)
…but the experience = PRICELESS!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sesto Fiorentino - Week 3
My final week in Sesto Fiorentino (and in Tuscany, for that matter) has come to a close. After being in this suburb of Florence for three weeks it kind of feels like a home, and I really will miss it. Although I stayed with a different family each week, I returned each morning to the same school, greeted by the same faces of my colleagues. Some of the children, too, I had the pleasure of knowing and teaching for all three of those weeks. This wonderful place has undoubtedly left a permanent mark on me… and hopefully I have left a small mark on some of its inhabitants.
The host family this week was extremely kind and comfortable to be with. The mother is a teacher at the grade school (including teaching English), and the father is an administrator at a local factory that produces toothpaste, among other things. He gave me a bottle of the “Whitening Mint” as a parting gift. They have two boys (14, 11) and a 5 year old little girl who was infatuated with my every move. One evening as I laid in bed reading, I heard the floorboards creek. I looked behind me with a startle to see little Anna staring at me with her eyes open wide, holding her doll. She raised her hand and mustered up a meek “ciao”.
For the first time, I shared a bedroom with someone else (Samuele, 11… and sometimes the family dog too). The host families are required to give tutors their own room, but seeing as they were so nice, I really didn’t mind sharing. Their home was small and all 6 of us shared one bathroom… but it was cozy. Since I was extra conscious of how much time I was spending in the bathroom to get ready in the morning, I opted to take my razor to school each morning and shave there before camp started. Sleeping was also a bit more difficult because the house was so hot, day and night. It turns into a dilemma because you want to sleep with the windows open to help keep it cooler, but then you know that more mosquitoes will get in.
The grandparents lived in the apartment above us, and sometimes we would go up there for dinner (which was a real treat because they had air conditioning in their dining room!). They didn’t speak a word of English, but we were able to share a few words in Italian. And the last night with the family, they insisted that I sing for them. I chose an Italian piece to humor them. Upon finishing, the grandmother shook my hand and said that she hopes I become a famous baritone… haha, nothing like a little flattery! By now, I’m pretty used to busting out an impromptu aria or two at any given moment since so many of my families ask to hear me. Our camp director took all the tutors out for a nice dinner in downtown Florence Thursday night. Because it was her birthday, she asked that I sing something for her under the frescoes of one of the main piazzas. I felt really awkward randomly singing a cappella in such a public place, but by the end of the second song I had about 5 euro in coins lying around my feet. Yay money! Does this mean I’m a street performer now??
My class this past week was really great. They were older than the previous few weeks (9-11), so that was nice. Our final show was Harry Potter and they really nailed it, so I was pleased. I hate to admit it, but I think I’m getting burnt out on this job. There must be something about week 5… it seems like that was about the same time I got burnt out last summer. I don’t want to leave Italy, but I am thankful that I only have two more weeks of the job remaining! I’m looking forward to my week or so of chilling at home with the fam, and then returning to WashU. I realize how much that school means to me when I’m away from it… ugh, graduating is gonna suck!
Next week I am going to a camp in Offanengo. It’s a tiny town near Crema (a small town itself), which is in the far vicinity of Milan. Franzi (the girl from London) and I will be working together for the 5th week in a row--the longest I’ve ever worked with someone in ACLE. We have to say goodbye to Jessica (US) and Gabrielle (Ireland)… it’s going to be one of the saddest ACLE good-byes to date. After three weeks of working together, we have really become close. I have laughed more with these girls than I can even think about! And after our weekend adventure of a lifetime (to which I will devote an entire blog entry), we have been through more together than probably any other tutors in the country! Thank goodness for facebook… we can at least attempt to stay connected.
Just wait for my next blog entry… it’s a whale of a tale!
Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-Bits
1.) One of the introductory questions in the workbook for 9-11 year olds is “What is your favourite pop group?” One girl in my class wrote “Mozart”. It makes me smile every time I think about it. Then, when I asked them to brainstorm ideas for the final show, she suggested “Le Nozze di Figaro”- an opera by Mozart. Needless to say, she was clearly my favorite student! This would only happen in Italy!
2.) Italians use the word “goma” for anything that is made of rubber… so when they speak English, they call anything made of rubber “a rubber”. While working on the ‘I have got…’ lesson page, one of my students noticed an eraser on my desk and wrote, “My tutor Taylor has got a rubber.” …Only the other American tutor understood the humor in it.
