please. ragazzi.

Just to give you a sense of things: from today, an example of your typical classroom interaction.

Barbara's talking about Cromwell and William and Mary and the Glorious Revolution, and writing notes on the blackboard as she speaks. The kids are causing their usual commotion. I'm sitting there at the teacher's desk next to her, "assisting." In reality, studying the class register and trying to match up all the names and faces.

Barbara (in English, almost yelling): "Is it clear? James II took the throne after his father Charles II died. Do you understand?"

Class (in Italian, in their mock-innocent singsong way): "Prof, why don't you go out with Professor Bologna?" [Their physics teacher.]

Barbara (exasperated, in Italian): "Ragazzi! Please!" (Pause. You think she's going to start talking about William and Mary again.) "Ragazzi, please! I have a boyfriend!"

Nadia: "Ooh, how long, Prof?"
Andrea: "Uffa, Prof, monogamy -- who needs it?"
Class: "Come on, Prof, you still need to go out with Professor Bologna."

Barbara: "Ragazzi! Why don't you ask Miss Browne if she wants to go out with Professor Bologna?"

?! Uh, gee Barbara, thanks for the assist...

Class: "Okay!" Pause. "Does Miss Browne have a boyfriend?"

Barbara: "I don't know, why don't you ask Miss Browne. In English!"

Class: "Okay!" [Some commotion as the class discusses how to say this in English, as I wait. The official line is still that I don't understand Italian, although by now lots of the kids are awfully suspicious of this notion. Still, I think they're not quite sure what to believe.]

Class: "Miss Browne, are you engaged!"

Me: "Uh..no."

Squeals. "Ma come no?!"

Class, in English: "Will you go out with Professor Bologna!"

Uh. Which one is Professor Bologna again?

Barbara: "The young one... short, dark hair?"

...That description matches everyone in this school.

Class: "Or Diego!"

Who the hell is Diego?

"The Spanish teacher!"

Dear me, ragazzi, this is so innappropriate. Your math teacher, though? He's not married, is he? Put in a good word for me, will you? Thanks kids!

When in Rome, I guess, right?

No, I didn't actually say that. I was thinking it though. This is proprio typical classroom exchange. And this, mind you, is my best class at CEI: my most studious, most well-behaved, highest-level-of-English class. Just to give you an idea.

Also, afterwards in the teacher's room, Barbara was recounting this to one of the older teachers . "Oh, those kids, they never give it a rest! They're always trying to fix up all the young teachers."

And the other was like, Fix up all the young teachers! Why, that's a great idea! "We should organize a dinner, with all the young teachers! I'll come too, even though I'm old. And we'll invite Professor Bologna and Diego and all the others so Cate can get to know them!"

lol. It was just kind of funny the way she reacted, though actually I would appreciate being able to get to know the other teachers at CEI. It's amazing what a young staff it is, and from the brief interactions I've had with them so far, they all seem cool: bright and energetic and hard-working and funny. And they've been very very sweet and welcoming. Such that even though my CEI students and my CEI responsibilities are much more challenging than those at Galilei, I feel much more comfortable and at home at CEI than I do at Galilei, with its big anonymous hallways and its stern dinosaur teachers who look at me as though they're evaluating me as much as they are their students.

Anyway, tomorrow I actually will be -- not evaluated but "observed" -- by an American ESL consultant hired by the embassy to come around and check up on all of us. I know I shouldn't be, but I'm kind of nervous despite myself.

Also, P.S. -- I should mention that as Italian acronyms are always pronounced like words, CEI is pronounced "chay." I just realized that with the frequency with which I use the school's name, my writing will have a lot more flow to it if you're pronouncing it that way in your head rather than sounding out the initials C-E-I.

Okay loves, until soon. I'll post my photos tomorrow and update you on this "observation" visit. Goodnight..

geography and milza and bears, oh my

Beginning of my third week of classes: ups and downs, as ever.

It's amazing how the same exact lesson can turn out entirely differently depending on the dynamic of a classroom and the energy of a group of students. In one a disastrous failure, in another a complete success.

I'm learning, I guess? With each week I'm able to pick out more individual students, make out personalities, get a better sense of the energy, capacities, and limits of each group.

I have one class at Galilei where the students are moderately rowdy, but the real problem is that the teacher causes more disturbance than anyone. It's like she tries to sabotage me, every lesson. Last week she was popping in and out of the classroom throughout the lesson, taking advantage of my presence to take care of all her little errands. Then halfway through she sat down at the desk at the front of the room and started calling students up one by one to chat, loudly, about some other assignments or god-knows-what. This is while I'm speaking, or trying to encourage students to speak, mind you. I struggle to make myself heard above the noise even when it's just her, though it's rarely just her; as you can probably imagine, students have little incentive to keep quiet when their teacher herself is causing a commotion. Even the students tried several times to shush her, to which she responded by blowing up at them, yelling that if she were speaking loudly, it was only because they were making noise and forced her to raise her volume.

When students tried to shush each other, she barked that they were behaving terribly, only that she wasn't going to do anything about it, she was just going to observe and carry out her revenge on them in the form of interrogations later. Well, great, that works for you, but it doesn't really help me get through my lesson, does it?

Today she parked herself in the back row and proceeded to strike up a casual conversation with the entire row of students, again at an above-normal volume, that carried on throughout the hour. Again you can imagine the reverberations on the rest of the classroom. If the teacher doesn't take my lessons seriously, why on earth should the students?

"Starting next time we're doing literature!" she barks, both at me and at them. She and all the other English teachers I've encountered here have this idea that unless you're doing literature, it's not "serious" enough. Forget activities, conversation, group work -- don't even breathe the word "games."

They're all obsessed with making sure my lessons are "serious" enough, and they're all convinced that teaching literature is the only way to be "serious." Okay, fine. But what literature they're determined to shove down these kids' throats!

Last week one of my teachers came up to me after my American high schools lesson and said, "That was fine, but now we'll do literature, no? I was thinking. Hawthorne."

Oh, right, of course. Because these are kids who can't remember to say "When does American school finish?" instead of "When American school finishes?" Pronounced fee.-NEESH-ezz. These are kids who don't know the words "guess," or "share," or "organize." Neither they nor their teachers know that "straight" can mean heterosexual or that "place" can be a verb. Clearly, The Scarlet Letter is the next logical step.

Uh, this is the kind of assertion to which WTF?!? is the only natural response.

I have nothing against literature; in fact, if you know me at all, you'll know I love literature. But I've also studied plenty of languages, and it's totally obvious to me that literature is no way to learn a language. I learned way more Italian in a few weeks of dating an Italian than in a year of reading Italian literature. I loved The Decameron and I remember its contents well, but I don't think I could tell you a single word of Italian I learned from it. It just doesn't work that way.

