Various people have told me about Italy that the further south you go, the friendlier the people are; that is, until you get to Sicily, where people are cordial but wary of strangers. There’s this idea, like in the mafia movies, that Sicilians are still sort of clannish, that they never really trust anyone outside of their families. I’m not saying it’s true or untrue; I don’t know. I suppose one of the things I’m interested in doing here is testing that hypothesis.
So far, I’d say it seems kinda true. I mentioned before how friendly and open and curious Neapolitans always were, and I haven’t seen that yet here. People I interact with in public, like at the grocery store or the bar (little cafe’) always seem sort of curt and bored. Like when I had to deposit my American money orders, this woman acted like it was the biggest inconvenience ever, like I was asking her to do this just to punish her.
I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, though... it’s too soon to tell. One factor is that I’ve mostly been around town with my friend, and when they see he’s a native they’re instantly bored. I have a feeling it may be different when I’m wandering around by myself and people figure out I’m foreign.
An interesting turn of events, though: on Sunday evening my friend took me to meet this acquaintance of his, Paola, the woman who’d like someone to tutor her in conversational English. Her son just left for college in the U.S., and so she’d like to be able to get around when she goes to visit him. She’s separated from her husband, and her daughter’s off to school in Milan, so she’s very lonely. I’d say she’s looking for a buddy as much as for an English tutor.
Anyway, we went to meet this woman, who lives in this enormous, gorgeous villa on a hill on the outskirts of Palermo. Absolutely gorgeous. A big deck with a view of the entire city and Monte Pellegrino and everything. Her income is basically that she owns some vineyards on an island off the coast of Sicily, which basically requires zero hours of work, which means this is a woman who not only lives alone but has a lot of free time on her hands.
So, Paola is like the nicest woman that I have ever met. She was friendly and warm, intensely curious about me and about the U.S. She’s been there plenty; in fact, she’s driven cross-country twice, which I haven’t even done. But she’s still very enthusiastic about the U.S. A major America-phile, I guess you could say. And of course, in the tradition of Italian mothers, she made like 9 million muffins for our visit (and Italians don’t do muffins, so it was just for my benefit to have an American food), and showed us a ton of pictures of her kids, and offered (begged, really) to have me stay in a spare room in her house, either permanently or temporarily if I don’t find a place before my friend moves. Did I mention she wants to pay me to hang out with her?
And then a friend of her daughter’s was hanging out with her there, a girl who’s exactly my age 22. Again, she seemed like the sweetest girl on the planet. She, too, is intensely curious about the States, having studied English her whole life but having never been there. She was so eager and warm that it kind of flustered me. It was like, Hi we’ve just met but I’m ready to be your best friend! I’m always kind of taken aback when people seem eager to be my friend, even at a less intense level than this one. My gut reaction is always sort of, What’s wrong with you that you find me appealing as a potential friend? Anyway, aside from my being a little flustered and stumbling a bit over my Italian (I really should have practiced over the summer... it’s a little rusty, though improving rapidly by the day), we got along great, and I hope she’ll end up being a good friend and someone to go out with while I’m here (plus she has a car... score!)
Anyway, the point of this whole rambling thing is that it led me to the theory that maybe Sicily, socially, is like Pride and Prejudice, or rather, Regency-era England. (If you lived in my head, you would know that I find ways to connect almost everything in life to Pride and Prejudice. But, I digress.) So you know how Mr. Collins commits this horrifying social sin by introducing himself to Mr. Darcy rather than having someone else introduce him. I wonder if that’s maybe how it is here. Like, you can’t just go up and introduce yourself to people, or chat with someone in line at the grocery store or waiting for the bus. Maybe they find that a little suspect or too forward. However, if a mutual acquaintance introduces you to someone, they’re all hugs and smiles and ready to bake you muffins and drive you places, all because you must be a trustworthy and decent person if you’re friends with so-and-so.
Maybe I’ll call this the Pride and Prejudice theory. And we shall see how it holds up.