3.) I now have a budding fondness of flies. Usually, people think of them as pests and shoo them away. But after weeks of swatting at mosquitoes, I’m relieved when I realize that the winged insect that just landed on me is a harmless fly. For a brief moment, I feel grateful to the fly for being a fly and not a mosquito.
4.) You know you’re an ACLE tutor when: you look down at your feet/ankles and wonder “Are those tan lines or dirt lines??”
The host family this week was extremely kind and comfortable to be with. The mother is a teacher at the grade school (including teaching English), and the father is an administrator at a local factory that produces toothpaste, among other things. He gave me a bottle of the “Whitening Mint” as a parting gift. They have two boys (14, 11) and a 5 year old little girl who was infatuated with my every move. One evening as I laid in bed reading, I heard the floorboards creek. I looked behind me with a startle to see little Anna staring at me with her eyes open wide, holding her doll. She raised her hand and mustered up a meek “ciao”.
For the first time, I shared a bedroom with someone else (Samuele, 11… and sometimes the family dog too). The host families are required to give tutors their own room, but seeing as they were so nice, I really didn’t mind sharing. Their home was small and all 6 of us shared one bathroom… but it was cozy. Since I was extra conscious of how much time I was spending in the bathroom to get ready in the morning, I opted to take my razor to school each morning and shave there before camp started. Sleeping was also a bit more difficult because the house was so hot, day and night. It turns into a dilemma because you want to sleep with the windows open to help keep it cooler, but then you know that more mosquitoes will get in.
The grandparents lived in the apartment above us, and sometimes we would go up there for dinner (which was a real treat because they had air conditioning in their dining room!). They didn’t speak a word of English, but we were able to share a few words in Italian. And the last night with the family, they insisted that I sing for them. I chose an Italian piece to humor them. Upon finishing, the grandmother shook my hand and said that she hopes I become a famous baritone… haha, nothing like a little flattery! By now, I’m pretty used to busting out an impromptu aria or two at any given moment since so many of my families ask to hear me. Our camp director took all the tutors out for a nice dinner in downtown Florence Thursday night. Because it was her birthday, she asked that I sing something for her under the frescoes of one of the main piazzas. I felt really awkward randomly singing a cappella in such a public place, but by the end of the second song I had about 5 euro in coins lying around my feet. Yay money! Does this mean I’m a street performer now??
My class this past week was really great. They were older than the previous few weeks (9-11), so that was nice. Our final show was Harry Potter and they really nailed it, so I was pleased. I hate to admit it, but I think I’m getting burnt out on this job. There must be something about week 5… it seems like that was about the same time I got burnt out last summer. I don’t want to leave Italy, but I am thankful that I only have two more weeks of the job remaining! I’m looking forward to my week or so of chilling at home with the fam, and then returning to WashU. I realize how much that school means to me when I’m away from it… ugh, graduating is gonna suck!
Next week I am going to a camp in Offanengo. It’s a tiny town near Crema (a small town itself), which is in the far vicinity of Milan. Franzi (the girl from London) and I will be working together for the 5th week in a row--the longest I’ve ever worked with someone in ACLE. We have to say goodbye to Jessica (US) and Gabrielle (Ireland)… it’s going to be one of the saddest ACLE good-byes to date. After three weeks of working together, we have really become close. I have laughed more with these girls than I can even think about! And after our weekend adventure of a lifetime (to which I will devote an entire blog entry), we have been through more together than probably any other tutors in the country! Thank goodness for facebook… we can at least attempt to stay connected.
Just wait for my next blog entry… it’s a whale of a tale!
Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-Bits
1.) One of the introductory questions in the workbook for 9-11 year olds is “What is your favourite pop group?” One girl in my class wrote “Mozart”. It makes me smile every time I think about it. Then, when I asked them to brainstorm ideas for the final show, she suggested “Le Nozze di Figaro”- an opera by Mozart. Needless to say, she was clearly my favorite student! This would only happen in Italy!
2.) Italians use the word “goma” for anything that is made of rubber… so when they speak English, they call anything made of rubber “a rubber”. While working on the ‘I have got…’ lesson page, one of my students noticed an eraser on my desk and wrote, “My tutor Taylor has got a rubber.” …Only the other American tutor understood the humor in it.