I don't know why all of Italy's language teachers have latched onto this idea. Haven't they noticed that their students are incapable of carrying on a fluid conversation in English at the most basic, basic (tipo, "What did you do this weekend?") level? Why do they insist on trotting out Beowulf and Hamlet and Paradise Lost and this universal "Oh, you're American? Let's do Hawthorne!" absurdity?

How about let's not do Hawthorne. Do you want the kids to hate English forever? Because sometimes it really seems like that's the goal. Reading The Scarlet Letter was like pulling teeth for my 11th-grade classmates, and we were native speakers. Seriously, you thought waterboarding was unpleasant... watch me inflict The Scarlet Letter on my 17 year-old Italians. Sometimes you wish you could just shake people, you know?

***

Anyway, at the end of third period today, after an hour with the barker, I felt so discouraged and out of control. And then my last class of the day, 4B, was totally wonderful and completely re-energized me.

This class is one of my two favorites, both fourth-year classes, so 17- and 18- year-olds, at Galilei. 4B and 4G. I don't know why, since the group of students never changes classrooms, but in essentially all of the classes I teach there are several more banchi (two-person tables) than there are students. Usually, as you'd expect, students fill in the back rows and leave the front row, sometimes the first couple of rows, empty. In 4B at Galilei, it's the opposite -- they'll all cram in, four or five to a table, at the front of the room, during my class. (All boys, by the way; and Galilei is two-thirds boys in general.) I'm not sure whether it's just my classes or every class, but in any case, they're darling. The boys in the first row are piled on top of each other like a litter of puppies, limbs askew, folded over their desks with their faces turned upwards at me, leaning on each other's shoulders. They look up at me with these big puppy eyes that never leave me the entire hour, hanging on my every word. They jump up to erase the board or get me chalk or shush each other or ask me questions. There's one boy in particular who stares at me so intently and looks away so sheepishly whenever I look at him, it's hard to keep a straight face.

Ahh, teacher crushes. Believe me, I know them better than anyone. It's kinda fun to be on the other side for once.

(On a side note, not to be inappropriate, but it's astonishing how good-looking many of these Sicilian boys are. I'd say like two-thirds of my students are as attractive as the top two or three most popular boys of my high school. Listening to them read their compositions on "If I went to high school in America..." it was hard not to think, Damn, if you went to school in America, teenage girls would be lining up to give you their phone numbers. I'm just saying.)

***

Yesterday the Consul General from the Naples consulate was in Palermo and deigned to grace me with his presence. We met for a bite to eat at the Foccacceria San Francesco, a cute little restaurant that's famous because its owner was the first to publicly denounce the pizzo (the money the Mafia asks of the business owners in the area it controls, in exchange for "protection") and point out in court the individuals who asked him to pay it. Now the owner has an entourage of police protection that accompanies him everywhere; the Naples consulate has helped him through the bureaucratic process of opening a branch of the restaurant in New York, and he'll soon relocate there to actually open the thing. And to escape this mouse-in-a-cage lifestyle he's stuck in here. Hopefully the restaurant succeeds, despite the dismal economic climate, so he can stay over there.

So, fun times with the CG. I know him from when I did my internship there at the consulate, and he's a fellow Brown alum, so naturally we have this deep spiritual bond. Except that I ended up having to eat pane con la milza, which is this gross liver/boiled meat/innards concoction, eaten with bread, that's basically the typical dish of this area, and everyone here is crazy about it. I feel like it would be unappetizing to me even if I weren't a vegetarian, so obviously given that I am a vegetarian I had no desire to try it.

Whenever Sicilians find out you're foreign, they always want to talk about food, and ask whether you like Sicilian food, and then the first thing they inevitably ask is whether you've tried pane con la milza, and I always have to explain that no, I'm a vegetarian; yes, I know it sounds crazy; unfortunately I have to miss out on exquisite delicacies like milza. Now, at least, I can skip over the explanation and just reply that yes, I've tried it.

This was the sort of situation where the owner came out and greeted us, and instead of taking our orders they brought out a fixed array of dishes, and it was all on the house, so I felt pressured to eat what they gave me so as not to appear rude. It's happened fairly often here in Italy that people invite me over for dinner or generously offer me food without thinking to ask whether I eat meat, since vegetarianism is a pretty foreign concept for most, and I feel too timid or embarrassed to refuse it. So, it kind of grosses me out, but I've ended up eating meat a few times here. Oh well, I'd hate to seem snotty or ungrateful. So anyway, milza can now be crossed off the list.

Another thing: the CG does alumni interviewing for Brown here in Italy, and he said he usually gets 4 or 5 applicants a year to interview, usually Italian kids with one American parent. I wonder if it's too late to sign up for this year; it'd be fun to interview kids for Brown, and it'd be interesting to see what sorts of Italian kids apply.

A year or two ago I never thought I'd become the sort of alum who'd be volunteering for alumni interviewing, or going back for Commencement, or donating to the Annual Fund, or attending dumb Ivy League alumni cocktail parties in San Francisco. Yet here I am. Graduating from college does weird things to you. Next thing you know, I'll be dressing my baby up in little Brown outfits -- or no, better yet, as Bruno the Bear for Halloween -- and turning out annually for the Harvard football game. Well, let's hope it doesn't quite come to that.

Then yesterday after CG time it was Italo's birthday so we went to dinner at this darling little place that serves typical Sicilian food and to which I will surely bring anyone and everyone who comes to visit me -- so remember it, it's called Cucina. Like Kitchen in Novato, the name is so vague that I fear I won't be able to remember. Plus he brought me some leftover wildberry mousse cake thing that his mother made for the occasion that was amazing, and by the end of the night I wanted to die of fullness, though it was all, with the exception of the milza, very delightful.

Plus Paola was kind enough to come pick up my laundry and return it all clean and freshly scented and neatly folded and newly lovely -- like my own personal laundry service. So as you can see I'm just a pig in mud over here.

Is that even an expression? It's so weird how your English leaves you when you're not around native speakers for a while. Well not basic English, obviously, but colloquial expressions. Like yesterday I was trying to think of the one about memory and elephants: elephants never forget? or is it singular: an elephant never forgets? or like in Italian, so-and-so has a memory like an elephant? or like my favorite Agatha Christie book, Elephants Can Remember? I've gotten myself all mixed up.

All right, there's more to say, much of it probably not particularly compelling but by now you've probably realized I write this more to keep my thoughts from boiling over and to keep track of where the hell my time goes, rather than as any sort of coherent or informative account for an outside reader, so I'll write my nonsense and my minutiae and my scatterbrained musings whether you like it or not. But for now I ought to go to bed or do something productive like review the Glorious Revolution for tomorrow morning. Remind me to tell you about Grazia and the Marcos and Grazia's Welsh friend. And I finally took some photos of Paola's place that I'll have to look through and post. Until soon, ragazzi.

Un abbraccio forte forte e un bacio enorme enorme.

Until tomorrow.

more things.