Anyway, just some thoughts for you. It’s amazing how when I don’t have reading and papers and exams to worry about, or constant appointments and meetings and activities to race around to, how all these thoughts just keep pouring in until they bubble over. I never had any time at school for any actual thinking. The kind where you just let your mind go wherever it wants to and make all sorts of convoluted connections. It’s kinda nice, really.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
miscellany
I was supposed to look at this apartment later this afternoon that looked really promising... and then the landlady just called me and said she showed it to a girl this morning who decided to take it on the spot. Cazzo. I am so exhausted from this apartment hunting thing. I need it to be over, now. Anyway, enough of that whining. Some random things:
1. So I went on this apartment-listing website and in order to respond to other people's announcements, you need to make one of your own. So in my little blurb I wrote something like, "I'm interested in getting to know ragazzi in Palermo!" Ragazzi means either boys or young people in general (you know how romance languages work... males + females --> you use the masculine plural). But apparently in this particular context of apartment listings, people are careful to specify (e.g. "Room available for female students" or "4 young men looking for 5th roommate"). So basically my announcement said I'm interested in meeting men in Palermo. When my friend saw it he laughed and explained it to me. But that explains why I was getting so many bizarre-o responses from people like "35 year-old man looking for female roommate." Then there was "56 year-old man looking for female student roommate." Uh yeah, good luck to that guy.
This is a quintessential example of how living abroad is inevitably full of awkward times. Eventually you have to decide either to embrace the awkwardness or to never leave your room.
2. I just learned an incredibly weird Italy factoid from my friend. So, like in the U.S., you have to be 16 to get a driver's license in Italy. In California at least, you can get a permit at age 14 and 10 months that allows you to drive with a licensed adult. In Italy, or maybe this is just in Sicily because I've never heard it before, you can get a permit at age 14 to drive around in a mini-car. It basically looks like a giant toy car. Usually I take in the craziness of Italy without blinking an eye; I'm used to it by now. But this makes absolutely no sense to me. It's like, "So you're too young to have a driver's license, but what we'll do is put you in a really little car, so that way if you get into an accident your car will surely be crushed and you will die."
I mean really, wtf? I need to have someone from the Italian version of the DMV explain the logic of this rule to me.
3. I brought with me the same Italian phone that I'd bought in Bologna when I studied abroad, but I had to buy a new SIM card for it and get a new phone number. But it turned out that it still saved all of my former phone numbers and the text messages I'd sent and received. Then of course, it instantly said that my text-messaging inbox was full, so I had to go through and delete 9 months' worth of texts. 9 action-packed, transformative months. It was such a bizarre feeling, like I was deleting 9 months of my life, faithfully documented by that little pink phone. Nine months of courtships, abbreviated attempts at courtship, flirtations, random stalker messages... . A lot of it I'd forgotten about until I saw those messages again. Weird. Pretty, pretty, pretty weird.
1. So I went on this apartment-listing website and in order to respond to other people's announcements, you need to make one of your own. So in my little blurb I wrote something like, "I'm interested in getting to know ragazzi in Palermo!" Ragazzi means either boys or young people in general (you know how romance languages work... males + females --> you use the masculine plural). But apparently in this particular context of apartment listings, people are careful to specify (e.g. "Room available for female students" or "4 young men looking for 5th roommate"). So basically my announcement said I'm interested in meeting men in Palermo. When my friend saw it he laughed and explained it to me. But that explains why I was getting so many bizarre-o responses from people like "35 year-old man looking for female roommate." Then there was "56 year-old man looking for female student roommate." Uh yeah, good luck to that guy.
This is a quintessential example of how living abroad is inevitably full of awkward times. Eventually you have to decide either to embrace the awkwardness or to never leave your room.
2. I just learned an incredibly weird Italy factoid from my friend. So, like in the U.S., you have to be 16 to get a driver's license in Italy. In California at least, you can get a permit at age 14 and 10 months that allows you to drive with a licensed adult. In Italy, or maybe this is just in Sicily because I've never heard it before, you can get a permit at age 14 to drive around in a mini-car. It basically looks like a giant toy car. Usually I take in the craziness of Italy without blinking an eye; I'm used to it by now. But this makes absolutely no sense to me. It's like, "So you're too young to have a driver's license, but what we'll do is put you in a really little car, so that way if you get into an accident your car will surely be crushed and you will die."
I mean really, wtf? I need to have someone from the Italian version of the DMV explain the logic of this rule to me.
3. I brought with me the same Italian phone that I'd bought in Bologna when I studied abroad, but I had to buy a new SIM card for it and get a new phone number. But it turned out that it still saved all of my former phone numbers and the text messages I'd sent and received. Then of course, it instantly said that my text-messaging inbox was full, so I had to go through and delete 9 months' worth of texts. 9 action-packed, transformative months. It was such a bizarre feeling, like I was deleting 9 months of my life, faithfully documented by that little pink phone. Nine months of courtships, abbreviated attempts at courtship, flirtations, random stalker messages... . A lot of it I'd forgotten about until I saw those messages again. Weird. Pretty, pretty, pretty weird.
and now for an education on palermo
I'm a teacher now, you know. So I'd better get practicing. Lesson 1: Palermo.