3.) I now have a budding fondness of flies. Usually, people think of them as pests and shoo them away. But after weeks of swatting at mosquitoes, I’m relieved when I realize that the winged insect that just landed on me is a harmless fly. For a brief moment, I feel grateful to the fly for being a fly and not a mosquito.
4.) You know you’re an ACLE tutor when: you look down at your feet/ankles and wonder “Are those tan lines or dirt lines??”
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sesto Fiorentino - Week 2
This past week has been my second week in the same city (Sesto Fiorentino), but my experience was very different from the first week. I also learned this week that Sesto Fiorentino is the town where the story of Pinocchio is set—how cool is that?!? I’m keeping a mental list of movies to watch when I get home that are all set in towns in which I’ve stayed. So far I’ve got “Life is Beautiful”, “Under the Tuscan Sun”, and now “Pinocchio”.
The camp was much larger this week (60 kids) and we had six classes, but only five classrooms… so I taught my class of 7-9 year olds in the gym. We moved some desks in there and I had to use paper as a blackboard. It was fine, but a lot more difficult to manage the children in such a large and open space. Anyway, I managed. Our final show was called “Pet Shop” and was about a little girl who is shopping for a pet, and each animal in the shop told her about themselves. And as usual, I wrote a little jingle for the end. It was pretty cute.
As for the new fam, they were really great! My previous family seemed very formal, so having one that is more casual and relaxed was a welcomed change. In this family, both parents are accountants and they have a nine year-old son who hates English Camp. He was a nice kid, he just hated the idea of learning during the summer. Also sharing the same house were grandpa and grandma, and great-grandma (who was 99). It was pretty cool seeing four generations around the dinner table. The grandmother absolutely adored me even though she didn’t speak a word of English… all week she would just stare at me and smile like I’m some sort of celebrity, and speak very slowly for me in Italian. And the grandfather had a big garden somewhere, so all week we ate his organic fruits and vegetables, and I got to see how jam is made from apricots.
The mom was a really awkward person, which actually makes me more comfortable in the family because no matter what kind of faux-pas I commit, I know that I’m still not the weirdest person in the house. She had the demeanor of a 15 year-old boy—I’ve never seen a grown woman with so much energy! They took me to the sea on Saturday (to a popular beach town called Viareggio) and in that one day we went sailing, swam in the sea, rented a paddleboat, went for a run on the beach, and rollerbladed at a really cool outdoor roller-rink. Then the next morning, I woke up early to go for a 7km run up and down a mountain with her, followed by over an hour of playing foosball and ping-pong. I was starting to think that I was sent to a fitness boot camp or something. That woman couldn’t sit idle for five minutes. I don’t know how her poor husband keeps up. All in all, it turned out being a good thing though. I’d never sailed before, so it was really cool to do that for the first time. And I actually had more fun at the roller-rink than I ever expected. I hadn’t been on rollerblades in about ten years, so I was a little wobbly at first, but I got the hang of it again after a few minutes.
We were planning on going to Pisa on Sunday, but the next family called them and said that they think it’s only fair if I stay with them on Sunday… so no Pisa yet. But at least I have families fighting to have me, haha!
I’m confident that Florence is my favorite European city that I’ve ever been to. I usually go into the city two or three times each week, and each time is so wonderful. Unfortunately, by the time I’m done at the school and shower and travel, most of the main sights are closed—but the outsides of them are still amazing: the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, the old palace, Torre di San Niccolo, the Uffizzi Museum. It’s also difficult always being accompanied by a host-family or the camp directors because it kind of inhibits the things that I would prefer to do/see (including searching for nice souvenirs for my family… sorry guys!). I’m really hoping that some night this week I’ll be able to go see an opera. I’ve seen ads for The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, and it’s killing me that I’m staying in the city where opera was born and I’ve not yet been to one here.
Side note: Sorry for the lack of pictures lately, but it's nearly impossible without having internet access in my homes. Maybe next week!
Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-Bits
1.)You know the old saying about turning into your parents more and more as you get older?... Well I believe it. When I was younger (even in high school) I used to make fun of my dad all the time because when he sweats, it looks like he’s been rained on. Well… I’m not laughing anymore. I’ve been sweating so much in the last few weeks. My “Tutor” t-shirts always have salt lines when I take them off. A few times, I’ve sweat so much that I have to hang my clothes out the window to dry because they are so wet. It’s disgusting. Sorry for all the times I made fun of you, dad!
2.)I showed my host-family a picture of my house the other day. This was the reaction: “Wowww, it looks just like those American houses in the movies!! The garage is so big! Oh wow, and it’s made of wood?!?” I never considered my house all that fancy, but to them it might as well have been in Beverly Hills!
3.)The other night, we were in the car on the way to Florence and I noticed that there wasn’t the normal traffic and queues in which we usually wait. I asked “Why isn’t there any traffic tonight?” Host-Dad: “Because there’s a soccer game on television.” Me: “Excuse me?” Host-Dad: “And if Italy was playing, we would be the only car on the street.” Me: “Ohh…right.”
4.)Showers in Italy are like a box of chocolates—you truly never know what you’re going to get. Two weeks ago I was in one of the best showers I’ve ever had. This week, I’ve had to bathe in a sit-down shower. It’s basically a bathtub with a hose attached. The water pressure was awful. It was freezing cold, then scolding hot… but never warm. And because my living quarters were in the attic, the A-frame of the roof slanted down to about four feet above the shower. So when I get out, I can’t stand up—I just have to lurch one leg out at a time and wait until I get to the middle of the bathroom before standing to dry-off. Luckily, after a day of sweating from head to toe, I really don’t care what the shower is like as long as I can use it.
5.)The Italian word for jellyfish is "medusa". I wonder if it's a reference to the woman from Greek Mythology who had snakes on her head instead of hair?... I guess that's kind of what a jellyfish looks like.
6.)I have a renewed appreciation of baby strollers. I was so tired after sailing, swimming, running, and rollerblading on Saturday and I saw a woman pushing her baby in a stroller. I couldn’t help but wish that it was me in the stroller. I started thinking about if it would be possible to build a stroller big enough for me to fit in, but light enough for my mom to push around. I thought of that phrase, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I’ve finally realized the meaning of it. Those babies have no idea how lucky they are. If I was in a stroller, I would appreciate it so much more than those babies ever could!
The camp was much larger this week (60 kids) and we had six classes, but only five classrooms… so I taught my class of 7-9 year olds in the gym. We moved some desks in there and I had to use paper as a blackboard. It was fine, but a lot more difficult to manage the children in such a large and open space. Anyway, I managed. Our final show was called “Pet Shop” and was about a little girl who is shopping for a pet, and each animal in the shop told her about themselves. And as usual, I wrote a little jingle for the end. It was pretty cute.
As for the new fam, they were really great! My previous family seemed very formal, so having one that is more casual and relaxed was a welcomed change. In this family, both parents are accountants and they have a nine year-old son who hates English Camp. He was a nice kid, he just hated the idea of learning during the summer. Also sharing the same house were grandpa and grandma, and great-grandma (who was 99). It was pretty cool seeing four generations around the dinner table. The grandmother absolutely adored me even though she didn’t speak a word of English… all week she would just stare at me and smile like I’m some sort of celebrity, and speak very slowly for me in Italian. And the grandfather had a big garden somewhere, so all week we ate his organic fruits and vegetables, and I got to see how jam is made from apricots.
The mom was a really awkward person, which actually makes me more comfortable in the family because no matter what kind of faux-pas I commit, I know that I’m still not the weirdest person in the house. She had the demeanor of a 15 year-old boy—I’ve never seen a grown woman with so much energy! They took me to the sea on Saturday (to a popular beach town called Viareggio) and in that one day we went sailing, swam in the sea, rented a paddleboat, went for a run on the beach, and rollerbladed at a really cool outdoor roller-rink. Then the next morning, I woke up early to go for a 7km run up and down a mountain with her, followed by over an hour of playing foosball and ping-pong. I was starting to think that I was sent to a fitness boot camp or something. That woman couldn’t sit idle for five minutes. I don’t know how her poor husband keeps up. All in all, it turned out being a good thing though. I’d never sailed before, so it was really cool to do that for the first time. And I actually had more fun at the roller-rink than I ever expected. I hadn’t been on rollerblades in about ten years, so I was a little wobbly at first, but I got the hang of it again after a few minutes.