I. yesterday, saturday, i slept. from midnight friday to 5:30 pm saturday. it was already dark when i woke up. this teaching thing is a little exhausting.

II. today is the first sunny day in a while, and it's nice to have a little break from the rain, though i don't really mind the rain. lately it's been pretty warm but drizzling on and off and windy, but a warm wind. blustery days. i just remembered that i love fall. even half-assed sicilian fall, which is similar to half-assed california fall. for east coasters it's not real fall, but it's the fall i know best. it goes without saying, of course, that fall in new england is the only time there that it's not totally miserable.

III. yesterday i was talking to my friend morena on skype and she was surprised to hear that i was coming home for christmas. you're coming home? why? and i was like, well, yeah, i need to take a real shower.

and then i thought, would i really fly 15 hours across the world to take a shower? and yeah, i think i would. i can handle a lot, but not being able to take a real shower pushes me over the edge. i really think you could ship me off to kabul and i would be fine so long as i got to take decent showers.

IV. i haven't exercised at all, other than walking, since i've been here, so about five weeks now. my body's changed, and it feels awful. my legs are scrawny and my stomach's soft and it's no good, no good at all. the joining of the gym needs to happen.

V. you might have noticed that i'm really not good at censoring myself when i write. everything just sort of spills out and the boundary between the deeply personal and the family-friendly dissolves completely.

hope you don't mind.

un bacio.

c

this week in my life

This week I've given lessons on the American school system, American geography, Napoleonic Empire, Milton's Paradise Lost, Obama and JFK, and the English Revolution.

I'm expecting that any minute someone will come up to me and be like, "Oh hey you're american, can you talk to my class about American advancements in nuclear physics over the past 100 years? K thanks!" Oh sure, and while we’re at it why don't we talk about the genealogies of everyone’s horses as well? (Bonus points: guess the movie reference!)

And I thought this year was going to be laid-back. Before I got here I was making lists of all the things I could do with the loads of free time I was sure iId have.

Anyway, if this post seems a little scrambled, it’s because I’ve been pretty scrambled these days. Before i go on, there are a couple of things you absolutely must know in order to get a sense of what my life is like (and since my life right now is work, I mean what my work is like).

Josephine, my tutor at CEI (in Fulbright language, tutor means the person who’s responsible for taking care of me at each school -- supervisor, really) has the exact same accent as Mira Sorvino’s character in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite. She grew up in the U.S. until age 12, when her parents decided to move back to Sicily, and now she teaches English. Her accent in English is totally New Yorker, but she uses these bizarre words and expressions that come from translating directly from Italian. It’s, pardon the expression, a total mindfuck. Like today she was saying, “Can you believe the rain? I’m soak wet!” It’s funny, and it’s weird to be the only person who realizes that her English is nuts.

She’s great, though, very intense and very anxious and very concerned about my well-being. Every time she sees me in the halls she goes “Are you okay? Is everything okay?” with an expression of such concern that you’d think she just told me one of my relatives had died. Anyway, she’s a real character. Some important things about Italian classrooms that I neglected to mention before:

In Italy, kids stay with the same group of 20-25 students for every class, every year. Each group has their own classroom, rather than each teacher, and so the teachers rotate rooms each period, rather than the students. The classroom thing might seem small but it changes the entire dynamic of school for them. The classroom belongs to them, and you, as the teacher, are a temporary visitor in their space. They’re much more in control of the classroom environment than the teacher is, which seems potentially interesting but makes things incredibly difficult for teachers. They sit wherever they like, with whomever they like, at 2-person tables, and apparently you’re not allowed to re-arrange them. It’s incredibly frustrating. In my worst class, CEI’s 4B, I feel like the discipline issues would be cut in half at least if we could just move them around. It’s such a basic thing. When I was in high school, not even our most lax teachers let us choose where to sit. We almost always sat in alphabetical order, or in some arrangement according to the teacher’s whim. It doesn’t make sense to me to let the troublemakers always sit together and the weakest students fade into the back of the room where they inevitably miss some of the exchange between teacher and eager beavers who sit up front and answer all the questions.

The discipline issue is frustrating, also because I’m not supposed to concern myself with maintaining order in the classroom, as it’s supposed to be the regular teacher’s job. In most classes it’s not a problem: I don’t expect absolute silence, and I don’t get it, but I can make myself heard and transmit information to the ones who want it. They told us again and again at orientation that we shouldn’t take it personally that there’ll always be some degree of noise and activity in the classroom, as standards of discipline are different here. Okay, fine.

4B is the only group I have where it’s a major obstacle to getting anything done in class, and it’s awkward because their regular teacher, Barbara, is so clearly unable to enforce any kind of order, it’s like watching a fish flail around on a dock. I had them today, and it was exhausting. At any given time at least one third of them are talking. Two of the kids are reading a magazine in the back of the room, and one of them rips out some pages with Miss Italia on them, and gets up to come pin them up on the wall in the front of the classroom. This is while the teacher is lecturing, mind you. The girls are sitting in each other’s laps, the boys are throwing little objects around, there’s a couple in the front who are always canoodling. Someone gets up to walk across the room and give something to his friend, everyone’s turned around in their seats to say something to the person behind him.

I can’t just stand there while Barbara yells herself hoarse for them to be quiet, but I don’t know what to do other than my American methods which seem to be unacceptable. Move them around, split them up, make the worst ones come sit next to the teacher’s desk by themselves like first-graders on time-out. I don’t know. If it doesn’t change, they’re going to move me to a third-year class and I’ll have yet another subject matter to keep track of on top of everything else.

The irritating part, too, is that I had them on Wednesday with Josephine, as she asked me to come in and give a lesson during her English class, and they were great. I talked about American high school, and they were engaged and attentive and asked questions and made an effort to tell me in English about their school. Part of it is that Josephine has a much more authoritative presence and clearly commands their respect, and part of it was that the subject matter was actually interesting to them. History’s really brutal in there. Barbara’s never satisfied that they’ve truly understood the Thirty Years’ War, so every single lesson we have to go over it again. By this point even I hear the words ‘Defenestration of Prague’ and I’m totally checked out.

Today we managed to make a little bit of progress only when we came to the agreement that if they could answer my question, they could ask me a question of their own about whatever they liked. What dynasty was Elizabeth I a part of? After a few minutes, we manage to get “the Tudors.” Okay, go ahead. “Do you like Sicilian food?”

Why do they always ask that? As if I’m going to say no, even if I did dislike it?

Other than that, things are okay, if a little crazy.

There’s a really sweet young teacher at CEI, Roberta, who’s an English teacher at the Liceo Classico (the classical high school, where they focus on Latin and Greek). She treats me like a mini-celebrity, and every time she sees me she’s super excited about being able to practice English, and talk to me about how she wants to apply for the Fulbright to teach English in the U.S., and so on. She speaks wonderful English, with a British accent, and you can tell she’s the kind of person who’s never satisfied with her level and who’s always trying to perfect her language, tweak her accent, learn new words. In short, the way all language teachers, and English teachers in particular, should be; in English even more so than in other languages, you can never be finished because you will never stop encountering new words. Even native speakers never stop encountering new words. That's one of the things I love about English.