1. Although you may not have heard of it, Palermo is pretty large.
For a bit of context, the population of Palermo is roughly 663,000. It's the fifth-largest city in Italy, after Rome, Milan, Naples, and Turin. For comparison, San Francisco has about 800,000. Boston has closer to 600,000. Baltimore, at 636,000 people, is roughly the size of Palermo. So it's a good-sized city.
2. The automatic association between Sicily and the Mafia is no longer valid.
I think most Americans associate Palermo, and Sicily in general, with the Mafia. La Cosa Nostra. The Godfather movies. It's okay... I think my interest in Italy was probably initially sparked by The Godfather, though I'd never admit that to an Italian. But even they should acknowledge that Sicily as depicted in those films was so beautiful and exotic. Anyway, the truth is, there was a major crackdown on the Mafia in Sicily during the 1990s, and hundreds of people, including major bosses, were sent to prison. La Cosa Nostra, by the way, is the specific term for the Sicilian version of organized crime.
Anyway, nowadays, organized crime is much less powerful in Sicily than it is in Naples/Campania, where the Camorra is a huge, violent problem, or in Calabria, where the 'Ndrangheta essentially controls that entire (large) region. All politicians, all businesses, all of the local economy, everything. And since the 'Ndrangheta is basically this huge, tight-knit family, nobody ever rats anybody out, and nobody spills any secrets. Thus, scholars and authorities know next to nothing about this major criminal organization -- how they operate, who's involved, where they're based. Nothing. It's pretty scary.
The point is, if you want to worry about organized crime, Sicily is no longer the place to worry about it. Don't get me wrong, the Cosa Nostra does still have a presence here. Just two days ago, there was a mafia-related shooting in Catania, on the street, middle of the day. But you can all relax... I have a feeling that the mafia isn't that interested in coming after me. And in any case, I was in much more danger last summer in Naples than I will be here.
3. Palermo and Me
To be honest, my first reaction to Palermo was nostalgia for Bologna and for Naples. It's nothing like Bologna... cute little Bologna, with all its medieval buildings and cobblestone streets. Bologna's small and wealthy and clean and totally walkable. And the buses, while they don't exactly run on time, are numerous and convenient and do at least arrive. Bologna's full of fancy boutiques and Prada-clad women walking around with little dogs. In retrospect, I realize what a perfect place Bologna was for studying abroad. A cozy, livable, student-friendly little city.
In comparison, Palermo is big and messy and dirty and loud. A lot of the older buildings haven't been well maintained and a lot of the architecture is from the Mafia-run construction boom of the 60's and 70's, and much of it is downright ugly. The scenery is beautiful: there's the ocean, with a gorgeous beach. There's that huge mountain, Monte Pellegrino, looming over it. But somehow it doesn't have the powerfully striking, almost violent beauty of Naples. Naples is basically a city on a hillside next to the ocean, so that from almost everywhere in the city there are spectacular ocean views. And a major volcano, Mount Vesuvius.
And somehow, also, it doesn't seem to have the intensity and the liveliness of Naples. In Naples, there are always people yelling in the streets. People standing in doorways and on sidewalks chatting and arguing and watching people go by, and often, if those people are women, whistling and cat-calling. I suppose it's because Naples has a much greater population density than Palermo. But also, I don't know, there's an intensity and passion to the people of Naples that seeps into the streets.
In Naples, every time I interacted with someone in an exchange of more than a sentence or two, they would notice my accent and ask me where I was from. And upon hearing my response, they would always get extremely excited and ask if I knew their cousin Frankie in Springfield or tell me the two words of English they knew or make my cappuccino with cream instead of milk. Damn, those were good. And they would always, always ask what I thought of their city. And when I responded that it was beautiful, they would beam with pride and say something like, it is, isn't it? Poor Naples is much maligned both within Italy and by tourists.
But here, so far, I haven't seen that level of friendliness, openness, and curiosity. I haven't felt that life-force that electrifies Naples. (If you haven't been there, it's hard to explain what it's like. You should go, with an open mind, and feel it for yourself.) Of course, I'm extremely new to this city, and I'm in no position to make judgments about it yet. I'll stay open-minded. And I'll let you know how it goes.