We were planning on going to Pisa on Sunday, but the next family called them and said that they think it’s only fair if I stay with them on Sunday… so no Pisa yet. But at least I have families fighting to have me, haha!
I’m confident that Florence is my favorite European city that I’ve ever been to. I usually go into the city two or three times each week, and each time is so wonderful. Unfortunately, by the time I’m done at the school and shower and travel, most of the main sights are closed—but the outsides of them are still amazing: the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, the old palace, Torre di San Niccolo, the Uffizzi Museum. It’s also difficult always being accompanied by a host-family or the camp directors because it kind of inhibits the things that I would prefer to do/see (including searching for nice souvenirs for my family… sorry guys!). I’m really hoping that some night this week I’ll be able to go see an opera. I’ve seen ads for The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, and it’s killing me that I’m staying in the city where opera was born and I’ve not yet been to one here.
Side note: Sorry for the lack of pictures lately, but it's nearly impossible without having internet access in my homes. Maybe next week!
Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-Bits
1.)You know the old saying about turning into your parents more and more as you get older?... Well I believe it. When I was younger (even in high school) I used to make fun of my dad all the time because when he sweats, it looks like he’s been rained on. Well… I’m not laughing anymore. I’ve been sweating so much in the last few weeks. My “Tutor” t-shirts always have salt lines when I take them off. A few times, I’ve sweat so much that I have to hang my clothes out the window to dry because they are so wet. It’s disgusting. Sorry for all the times I made fun of you, dad!
2.)I showed my host-family a picture of my house the other day. This was the reaction: “Wowww, it looks just like those American houses in the movies!! The garage is so big! Oh wow, and it’s made of wood?!?” I never considered my house all that fancy, but to them it might as well have been in Beverly Hills!
3.)The other night, we were in the car on the way to Florence and I noticed that there wasn’t the normal traffic and queues in which we usually wait. I asked “Why isn’t there any traffic tonight?” Host-Dad: “Because there’s a soccer game on television.” Me: “Excuse me?” Host-Dad: “And if Italy was playing, we would be the only car on the street.” Me: “Ohh…right.”
4.)Showers in Italy are like a box of chocolates—you truly never know what you’re going to get. Two weeks ago I was in one of the best showers I’ve ever had. This week, I’ve had to bathe in a sit-down shower. It’s basically a bathtub with a hose attached. The water pressure was awful. It was freezing cold, then scolding hot… but never warm. And because my living quarters were in the attic, the A-frame of the roof slanted down to about four feet above the shower. So when I get out, I can’t stand up—I just have to lurch one leg out at a time and wait until I get to the middle of the bathroom before standing to dry-off. Luckily, after a day of sweating from head to toe, I really don’t care what the shower is like as long as I can use it.
5.)The Italian word for jellyfish is "medusa". I wonder if it's a reference to the woman from Greek Mythology who had snakes on her head instead of hair?... I guess that's kind of what a jellyfish looks like.
6.)I have a renewed appreciation of baby strollers. I was so tired after sailing, swimming, running, and rollerblading on Saturday and I saw a woman pushing her baby in a stroller. I couldn’t help but wish that it was me in the stroller. I started thinking about if it would be possible to build a stroller big enough for me to fit in, but light enough for my mom to push around. I thought of that phrase, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I’ve finally realized the meaning of it. Those babies have no idea how lucky they are. If I was in a stroller, I would appreciate it so much more than those babies ever could!
Monday, July 5, 2010
Sesto Fiorentino
Unusual for ACLE, my current camp in Sesto Fiorentino is a 3-week camp. I will still live with a different family each week and have different children each week, but my location and colleagues will remain the same. My current host-family is really great and they live within walking distance from the school, so it’s kind of unfortunate to be leaving them… but who knows what the next family will be like (maybe they’ll even have internet!!).
The family seems to be fairly well-off and traditional. The father (Marco) is an architect, who designed the apartment complex in which they (we) live. The mother (Cecilia) is a radiologist for a gynecology facility. And the 6 year old boy (Andrea) is one of the funniest kids I’ve met. He is crazy about soccer; therefore, I have watched at least part of four or five World Cup games this week, played soccer with him once or twice, and was constantly forced to choose for which team to root. After dinner the other night, he taught me how to play the Italian version of “rock, paper, scissors” and thumb-wars. Then I would refuse to continue until I heard him blurt out the score in English numbers.