Anyway, today we were chatting in the hall and I said it was my free period and she asked if I’d sit in on her English class. My kids would love to meet you, she says, and it would be so fun for them to hear you speak in contrast to the way I speak. Well, I can think of some other ways I wouldn’t mind spending my free period, but she’s so nice, and she’s young and maybe we could actually be real friends. So okay, sure, I’ll come.

“You will? Oh, really? Oh, fantastic!” In her cute little British-Italian accent. And, as we’re coming to the door. “So we’re just starting to read John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Would you mind giving us an introduction?”

Uh.

Paradise Lost. Well. I read the thing once, I can tell you that. I even remember liking it, once I got past the density of the language. Paradise Lost....uh... it was written in the 1600s? ... By a Puritan?... As I remember, the devil's kind of a big deal? That’s about all I remember.

This is basically my introduction: “So kids, what can you tell me about Paradise Lost?”

Thankfully, it works and they start talking about iambic pentameter and blank verse and Satan (which they pronounce “satin,” which is pretty distractingly amusing, but even the teachers say it, so I feel too embarrassed to correct them). And when they start talking about it, actually, I start remembering.

Roberta’s class is, unexpectedly, actually able to explain passages from this book that’s very difficult even for native speakers. “What did you think of them?” she asks me afterwards. “They’re amazing,” I say. “They’re my worst class!” she says cheerfully. “See, liceo classico is different.” Well gee, apparently.

Further proof that Liceo Classico students are piu’ bravi: they ask me where I went to college and when I say Brown they all go, “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

?? How do they know Brown? “Gossip Girl!” Oh, have you seen the OC? They talk about it on that show, too. “Oohhh, yes!” Nice. My high school classmates hadn’t heard of Brown, but these Italian high schoolers are duly impressed. Thanks, TV and movies. This week they also helped me explain lacrosse ("you know, like in American Pie?") and Phoenix ("You know, where Bella's from, in the beginning of Twilight") and autoshop ("In Grease, the class where Danny Zuko and the guys are always hanging out and working on cars.") Essential.

Also, Roberta took me to lunch after school and introduced me to her boyfriend whom she purposely hasn’t mentioned yet to any of the other teachers or to her students (who are always begging for information about teachers’ personal lives). His name Roberto. It's too cute... I always wondered whether male and female versions of the same name pair up, since there’s so much overlap here [and relatively few commonly-used names]: Federico/a, Francesco/a, Giulio/a, Giovanni/a, etc.). Apparently they do. And they both call each other “Robi.”

***

I hope I at least get out of this that I’ll start to feel more comfortable about being put on the spot. It happens so often here that even in these past two weeks I’ve felt myself become a lot more at ease standing up in front of the class and talking about something I know nothing about off the top of my head. As of now it’s only been teenagers, though. I hope this sense of comfort transfers to adults as well.

Yesterday at Galilei, too, it happened. The teacher and I had talked about doing a U.S. geography lesson sometime. I came in and told her that I hadn’t been able to get a map of America yet but I’d be getting one soon so for now could I do the lesson I’d planned about the American school system and next time we’d do geography?

No, she'd rather the class do geography now.

All right everyone, let’s learn about U.S. geography from the very dubious-looking map that I will draw on the board! Who needs actual maps to learn geography?

Can you show us where Cleveland is? someone asks.

Cleveland! I’m so glad you asked! Why, gee, Cleveland is right about here! I draw a dot somewhere vaguely in the middle of my rendering of the eastern Midwest. I have no idea where Cleveland actually is within Ohio. I've never even been to the Midwest. What are the chances someone will actually look up Cleveland and find out how accurate I am? One bonus about teaching: they can’t usually tell when you’re bullshitting.

My American school system lesson, which I gave to most of my other classes (only eight or nine times), went pretty well. In addition to general differences between the U.S. and American school systems, I talked about the electives and sports teams and activities at Novato High. They were all particularly shocked by the existence of the GSA, the Gay-Straight Alliance. Some were shocked-horrified (“But those are bad people!”), most were shocked-impressed (“Oh, we should have that at Galilei..”). Most of them were convinced that Italy will never be ready to accept such a thing.

That’s the sort of moment when I like telling them about the U.S. Even for the ones who are scandalized, I think it’s important to be able to say, See, there are different ways of doing things from the way you do things here. There’s a lot out there, outside of this place. Usually Americans get in trouble for not knowing much about how the rest of the world lives, but I've discovered we're not the only ones guilty of this.

Mostly by the end they’d say things like, “Prof, we’ve all decided we want to go to high school in America!” Whoa kids, don’t get too excited, it’s not all great. Well, it seems I’m serving my role as a propagandist, though. Also, I may have hated high school at the time, but as of now, after spending a couple of weeks in Italian high school, I'm feeling more and more confident about putting my hypothetical future children through the American school system. It might sound silly, because I obviously can't be completely objective. But football players, cheerleaders, lockers, the G.S.A., prom –- my kids are getting all of it, and if they want to wear all black, pierce odd body parts, and smoke cigarettes behind the gym, at least they’ll have had all those other possibilities open to them, you know?

cei

I wrote this post sunday night, but due to never-ending internet difficulties, I was unable to post it until now. I thought my problems were over when Italo gave me his internet chiavetta, but perhaps unsurprisingly that worked for all of 1 day until I went over the time limit and fucked the whole thing up, so the program is refusing to work now. Anyway, with my intermittent wireless signal, I can finally post this:

I have this bad foreign-language habit where when someone says something to me that I don't hear or don't understand, instead of asking them to repeat it I'll just nod and smile or respond to what I guess they might have said. As you can probably imagine, this isn't really an effective communication strategy.

Sadly typical conversation with Maria Grazia (granted, she does speak super fast and with a Palermitan accent that i'm still not totally used to yet):

MG: "Why does it smell like burnt plastic in here?"
Me: "Yeah, sorry, I should remember to turn out the lights."
MG: "What? I said why does it smell like burnt plastic?"
Me: "Oh... yeah, that was me, I burnt some plastic."

And, not feeling like going through the trouble of explaining how I keep melting the handles of the same pot every night, I stop there. And then I think, damn, Caitlin, could you appear any more strange?

le sigh.

Today I met one of my teachers at CEI (my fancy-pants Jesuit school) for coffee in the historic center. Antonella teaches the 5th-years, so we're slogging through Napoleon with these guys with the goal of making it to the present day by exams in June. It's a pretty daunting task.