1. Although you may not have heard of it, Palermo is pretty large.
For a bit of context, the population of Palermo is roughly 663,000. It's the fifth-largest city in Italy, after Rome, Milan, Naples, and Turin. For comparison, San Francisco has about 800,000. Boston has closer to 600,000. Baltimore, at 636,000 people, is roughly the size of Palermo. So it's a good-sized city.
2. The automatic association between Sicily and the Mafia is no longer valid.
I think most Americans associate Palermo, and Sicily in general, with the Mafia. La Cosa Nostra. The Godfather movies. It's okay... I think my interest in Italy was probably initially sparked by The Godfather, though I'd never admit that to an Italian. But even they should acknowledge that Sicily as depicted in those films was so beautiful and exotic. Anyway, the truth is, there was a major crackdown on the Mafia in Sicily during the 1990s, and hundreds of people, including major bosses, were sent to prison. La Cosa Nostra, by the way, is the specific term for the Sicilian version of organized crime.
Anyway, nowadays, organized crime is much less powerful in Sicily than it is in Naples/Campania, where the Camorra is a huge, violent problem, or in Calabria, where the 'Ndrangheta essentially controls that entire (large) region. All politicians, all businesses, all of the local economy, everything. And since the 'Ndrangheta is basically this huge, tight-knit family, nobody ever rats anybody out, and nobody spills any secrets. Thus, scholars and authorities know next to nothing about this major criminal organization -- how they operate, who's involved, where they're based. Nothing. It's pretty scary.
The point is, if you want to worry about organized crime, Sicily is no longer the place to worry about it. Don't get me wrong, the Cosa Nostra does still have a presence here. Just two days ago, there was a mafia-related shooting in Catania, on the street, middle of the day. But you can all relax... I have a feeling that the mafia isn't that interested in coming after me. And in any case, I was in much more danger last summer in Naples than I will be here.
3. Palermo and Me
To be honest, my first reaction to Palermo was nostalgia for Bologna and for Naples. It's nothing like Bologna... cute little Bologna, with all its medieval buildings and cobblestone streets. Bologna's small and wealthy and clean and totally walkable. And the buses, while they don't exactly run on time, are numerous and convenient and do at least arrive. Bologna's full of fancy boutiques and Prada-clad women walking around with little dogs. In retrospect, I realize what a perfect place Bologna was for studying abroad. A cozy, livable, student-friendly little city.
In comparison, Palermo is big and messy and dirty and loud. A lot of the older buildings haven't been well maintained and a lot of the architecture is from the Mafia-run construction boom of the 60's and 70's, and much of it is downright ugly. The scenery is beautiful: there's the ocean, with a gorgeous beach. There's that huge mountain, Monte Pellegrino, looming over it. But somehow it doesn't have the powerfully striking, almost violent beauty of Naples. Naples is basically a city on a hillside next to the ocean, so that from almost everywhere in the city there are spectacular ocean views. And a major volcano, Mount Vesuvius.
And somehow, also, it doesn't seem to have the intensity and the liveliness of Naples. In Naples, there are always people yelling in the streets. People standing in doorways and on sidewalks chatting and arguing and watching people go by, and often, if those people are women, whistling and cat-calling. I suppose it's because Naples has a much greater population density than Palermo. But also, I don't know, there's an intensity and passion to the people of Naples that seeps into the streets.
In Naples, every time I interacted with someone in an exchange of more than a sentence or two, they would notice my accent and ask me where I was from. And upon hearing my response, they would always get extremely excited and ask if I knew their cousin Frankie in Springfield or tell me the two words of English they knew or make my cappuccino with cream instead of milk. Damn, those were good. And they would always, always ask what I thought of their city. And when I responded that it was beautiful, they would beam with pride and say something like, it is, isn't it? Poor Naples is much maligned both within Italy and by tourists.
But here, so far, I haven't seen that level of friendliness, openness, and curiosity. I haven't felt that life-force that electrifies Naples. (If you haven't been there, it's hard to explain what it's like. You should go, with an open mind, and feel it for yourself.) Of course, I'm extremely new to this city, and I'm in no position to make judgments about it yet. I'll stay open-minded. And I'll let you know how it goes.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
where i am RIGHT NOW
All right guys, I know many of you are only vaguely aware of having heard of palermo and therefore are likely wondering where the hell I am. So, first thing's first: where I am geographically.
http://www.ils-milano.it/italy_map.gif
So Sicily's the island off the toe of the boot, and you'll see Palermo's on the northwestern coast. Essentially, this is just about as south as you can get in Italy. Well, you know, you can go further south in Sicily. But Sicily in general, I mean, is the very southiest of the South. Note, if you will, its proximity to northern Africa. A lot of Africans come into the country (legally or illegally) through Sicily and many make their way north through Italy to economically greener pastures.