The host father reminds me of my own father in a lot of ways, constantly going out of his way to make sure everybody is happy and having a good time. Unfortunately, when it came to meal time, he took it a bit over the top. He would always insist that I take more of each dish and that I must “try some of this, and some of this…” There were a few nights this week when I actually wanted to throw up because I had eaten so much. The day I met the family, they took me to lunch at a beautiful restaurant that sits on the side of a mountain. The menu, in typical Italian form, has 3 main sections: Antipasta (appetizers), primi piatti (usually pasta), and secondi piatti (main entrees). After ordering a bottle of wine and two different appetizers, Marco asks what I want. I choose some kind of pasta with mushrooms. He insists that I order a second (entrée) dish as well and recommends the steak tenderloin… so I nod, reluctantly. Well, then I discover that the rest of the family has only ordered one dish, and here I am with more food than I’ve ever had to eat before. To ease his disappointment when I say that I don’t want dessert, he orders me some sort of really strong liquer, ‘limoncello?’. Combine that with an espresso and three glasses of wine, all of which he poured me , and I was feelin’ a little too happy… at 1:30pm.
As for the camp, it’s going really well. We’re in a five-classroom school, so things are a bit tight and crowded, but we’re managing. My class consists of 9 nine-year olds who are all pretty good kids. Our final show was Scooby-Doo (which I accidentally spelled with only one “o” all week). I was kind of hard on them during rehearsals, but I think it was worth it… they seemed really proud of their performance. And I was proud (for the first time) of my drawing abilities! I pulled-up a picture of Scooby and Scrappy on the computer, determined to draw their faces for masks... and they tuned out pretty darn good (and I have the pictures to prove it, haha)!! I also made ‘The Mystery Machine’ out of cardboard for them.
Anyway, it has been a tiring week, so I was thrilled when the family invited me to “go to the sea” with them this weekend. I’m not sure I got caught up on my rest, but I had a great time. The family has a small apartment flat within walking distance of the shore, so we just relaxed on the beach and swam in the sea for two days. I also learned that applying SPF 55 sunscreen four times a day doesn’t guarantee anything!!
On Wednesday, our Camp Director took all the tutors out for dinner in Florence. It was a really nice place with great food, right in the middle of the piazza. There was a huge sold-out concert going on in the piazza and the only way to get in was if you had a ticket or a reservation at one of the restaurants. Lucky for us, we were able to sneak into the concert following the dinner. Aside from the beautiful music, the atmosphere was simply indescribable. There were thousands of people sitting in the temporary seats and side-bleachers in the piazza, and every window of every apartment was open and crowded with family and friends relaxing to the music, drinking wine… just enjoying life. La vita e bella!! It was one of those nights during which you hope you will never forget the way you felt.
I really was in a euphoric state the whole time. I kept thinking about a conversation that Marco and I had had during the aforementioned lunch on the mountain. In his broken English, I think he was trying to investigate my personal philosophy on life and politics, etc. And I remember him saying, “I think man is a mistake of nature. There is nothing else in this world that destroys.” And during that lunch, I was inclined to side with him. After all, his comment is completely justified. There really isn’t anything else that destroys like we do, and creates things that we can’t even control (ie: Gulf oil spill). But then, sitting in that concert, I had the sudden realization that there is also nothing else in this world that creates such beauty either. Nothing else is capable of being emotionally moved by art or music. Nothing else is truly appreciative or altruistic beyond natural inclinations. No other living things are creative; they just exist. (I know, I know… I’m starting to sound like a romantic Florentine!) I just wish I had gone to the concert before that lunch so that perhaps I could have brought this realization to someone who thought otherwise.
Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-Bits
1.) Italian kids go crazy over stickers. I guess stickers aren’t very common here. When I put them on a page in their workbooks, their eyes get all big and their mouths curl up in delight… then I have to pause class for 5 minutes so that they can compare their sticker to every other one of their classmates’. Then they kind of just zone out and stare at the sticker for another 5 minutes, as if they are absolutely perplexed beyond words that such an amazing thing exists.