They have no interest at all in history, which I understand, since when you're 17 it's not always clear how things like the English Civil War and the Napoleonic Code are relevant to your life. On top of that, English is a struggle, so that's just one more excuse to tune it all out. Even their teachers struggle with English, don't know how to translate many of the terms, and mispronounce nearly everything. Also understandable: they were trained as history teachers and taught history in Italian until this year, when the school announced that from now on history would be taught in English. They apologize to me every day for how inadequate their English is. And if the teachers feel embarrassed about speaking English in front of me, you can imagine how the students feel.

Anyway, it's a struggle. And all the teachers have told me what a particularly difficult and unmotivated class this year's 5th-year students are. Apparently they've all told Antonella they're not interested in going to college, they don't understand why school is important, they don't care about their grades. It's surprising that the children of the wealthiest people in Palermo could feel this way -- or rather, perhaps, that they could get away with these kinds of attitudes at home.

But according to Antonella, many of the CEI parents don't pay any attention to what their kids do, and hardly even see their sons or daughters. and, Antonella was saying, a lot of the kids don't feel like they have to go to college because they've already got a job waiting for them at their father's company, or with a family friend, and so on. again, it seems baffling to me; college is so important to social prestige in the U.S. that it's hard to imagine that the most well-to-do families would let their kids not go.

Despite their lack of motivation, though, they're mostly very sweet kids. like Antonella said, it's not that they're not smart or capable. What I like about CEI is that despite how stressful and frustrating it often is to teach these kids, the teachers are nowhere near giving up on them. The dynamic of the school really is like a family dynamic. Even though the older kids rebel and push you away, you still care about them deeply and do whatever you can to reach them. Antonella's concerned about teaching them history, sure, but also about what kind of people they'll turn into.

Al cei, i ragazzi vengono molto seguiti, anche ad un livello spirituale, Josephine told me at orientation. The kids are very closely watched after, I guess you could say, even in a personal and spiritual sense. It sounds like one of those BS things you're supposed to say about a Catholic school, but from what I can tell, it's actually true at CEI.

la mia mamma italiana

Happy Sunday, everyone.

Well, I may not have friends in Palermo yet, but I do have a surrogate mother. I just got back from lunch at Paola's... she's the woman i talked about earlier, who'd like me to give her English lessons starting from scratch. She's the one who's a brand-new empty-nester, separated from her husband, with a daughter my age who's at school in Milan and a son who just started college in the U.S. She used to be a doctor, now she runs a vineyard on Vulcano, one of the Aeolian islands off the coast of Sicily. So basically she has no idea what to do with her time and is beside herself without her children to dote on.

You thought empty nest syndome was a problem in the U.S. You have no idea. These Italian moms go crazy when (if) their children leave home. They take mothering to a whole new level.

She's very sweet, though, and incredibly smart and interesting and funny. I'm happy to hang out with her, and also unable to resist her cooking. She's also very worldly and well-traveled, something I (probably unfairly, I admit) wouldn't expect from a palermitana. In fact, we were talking about that... she was kind of apologizing to me for how close-minded and provincial a lot of Sicilian girls are. How they're focused on men and marriage and society, they're un-curious, un-independent, un-adventurous. And I was telling her that I thought it was maybe more of a generational thing than a regional thing, because I've been surprised at how many American girls are a bit that way, too, even in places like Brown -- much more so than I think most foreigners realize, with their Rosie-the-Riveter-type images of American women. So we were talking a bit about that. She was telling me how lucky she feels to have had the parents she had, who let her go off and do her own thing, and reject Catholic school, and move to Paris by herself for a few months at age 17, despite the fact that this was a totally scandalous thing for a Sicilian family to let their daughter do in those days. And now, in her view, Sicilian girls of today wouldn't have the curiosity or bravery to even think of doing such a thing, if their families did let them.

Anyway, she's a cool woman. Plus she has the most beautiful house. I think I talked about it last time, this enormous villa in kind of a ring shape around a central courtyard, on a hilltop outside of Palermo with an awesome view of the city and the water and the mountains, and with a swimming pool. She says she has to sell it, because it's much too big for one person, and she doesn't think her children will ever come back to Palermo for the long-term. But it makes me sad to think of selling such a house, especially since her father built it. And despite its size, it's totally un-ostentatious. It's got a very lived-in feel, with the presence of children throughout -- for example, stickers all over the kitchen cupboards -- and wacky furnishings, like a rug with a big map of Afghanistan bordered by machine guns and helicopters. And, most importantly, books everywhere. Every room filled with books, lining the walls, stacked in piles on tables and desks, tucked into every nook and cranny. When I have my own house, it'll be covered with books just like that.

Probably we Americans get more attached to houses than they usually do here in Italy. Next time I go to Paola's I'll have to bring my camera and take tons of photos. Today I was kicking myself for not bringing it because it was raining heavily and then the sun came out and there was a huge, full rainbow over the city down below, with the ocean in the background. It was lovely. I know my parents would go wild over this house of hers. You guys have to see it, at least in pictures.

Plus, she told me she'd like to bring me along to this island vineyard of hers next time she goes, when the weather's good enough. I'm super excited about that; I'm sure it's a totally gorgeous place. It's two hours by car from Palermo plus an hour-long boat ride. She says she often leaves Friday afternoons and comes back Sunday evenings. So I'm hoping I'll get to go along one of these weekends.

I'm grateful for her hospitality, though it's not easy for me to accept that kind of generosity and motherly attention. I mean, I have a hard enough time letting my own mother do things for me, let alone other people's mothers. And other people's mothers who don't even know me. I have a deeply-ingrained American mentality of having to do everything on my own, to reject help or favors from people when I can't adequately repay them. But I try, I try to force myself to let people help me. And probably Italy is the ideal place to overcome such a mentality, since people are so insistent with their generosity and hospitality.

I think that's one of the things that draws me to Italy. It's a place that pushes me to be the exact opposite of the way I'm naturally inclined to be. I hate to be dependent on anybody, but here you kind of have to depend on other people. I sometimes have trouble letting people get close to me, and I tend to isolate myself when I feel stressed or out of my element, but here people force their way in, pull you in to their lives. I've tended to avoid interacting with total strangers in public, just out of habit, but here, everything is unpredictable and unreliable and you can't do anything without having to ask people for help or for directions or for information. And so, Italy pushes me and I push myself. And it's exhausting, mentally and physically, but it's like I know on some level that it will make me better in the end.

It's strange that I sit down at the computer with an idea of what I'm going to write and then I end up going in another direction entirely. Here I am going off on these tangents when there's still all this basic stuff I haven't talked about yet. Anyway, I'll post again soon. At least now I have reliable internet, thanks to Italo so generously making it his personal mission to address all the little discomforts I have here -- without my asking or even feeling comfortable accepting his help -- and giving me his chiavetta for internet access through the phone. (Plus he also found me a little screwdriver for my glasses. And now he has his eye on my shower.)