And now, a few photos for you all. As it's the first sunny day since I've been here, I took some photos from the windows of my friend's apartment. So now you can get a sense of where I actually am. Yay!
The street view, from the balcony. If you can see the sort of gray shape in the background, that's a fatty mountain, although I know you can't really tell in the picture. It's pretty much visible from everywhere in Palermo, and it's gorgeous.
Here's from the other side. Lots of palm trees in this city.
And here's the view of my friend's darling little cortile (courtyard) in the center of his building/palazzo. Complete with pond (though you can't really tell here because it's covered with greenery) and fish and a few resident cats.
The "up" view from his inner balcony... Sunday's laundry day.
So, alas, I have still not found an apartment. But I can tell you definitively that when I do, it will be nowhere near as nice as this one. I couldn't afford a place like this on my measly grant money. But that's okay, I'm young... there's only a short period in your life when you can live in shitty apartments with no heating and no washing machine and not be considered a failure at life. And I, friends, am still in that blissful period.
By the way, I just got back from looking at a place in the older, central part of town with the aforementioned defects (no heating or washing machine). And the commute to my schools would be a little long. But, there would be five other girls, three of them art students; I met two of them, and they were very sweet. The area is a bit more run-down than some parts of town but it's where most of the students live, and where all the bars and nightlife are. So I'm not sure. Ugh, apartment hunting is so stressful. I can't really think about anything else while this is still up in the air. But once it's settled, I can start showing you around the city.. and finally see it for myself.
A presto...
Friday, September 25, 2009
chapter one...
...in which our plucky young heroine arrives in palermo and begins to see to the business of settling in.
so here i am, in palermo at last, after the longest summer I've ever had (4 whole months, and remarkably I managed to do nothing remotely productive during any of it). really, it was about time. i'd already given into all those guilty pleasure temptations that i'd previously managed to resist for like, my whole life... all six seasons of sex and the city, gossip girl, twilight (the movie, twice in one sitting; all four books in three days). the kardashians were even starting to grow on me. so really, who knows where it would've gone next.
it's funny, i was talking to someone right before graduation about being worried about having nothing to do for four months. she was like, "oh, don't worry, you'll get so bored that you'll find yourself getting into all sorts of amazing things...." she, of course, during her time off from school, ended up teaching herself arabic, learning how to ride a unicycle, teaching herself to knit, and more along those lines. oh octavia, i wish i were more like you. but no, apparently, i'm not at all.
anyway, palermo. i got in on monday at around 8 pm, and i proceeded to sleep from about 11 pm until 5 pm the next day. 17 straight hours of sleep must be a record, i think, even for me. and since then i've averaged at least twelve hours a night.
and during those rare hours of wakefulness, i've been running around dealing with all this bureaucratic nonsense italy requires of people who try to live here for a year. i had to fingerprinted, of course (the fourth time i've had to get fingerprinted here. i mean really, italy, don't you have them on file somewhere by now?). i had to go to some DMV-like office and wait for hours to get some sort of social security-like number, in order to open a bank account. and then at the bank they were utterly confounded when confronted with american money orders.
thankfully i have my dear sicilian friend around to help me with all of this. of course he knows someone at the immigration office, so we walked in right past the poor crowd of africans and middle-easterners who'd been waiting for god-knows-how-long. and then he knows someone at the bank. so as confusing and time-consuming as all this been, it would've been five times worse without his help. plus, he knows someone who knows someone with a spare room to rent, and he knows someone looking to hire an english tutor, so that's great too. ah, the wonders of knowing someone in a country all about having connections.
before i left home i was trying to remember why i wanted to come back here. after all, it was over a year ago that i applied for this grant, and things were entirely different back then. in fact, it's amazing how much has changed over the past year. other than the fact that i graduated from college, i suppose not much is different in a straightforward sense. but psychologically, i feel like i'm an entirely different place now than i was a year ago. a better, a more confident, a more mature place, for sure. but still, why am i in italy? didn't i already do my nine months here? learn the language, experience the culture, all that? i guess i haven't yet figured out the answer to that. hopefully something will surface, in time.