2.) There are a few laws of ACLE tutoring that one comes to experience time and time again, for better or for worse. One of them is that whichever kid in class is the worst at speaking English always wants to be the lead character in the show… ALWAYS. I don’t know how it works, but I swear it’s true. It’s so difficult to write a good Scooby-Doo script when you know that Scooby has to have the fewest words. Or it’s the day of the show and all your kids have their lines memorized for Noah’s Ark except for the one kid playing Noah. It never fails.
3.) I forgot what it feels like to wear pants. The weather is so hot and humid that all the tutors wear shorts to school. I put on a pair of pants for dinner the other night (for the first time in 3 weeks), and it was like I was putting pants on for the first time. It was weird not feeling a breeze on my thighs, or sensing that my leg hairs weren’t as free as usual.
4.) I’ve learned that saying “I really hate being wet!” only makes people want to get you wet even more. Water-games is the pinnacle of each camp for most tutors… but never for me. I always rationalize that telling other adults that I really don’t like being wet and that it makes me miserable would encourage them to avoid getting me wet. So it really irritates me when the next thing I know, all the other tutors have poured a huge bucket of water over my head. Then they wonder why I’m so quiet and grumpy the rest of the day… ugh, I just want to scream: “HELLOOO, I just told you that being wet makes me miserable. You got me wet; therefore, you have made me miserable; therefore, I would really rather not talk to you right now. Why is this surprising to you?!? It’s a perfectly logical deduction that should have occurred to you the moment I gave the warning!!!”
5.) I had forgotten until this week that little kids don’t wipe their own butts… that’s so gross. The boy in my host family would call for his mom every time he went to the bathroom. I mean, I realize that I must have done the same thing… but it just seems so primitive. It’s 2010, someone should’ve invented a devise by now that liberates people from the task of wiping someone else’s butt. What if this kid had needed to take a dump at camp? Then what? I sure as hell wouldn’t do it!—This is a great job, but I am not getting paid enough for that!
The family seems to be fairly well-off and traditional. The father (Marco) is an architect, who designed the apartment complex in which they (we) live. The mother (Cecilia) is a radiologist for a gynecology facility. And the 6 year old boy (Andrea) is one of the funniest kids I’ve met. He is crazy about soccer; therefore, I have watched at least part of four or five World Cup games this week, played soccer with him once or twice, and was constantly forced to choose for which team to root. After dinner the other night, he taught me how to play the Italian version of “rock, paper, scissors” and thumb-wars. Then I would refuse to continue until I heard him blurt out the score in English numbers.
The host father reminds me of my own father in a lot of ways, constantly going out of his way to make sure everybody is happy and having a good time. Unfortunately, when it came to meal time, he took it a bit over the top. He would always insist that I take more of each dish and that I must “try some of this, and some of this…” There were a few nights this week when I actually wanted to throw up because I had eaten so much. The day I met the family, they took me to lunch at a beautiful restaurant that sits on the side of a mountain. The menu, in typical Italian form, has 3 main sections: Antipasta (appetizers), primi piatti (usually pasta), and secondi piatti (main entrees). After ordering a bottle of wine and two different appetizers, Marco asks what I want. I choose some kind of pasta with mushrooms. He insists that I order a second (entrée) dish as well and recommends the steak tenderloin… so I nod, reluctantly. Well, then I discover that the rest of the family has only ordered one dish, and here I am with more food than I’ve ever had to eat before. To ease his disappointment when I say that I don’t want dessert, he orders me some sort of really strong liquer, ‘limoncello?’. Combine that with an espresso and three glasses of wine, all of which he poured me , and I was feelin’ a little too happy… at 1:30pm.
As for the camp, it’s going really well. We’re in a five-classroom school, so things are a bit tight and crowded, but we’re managing. My class consists of 9 nine-year olds who are all pretty good kids. Our final show was Scooby-Doo (which I accidentally spelled with only one “o” all week). I was kind of hard on them during rehearsals, but I think it was worth it… they seemed really proud of their performance. And I was proud (for the first time) of my drawing abilities! I pulled-up a picture of Scooby and Scrappy on the computer, determined to draw their faces for masks... and they tuned out pretty darn good (and I have the pictures to prove it, haha)!! I also made ‘The Mystery Machine’ out of cardboard for them.