I don't know how on earth I'm hungry again after my big traditonal Italian lunch at Paola's and cannoli and then an afternoon coffee and pastry with one of my co-teachers, but lately I have been eating everything in sight. So, I'm off to have dinner and then I'll post again.

A presto!

rain.

just a couple of things.

a. twice today i went to take a shower and gave up, deciding it wasn't worth the hassle. literally the water comes out as a trickle. yesterday i washed my hair in the sink. more water pressure. really i might as well stand outside in the drizzle.

b. dog poop is really a public health hazard here. you can't take your eyes off the sidewalk if you hope to avoid it. i thought it was just a major issue in bologna, since people used to complain about it constantly there. but it's just as bad in palermo. seriously, doesn't one single person in palermo feel a duty to pick up after their dogs?

c. there's always extreme traffic in palermo. and it's a headache every time you need to cross the street. they don't stop for pedestrians unless forced. they will literally leave you standing at the crosswalk for hours if you let them. hell, i don't even know why they have crosswalks. in crossing the street, confidence is key. you have to just step out in front of traffic and give them a look like, "go ahead, i dare you to hit me." it's vital that you not hesitate, because if they sense doubt they will hit the gas and try to scare you back onto the sidewalk.

d. i realized i forgot my little screwdriver to tighten up my glasses with. i brought it last year when i came to italy.. it's really frustrating that i forgot it this time. it belongs to that rather large category of random things you absolutely can't find here. i'm still looking for index cards. and surprise surprise, it's impossible to find anything that resembles a map of america.

e. i felt my first stabs of homesickness today. maybe you could tell.

when i was in bologna, we talked about the various stages of being abroad. i remember hearing about it from older students before i left, and then my classmates' experiences seemed to confirm it. it was pretty universal: there's the initial period of novelty and excitement, when all of the little cultural differences are fun and charming. then comes the second stage, the homesickness stage, when all you can see are those little differences and they make you feel slightly alienated. you find yourself cataloguing all the little ways in which your new adopted culture is inferior. but once you get over that hump, you can move onto the third stage, where you take in the cultural differences and appreciate them, where you grow and learn and adapt and carry on with regular life -- or at least it feels like regular life, until it's over, and then you look back and realize every moment of it was precious and amazing.

so i've officially arrived at stage two. which means stage three will be here soon enough.

first day of school!

Word of Caution: It's A Long One...

So I just got back from my second day of school, or rather, my second first day. I’m teaching at two schools, one on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and the other on Tuesdays and Thursdays (I hope... but I might have to work Saturdays as well). It’s such a relief to have gotten those two first days out of the way. I was much more nervous beforehand than I was by the time I actually got inside the classroom. By then, it was like, oh yeah, high schoolers. I know these guys. They’re not so scary.

Both first days were pretty nervewracking, though, since I was meeting all of the teachers for the first time, like literally when they shoved me into the classroom, so I hadn’t been able to talk any of them about what they wanted from me or what I was supposed to do on the first day. At Galilei today, I didn’t even get a written schedule until the end of the day; each teacher would just lead me to the next one and we’d dive right in again.

At CEI I was pretty terrified, having never even been inside an Italian school before, so it was probably better that I only had to introduce myself and then spend the rest of the time observing. I’d prepared a lesson anyway – a simple exercise of having the students write down some information about themselves and some questions for me, and then go around sharing what they’d written. It was a good thing I’d done it though, since at Galilei I was expected to just walk in and give my lesson. But at both schools I had no clue what the teachers wanted me to do until we were both standing at the front of the classroom and they were explaining it to the students.

A little anxiety-provoking. I’m not a spontaneous person. I don’t really do improvisation.

The work itself is going to be a bit challenging, I think, more so than I was expecting. Given that I’m doing completely different things at each school and to a lesser extent, in each class, it’s like instead of having one regular job, I have 12 little jobs. Twelve. That’s how many different classes I’m slotted to teach (though it may change, and I’m hoping it will). Multiplied by 20 or so students per class, that’s 240 kids to get to know. Not ideal.

So, about my schools. According to various sources, they’re two of the best schools in Palermo. This year, the schools had to contribute financially to the ETA program, which means that basically only the wealthiest schools can participate. Which in a way is too bad, since their need is smaller than that of less wealthy schools, but I probably shouldn’t complain. One of them, CEI, is a private Jesuit-run school, which runs K-12. My tutor, Josephine, says it’s the best school in Palermo. Italo says it’s the school where the wealthiest families of Palermo send their kids. Same difference, right? Maybe, we’ll see.

The school itself is beautiful. Palermo is full of places like this, apparently, where you turn off of a busy street and come unexpectedly into an oasis of green, peaceful and calm and tucked away from the busy world outside. You can tell it’s quite a wealthy school, with perfectly manicured lawns and well-restored buildings.

So the education system in Italy is quite different, but suffice it to say that high school is 5 years long instead of 4, and slightly specialized. CEI contains a few different types of high school (at liceo classico there’s an emphasis on classics/humanities, at liceo scientifico they emphasize math and science..), but I’m teaching at the liceo europeo, where they focus on modern european languages. So far, though, it doesn’t seem as though the actual curriculum varies too much from one type of liceo to the next. But I may be wrong about that.

I’m assigned to all the 4th and 5th year students, of which there are two groups each. So 4 groups overall, and I’ll see them each twice a week. The catch is that I’m teaching European history, not English or American culture, which is what we’re supposed to do. I like history, obviously, but this is high school history. Meaning that you cover way too much ground to go into any meaningful depth about anything, you basically just cover the wars (and wars to me are the most boring part of history), and the main focus, at least in the 5th year, is preparing for the end-of-year exams that determine whether or not you graduate high school. And, in the classes that I observed, the main activity was having the students read a paragraph aloud and then explain it. Which meant picking out a couple of phrases and repeating them to the teacher, likely without really understanding them, since oh yeah, this history is in English, which means it’s even more boring and easier to tune out than a history class in their native language would be.

So, since the main things we’re supposed to do are help the kids practice conversation in English and talk about American culture, I’m still not quite sure how I’ll fit into these European history classes. One of them goes from the 1400s to the French revolution, and America wasn’t even around until the very end, so there’s no way to squeeze America in there. I don’t know.

The thing is that both of the school’s English teachers are native speakers (or rather, “native speakers,” since both of them kind of speak an Italianized version of English, though they were born and spent their early childhoods in the U.S.). Thus my presence would be superfluous in their classes, so I get history. The bizarre part is that the history textbook is in Italian, but the class is conducted in English, and I’m supposed to be pretend not to speak any Italian so the kids will force themselves to speak English with me. I don’t know how the kids are expected to believe that I know no Italian when the entire course is structured around an Italian text, but whatever, maybe they won’t think too much about it.