one thing i'd forgotten that i do remember, now that i'm here, is that i really do love italy and italians. i adore the way italian sounds, the way it rolls off their tongues. it sounds so sexy, it seems almost obscene, almost indecent that people just walk around talking like that, in public. like, in front of everyone.
and there are so many other little things. i love the hand gestures and the eye-rolling. i love the way italians say "ciao" like ten million times at the ends of phone conversations. like, "ok, a dopo. allora, ciao. ciaociaociao ciaociaociaociao... ." i love the way they wear metallic shoes. i love the boys' meticulously-shaped sideburns and their plucked eyebrows (ok, definitely more a southern thing). i love the way that italian businessmen are so impeccably dressed that they're simply beautiful to look at. and i love the way that so many young, beautiful girls wear glasses and are still considered cool.
all right, i realize i haven't said a single thing about palermo but i will, soon. i've hardly seen any of it myself, but for the next nine months at least it'll be all palermo, all the time, so you'll definitely hear about it. and see pictures. until soon...
so here i am, in palermo at last, after the longest summer I've ever had (4 whole months, and remarkably I managed to do nothing remotely productive during any of it). really, it was about time. i'd already given into all those guilty pleasure temptations that i'd previously managed to resist for like, my whole life... all six seasons of sex and the city, gossip girl, twilight (the movie, twice in one sitting; all four books in three days). the kardashians were even starting to grow on me. so really, who knows where it would've gone next.
it's funny, i was talking to someone right before graduation about being worried about having nothing to do for four months. she was like, "oh, don't worry, you'll get so bored that you'll find yourself getting into all sorts of amazing things...." she, of course, during her time off from school, ended up teaching herself arabic, learning how to ride a unicycle, teaching herself to knit, and more along those lines. oh octavia, i wish i were more like you. but no, apparently, i'm not at all.
anyway, palermo. i got in on monday at around 8 pm, and i proceeded to sleep from about 11 pm until 5 pm the next day. 17 straight hours of sleep must be a record, i think, even for me. and since then i've averaged at least twelve hours a night.
and during those rare hours of wakefulness, i've been running around dealing with all this bureaucratic nonsense italy requires of people who try to live here for a year. i had to fingerprinted, of course (the fourth time i've had to get fingerprinted here. i mean really, italy, don't you have them on file somewhere by now?). i had to go to some DMV-like office and wait for hours to get some sort of social security-like number, in order to open a bank account. and then at the bank they were utterly confounded when confronted with american money orders.
thankfully i have my dear sicilian friend around to help me with all of this. of course he knows someone at the immigration office, so we walked in right past the poor crowd of africans and middle-easterners who'd been waiting for god-knows-how-long. and then he knows someone at the bank. so as confusing and time-consuming as all this been, it would've been five times worse without his help. plus, he knows someone who knows someone with a spare room to rent, and he knows someone looking to hire an english tutor, so that's great too. ah, the wonders of knowing someone in a country all about having connections.
before i left home i was trying to remember why i wanted to come back here. after all, it was over a year ago that i applied for this grant, and things were entirely different back then. in fact, it's amazing how much has changed over the past year. other than the fact that i graduated from college, i suppose not much is different in a straightforward sense. but psychologically, i feel like i'm an entirely different place now than i was a year ago. a better, a more confident, a more mature place, for sure. but still, why am i in italy? didn't i already do my nine months here? learn the language, experience the culture, all that? i guess i haven't yet figured out the answer to that. hopefully something will surface, in time.
one thing i'd forgotten that i do remember, now that i'm here, is that i really do love italy and italians. i adore the way italian sounds, the way it rolls off their tongues. it sounds so sexy, it seems almost obscene, almost indecent that people just walk around talking like that, in public. like, in front of everyone.
and there are so many other little things. i love the hand gestures and the eye-rolling. i love the way italians say "ciao" like ten million times at the ends of phone conversations. like, "ok, a dopo. allora, ciao. ciaociaociao ciaociaociaociao... ." i love the way they wear metallic shoes. i love the boys' meticulously-shaped sideburns and their plucked eyebrows (ok, definitely more a southern thing). i love the way that italian businessmen are so impeccably dressed that they're simply beautiful to look at. and i love the way that so many young, beautiful girls wear glasses and are still considered cool.
all right, i realize i haven't said a single thing about palermo but i will, soon. i've hardly seen any of it myself, but for the next nine months at least it'll be all palermo, all the time, so you'll definitely hear about it. and see pictures. until soon...
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