Anyway, it has been a tiring week, so I was thrilled when the family invited me to “go to the sea” with them this weekend. I’m not sure I got caught up on my rest, but I had a great time. The family has a small apartment flat within walking distance of the shore, so we just relaxed on the beach and swam in the sea for two days. I also learned that applying SPF 55 sunscreen four times a day doesn’t guarantee anything!!
On Wednesday, our Camp Director took all the tutors out for dinner in Florence. It was a really nice place with great food, right in the middle of the piazza. There was a huge sold-out concert going on in the piazza and the only way to get in was if you had a ticket or a reservation at one of the restaurants. Lucky for us, we were able to sneak into the concert following the dinner. Aside from the beautiful music, the atmosphere was simply indescribable. There were thousands of people sitting in the temporary seats and side-bleachers in the piazza, and every window of every apartment was open and crowded with family and friends relaxing to the music, drinking wine… just enjoying life. La vita e bella!! It was one of those nights during which you hope you will never forget the way you felt.
I really was in a euphoric state the whole time. I kept thinking about a conversation that Marco and I had had during the aforementioned lunch on the mountain. In his broken English, I think he was trying to investigate my personal philosophy on life and politics, etc. And I remember him saying, “I think man is a mistake of nature. There is nothing else in this world that destroys.” And during that lunch, I was inclined to side with him. After all, his comment is completely justified. There really isn’t anything else that destroys like we do, and creates things that we can’t even control (ie: Gulf oil spill). But then, sitting in that concert, I had the sudden realization that there is also nothing else in this world that creates such beauty either. Nothing else is capable of being emotionally moved by art or music. Nothing else is truly appreciative or altruistic beyond natural inclinations. No other living things are creative; they just exist. (I know, I know… I’m starting to sound like a romantic Florentine!) I just wish I had gone to the concert before that lunch so that perhaps I could have brought this realization to someone who thought otherwise.
Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-Bits
1.) Italian kids go crazy over stickers. I guess stickers aren’t very common here. When I put them on a page in their workbooks, their eyes get all big and their mouths curl up in delight… then I have to pause class for 5 minutes so that they can compare their sticker to every other one of their classmates’. Then they kind of just zone out and stare at the sticker for another 5 minutes, as if they are absolutely perplexed beyond words that such an amazing thing exists.
2.) There are a few laws of ACLE tutoring that one comes to experience time and time again, for better or for worse. One of them is that whichever kid in class is the worst at speaking English always wants to be the lead character in the show… ALWAYS. I don’t know how it works, but I swear it’s true. It’s so difficult to write a good Scooby-Doo script when you know that Scooby has to have the fewest words. Or it’s the day of the show and all your kids have their lines memorized for Noah’s Ark except for the one kid playing Noah. It never fails.
3.) I forgot what it feels like to wear pants. The weather is so hot and humid that all the tutors wear shorts to school. I put on a pair of pants for dinner the other night (for the first time in 3 weeks), and it was like I was putting pants on for the first time. It was weird not feeling a breeze on my thighs, or sensing that my leg hairs weren’t as free as usual.
4.) I’ve learned that saying “I really hate being wet!” only makes people want to get you wet even more. Water-games is the pinnacle of each camp for most tutors… but never for me. I always rationalize that telling other adults that I really don’t like being wet and that it makes me miserable would encourage them to avoid getting me wet. So it really irritates me when the next thing I know, all the other tutors have poured a huge bucket of water over my head. Then they wonder why I’m so quiet and grumpy the rest of the day… ugh, I just want to scream: “HELLOOO, I just told you that being wet makes me miserable. You got me wet; therefore, you have made me miserable; therefore, I would really rather not talk to you right now. Why is this surprising to you?!? It’s a perfectly logical deduction that should have occurred to you the moment I gave the warning!!!”
5.) I had forgotten until this week that little kids don’t wipe their own butts… that’s so gross. The boy in my host family would call for his mom every time he went to the bathroom. I mean, I realize that I must have done the same thing… but it just seems so primitive. It’s 2010, someone should’ve invented a devise by now that liberates people from the task of wiping someone else’s butt. What if this kid had needed to take a dump at camp? Then what? I sure as hell wouldn’t do it!—This is a great job, but I am not getting paid enough for that!
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