The other thing about pretending not to speak any Italian is that then, as I saw on my first day, it becomes a fantastically fun game for them to say obscene or funny things either to get me to betray that I understand, or to be able to laugh at the fact that I seemingly don’t know what they’re saying.

Anyway, on the plus side, I was worried that teaching the oldest students would be strange because I would seem too close to their age to be taken seriously. 22 is an absurdly young age for a teacher in Italy, since people often take until 25 to graduate from college and longer to become a teacher. I was surprised, though, at how young even the 5th-year students seemed. Possibly I seemed young to them, too, but I was relieved; in my opinion, given the way I look and the way I dress and the way I carry myself, I’m pretty easily distinguishable from them.

Also, a funny thing: both days, even though the teachers in most cases hadn’t previously mentioned anything about my arrival, it only took until 2nd period for everyone in school to know who I was. And I’d hear everyone whispering in the halls around me, “There’s that girl from San Francisco,” or, “There’s the American.”

My second school, then, is called Galileo Galilei, a liceo scientifico. It’s supposedly one of the best, if not the best, public school in Palermo, although I don’t know exactly how that works, as I’m not sure how they determine who goes to which school. We’ll find out. Anyway, Galilei is massive compared to CEI... about 2000 students. To give you an idea: at CEI, the liceo europeo has 2 groups in every year, A and B (so I teach 4A and 4B, and 5A and 5B). At Galilei it goes up to least 9, since one of my classes is 3I. Also, at Galilei, I’m supposed to come in two days a week but I have 4 different classes each day, or 8 different classes overall, which means I’d only be seeing each group once a week.

Plus, perhaps more importantly, that’s 8 different teachers to deal with. 8 teachers to satisfy, 8 different sets of expectations to worry about, 8 different teaching styles to work around.

At Galilei, it being a math and science school and society being the way it is, about two thirds of the students are boys to one third girls. At first I thought, uh oh, they’re going to be trouble. But then it turned out that the kids at Galilei were much quieter and more well-behaved, plus seemingly more motivated and attentive, than the kids at CEI. Maybe it’s that CEI sense of entitlement. That’s what Josephine would say.

Anyway, the CEI kids, in comparison, sort of seem to do what they like in class. They talk back, argue with the teacher about her instructions, spend half the lesson turned around in the seats chatting with the person behind them, get up and leave the room or just walk around it whenever they feel like it.

They emphasized at the orientation that standards of behavior in Italian classrooms aren’t the same as in American classrooms. Basically, the room is never completely quiet, and there’s usually a certain level of activity in the room, and students tend to bicker with the teacher or dispute what she says. I guess I had super-low expectations after what they said at orientation; I got the impression that classrooms were always slightly chaotic. Compared to what I expected, though, it wasn’t too bad.

And actually, I was impressed by their English abilities. And then all the teachers are always apologizing for the students’ poor language skills, even in front of them, which can’t do much for their self esteem. And of course they’re always reprimanding students for their mistakes. One of the teachers was even chastising her students, who weren’t making any mistakes, for not using more complex grammatical constructions or advanced-enough vocabulary when they spoke in class. And then she complains aloud that people don’t speak out enough. Boh.

Also, I found out that I have to teach American literature to the Galilei, and I’m supposed to select authors for them to read. I had a couple of ideas, but my tutor Francesca wanted me to think of a female writer, preferably from the 1950s-1970s and preferably someone who writes about Vietnam, protests, and civil rights, as apparently that’s what the kids are most interested in. So if you can think of someone who meets these qualifications, let me know.

All right, now I have to go review my Napoleon and my English Civil War history for tomorrow. Oh, did I tell you that the rowdy, boisterous ones I met on Monday at CEI were supposedly the good classes? The more advanced, better-behaved ones. So now I get to find out what the bad classes are like. Wish me luck! More soon.

vedi napoli e poi muori

recap of last week, part one: naplesssssss

last sunday afternoon i left for naples, to spend about two and a half days there before i had to be in rome for the ETA orientation. two and a half days, three Neapolitan pizzas. not a bad deal.

in retrospect, it may not have been a fabulous idea to combine a naples visit with my orientation, as by the time i got to rome i was already exhausted and then the intensity of orientation left me feeling pretty overwhelmed. i'd bought the plane tickets shortly after arriving in palermo, though, and at the time the strangeness and newness of it all made me long for somewhere familiar, somewhere where i already know people. and since naples is only an hour by train away from rome, i decided to stop off on the way.

actually, it did end up feeling fantastic to be in naples again. it surprised me how fantastic it felt. i really do love the city... its bustling atmosphere, its hugeness, its gritty beauty, its incredibly warm and friendly inhabitants.

i took a few pictures, since i never managed to take very many when i was there last summer. i mostly hung around piazza del plebiscito, which i've decided is my favorite place in naples and my favorite piazza in italy. it's hard to capture it in pictures, and i don't think i was very successful, but i hope you can get at least some sense of the atmosphere from these.

its most striking feature is its sheer enormity, which is hard to really absorb without being there. it's simply an enormous space, in the middle of a very big, dense, and crowded city. what's more, the density of the buildings surrounding it and the narrowness of the streets makes it so that you can't see the piazza until you stumble into it... like coming through a thick forest into a giant, sunny, unexpected clearing.

when they hold concerts in naples, they hold them here... and it holds several thousands of people. on one side is a church, san francesco di paola, or in english, i suppose, st. francis de paul. on two sides are massive government buildings, and i admit i'm not sure exactly what buildings they are, though i'll look it up. through the gaps there's a view of mount vesuvius and the city beneath it on one side, and on the other side the silver dome of the galleria umberto.

for me, it's impossible to be there without thinking about the time when it was first built, several centuries ago, and trying to imagine how people back then could even conceive of building a place of such enormity. how long it must have taken. what vision it would have required. if you look at paintings of naples from say, the 1700s, you always see the enormous piazza del plebiscito, seemingly taking up half of the city at its then-size. i could easily look up the details about when it was built and how long it took and all that, but honestly, for me, too many details ruin the thing. i like to be able to go and sit and absorb places like that on a gut level. anyway, here i am going on and on and you haven't even see the thing. without further ado, the photos:


view from the steps of the church:
and again, with a couple of newlyweds walking across the piazza from the right:

the dome is the galleria umberto:

the galleria with the bride and groom at the lower left:
the church, san francesco di paola:

vesuvius visible from the church steps:

close-up of the bride and groom. by the way, this is the second wedding ive seen take place here.
getting photographed (by their wedding photographer and me):
someone else getting photographed on the church steps:



old friends who spot each other across the piazza:


and then they hug, and then they chat. wow, i feel like a creepy paparazzo.







