Carnate

Okay, so the time has come to begin blogging again. I realize that this is not the typical short and sweet type of blog filled with more pictures than words, but I wanted a way to both record my memories for myself as well as share them with others at the same time. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words... but think of what a moment could be worth if you have both pictures and words to account for them. Hence, the following:

The past year has brought a lot of changes and new things to my life. Most notable are my increasingly demanding roles as a student at WashU. Not only have I become more disciplined in devoting myself more than ever to my music and training my voice, but I’ve also taken on the large responsibility of being an RA (Resident Advisor). Because of these experiences, I feel that I am voyaging to Italy with a slightly different (and perhaps better equipped?) metaphorical toolbox to teach this summer.

As I write this, I’ve already been in the land of olives for over a week and have completed teaching at my first City Camp of the summer. It was a small camp (about 30 kids) in Carnate-- a far suburb of Milan. Having taught for so many weeks with the ACLE program last summer, I feel like I have arrived with clear standards by which to judge my weekly experiences. As far as my class of 11 ten year-olds is concerned, they were about average. I got a lot accomplished with them and our final show (Alice in Wonderland) was a big hit, but a few of the kids at the camp were simply monsters.

As for the host family, they were a perfect 10! I will miss them more than any family I stayed with last summer. They made me feel like I was really a part of the family from the second I arrived at their house to our tear-filled goodbyes at the train station. The mother was an architect with who was raising two kids on her own. Her sense of humor was so quirky that it could almost rival mine… and she played piano. After a few good laughs and songs on the first night (including ‘Sebben Crudele’- in case any of my singer friends are reading this), I already knew it was going to be a great week! And without having a father figure in his life, I think the eight year-old son was really enamored by my presence in the house… and it felt really good.

It rained all week and the town wasn’t the most exciting place in the world by any stretch of the imagination, so my evenings were pretty low-key. I would come home, shower, create my lesson-plan for the next day, write the script for the final show, and have dinner on the patio with the family. Afterwards, we would go inside and I would read as we all semi-watched the World Cup… which, I discovered, is much more interesting to watch than “football Americano”! (Side note: The book is titled Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. It’s like a mix between a self-help book and a psych/philosophy book. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be better at what they do than status quo.)

Okay, so here comes the humorous parts (or at least they’re funny to me!). I’m thinking I’ll put a little section of humorous, interesting, or odd thougths/stories in each blog entry, so I need to think of a clever title for it with alliteration or something …any suggestions?? Maybe “Topsy-Turvy Italian Tid-bits”?

1. My host mom and I were having a discussion about the differences between colleges in America and Italy. One of the main differences is that many college students in America go away for college (as in, out of their home town). So I was explaining to her what a dormitory is and all that jazz. And then she asks “So you have a little chicken in your bedroom?” Me: “ummm…excuse me?” She: “You have a little chicken in your bedroom?!” Me: “uhh… I don’t think I understand what you’re asking.” After repeating this dialogue back and forth a few more times and asking her to describe a chicken, I realize that she meant to say “kitchen”, not chicken. For a minute, I was trying to think if “having a little chicken in your bedroom” was a euphemism that I just hadn’t heard before… guess not… but it sounds like a good one.

2. Fast forward to the last night I’m with this family. We’re having a peaceful dinner on the porch like every other night. The host mom and I will usually talk for a few minutes at a time, and then she’ll give the kids an abbreviated translation of what’s been said, and then they’ll chime in or ask questions or whatever. Well, she started asking me about what the families were like that I had stayed with the previous summer. When I told her that my first host family had 7 children from ages 8-26, she seemed very shocked. Forgetting that the kids would demand to know what we are talking about, I explain to her that that host mother had told me she had so many children because “good Catholics don’t use contraceptives”. As soon as that flew out of my mouth, I realized that I had just started down a road that I had no intention or desire to go down (damn you, Robert Frost!). As predicted, 8 year-old Tommasso and 11 year-old Ariana asked what I said. After the mother hesitantly repeated it in Italian, Tomasso asks what a contraceptive is. Then the daughter says (in Italian) “Oh, like the pill… or a condom!”. The mom’s jaw almost dropped into the pasta in shock that her daughter knew what those were. Then Tommasso: “What’s a condom?” Mom: “It’s…ummm… it’s like… ummm… well, it’s basically just a piece of rubber that couples use to prevent pregnancy.” Tommasso: “Oh, kind of like chewing gum?” At this point, the mom awkwardly glances in my direction, as if to say that I should be the one to explain it to him since I’m the man in the house and the one who brought on this conversation. But if he wasn’t understanding it in Italian, he clearly wouldn’t be any better off trying to understand it in English. Mom: “Not exactly… it’s… it’s more like a balloon.” (By this time, I’m praying that a black hole will just appear and swallow me up or something.) Tommasso: “But how can a woman fit a balloon inside her?” Mom: “Well, you don’t inflate the balloon. The man just puts himself inside of it.” Tommasso: “OHHHHHH!!!” [insert uncomfortable silence here] Mom: “Well, how about some dessert!”

3. On Friday, we had some special teachers from the school coming in at 3:00 to teach a dance class to the kids. So we get them all sitting down in a circle and quiet (which is SOOO much harder than it sounds!!) at approximately 3:05… but we are informed that the teachers are running half an hour late. Not wanting to put to waste our beautifully silent circle of children, one of the other tutors (Isabella) decides that we should have English story-time. So she goes to the resource room and gets Hansel & Gretel. I sit at the outside of the circle, making sure everyone stays seated and quiet, and at least pretending to pay attention. As any picture book would require, Isabella reads it with the book held out in front of her. When she’s about halfway through the book, I realize that the story isn’t at all how I remember and that the plot seemed to be really random. At the exact same time, Isabella gets a look on her face like she’s just had the same realization. Then, all of a sudden (or is the phrase: all of THE sudden??), she breaks out into hysterical laughter. All of the kids are looking around like ‘WTF, did we miss something?’. When she’s able to breathe again, she explains that she had started on the last page of the book and was reading the whole thing backwards!! I guess that because she had the book in front of her and was looking downward upon it, she became disoriented with the page-turns. In any case, I thought it was the funniest moment of the entire week!