i also took some photos of the consulate, like a sketchball, so that more than a year later you all can see where i worked for a summer. they monitor people who take photos of the consulate, for security reasons, so i probably seemed like a terrorist, taking like a dozen photos of it from different angles so that i could get a decent-looking one. by the way, you probably can't tell but it's rather an imposing building, a massive white box, standing apart from all the other buildings, mostly restaurants and hotels, forming one continuous line along the waterfront. and with the carabinieri, the military police, surrounding it 24/7, it's pretty clear it's a special place.
then the view along the lungomare with castel dell'ovo at the end


Someone sunbathing on the rocks of the lungomare. We always used to laugh about the fact that neapolitans are desperate enough to come hang out on these rocks alongside a busy major street as if it were a beach. it looks kinda pretty in a photo, but believe me, it's pretty schifoso. disgusting, that is. you don't really want to be hanging out in a bathing suit down there. except that neapolitans do it. and then you laugh at them.


la pizza napoletana at da michele, regarded as possibly the best in naples:

i went by on tuesday afternoon and managed to say hi to a lot of the people i worked with during my internship, which was nice. honestly, i wasn't sure whether people would really remember me, but they all did, even the guards.

unfortunately, though, the one person i wanted to make sure to see while i was in naples was occupied all of monday and tuesday, the days i was planning on being in town. i wanted to leave first thing wednesday for rome, but i ended up taking a later train so i could go back wednesday morning and see manuele. so i arrived at the ministry of education in rome on wednesday 15 minutes late for orientation, sweaty and out of breath, and having been ripped off by a sketchy very non-legit taxi driver but having been too tired to put up a fight. still, it was worth getting to see the ever-adorable manuele for an hour.

even though he works in political and i interned in public affairs, he ended up becoming my best buddy at the consulate while i was there. on slow afternoons when i didn't have much to do i'd go and hang out in his office, and he'd chat with me, pausing to answer phone calls and reply to emails. he could go on forever and ever about italian politics and history and life in general. i'd ask him to walk me through the news stories of the day, and it was really helpful to have someone provide some background context for current events.

plus he's fun to listen to. and great for language practice. he never tries to talk to me in english, and he's given me my only prolonged exposure to a roman accent. he speaks italian super-quickly and smushes words together and skips over consonants, so it's challenging just to listen to him, and he does this hilarious thing where he'll say something quick and jumbled, take a long pause, and then go, "o no?" ("or not?"), and keep saying it even when you enthusiastically affirm what he said.

like, he'll go, "letsgodownstairsandgetsomecoffee,"
and i'll go, "si', ok, va bene,"
".... o no?"
"si, no, si si si si, coffee sounds good."
"alwaysgoodtohavecoffeeafterlunch, no?"
"si si si si si si si."
"... O NO?"
"si si si si."
"... O NO?"

and so on. it always makes me laugh. which means i'm basically always laughing because that's basically the way he talks continuously.

it's kinda hard to explain to someone not familiar with italian. or people who don't understand the sheer pleasure I get out of watching the different ways people use italian, and the ways people manipulate language in general.

also manuele, like many men of a certain age, loves to dispense his sage wisdom about life to younger people. okay, maybe young women especially tend to experience this. i love it though. i'm not sure why, but i absorb older people's life advice like a sponge, even when i don't completely buy what they're saying. like, manuele was horrified by the idea that i might want to work for the foreign service. this was no job, in his opinion, for a nice girl like me. i might not have to know yet what i wanted to do, but i had to start thinking about my priorities, didn't i? sure, i guess so, sure. ".... o no?!" sure, of course. "o no." yes, yes, definitely. i wanted to get married and have children, didn't i? yeah, sure. i didn't want to have a marry a foreigner, did i, like all these foreign service officers do? i wanted to marry a nice american boy, didn't i? i didn't want to have to move my children around all the time, did i? i wanted to be close to my family and among my compatriots, didn't i?

uh, well actually, i wouldn't mind marrying a foreigner, i told him. he looked a little perplexed by that but sighed and shook his head like, those americans, i don't get them sometimes. i appreciated the genuine concern. manuele's full of wisdom like that. no, actually, most of it is quite legit. he's a very sweet guy and child-like in a lot of ways, very ADD and always teasing and all over the place, bouncing off the walls, jumping around from subject to subject, from very serious and solemn one second to lighthearted and teasing the next. i wish you could meet him. i wish you could meet all these people all i come across, cause it's so hard to do them justice in just a paragraph or two!

also great: the taxi driver who took me to the airport from the consulate on wednesday. he was a perfect example of why i love neapolitans. first of all, he asked me how to teach him to say "devo fare il giro," in english, which would be something like "i have to circle around," as in around the block and around the roundabout. you know, to avoid traffic, or if the street is one-way in the wrong direction. but it was confusing, because in english we don't really have an equivalent catch-all phrase, and he wanted to translate it word for word, which obviously doesn't work. i tried to explain, but i'm afraid it was too confusing for him to remember. anyway. then he asked me if i was a native italian speaker or a native english speaker, and then of course i liked him immediately. maybe he was just trying to flatter me.

like all neapolitans, he was thrilled to find out that i had lived in naples, and what's more, that i'd liked it. he said he'd been stationed in palermo and didn't like it, not that that's surprising. but then he was explaining why, and he said, "we merdionali (southerners) are un po' chiusi ( a little close-minded, in this case). neapolitans," he says, "are like this --" he cups his hands to the side of his eyes to block out his peripheral vision. "but palermitani," he says, "are like this --" he covers his eyes with his hands completely. (by the way, i should mention he's not driving during this explanation... we're stuck in traffic. haha.) i assume he meant that palermitans are piu' arretrati: a bit more backwards, close-minded, traditional.

it's funny, because palermitani would say the exact same thing about napoletani. in fact, maria grazia was just telling me so the other day, talking about how primitive and old-fashioned neapolitans are, how the girls get married so young and have babies and stay at home, and the parents are so strict with their children, and so on. and, she even said, "the strange thing is, they think of us that way."

i wanted to tell both of them: you know, you guys should stop hating on each other. the only sure thing, in my mind, is that southerners seem to be determined to be as biased against each other as northerners are against them. they should really unite. have some southern pride. that's their big problem.

the taxi driver did admit, though: both groups of people, underneath it all, have a good heart. and from what i've seen so far, i agree. although i have to say that in my experience napoletani are more open, friendlier, less guarded. totally unguarded, actually. palermitani, though very cordial and very nice, aren't so eager to be friends.

example of how crazy nice neapolitans are: i asked this taxi driver (the same one) a couple of times if he was sure we'd make on time to the train station. the first time he seemed too blase' to be very convincing. the second time i asked, he was like, "i gave you my word, didn't i? i told you i'd get you there on time, so now i have to. i'll carry you there on my shoulders if i need to" -- traffic --- "but no matter what, i won't let you miss that train." and then, as proof that he really meant it, he said: "you know how neapolitans are."

i had to smile. and i thought, yes, signor tassista, i do know how neapolitans are. they're pretty freaking delightful.

anyway, more to come soon... i still have to talk all about rome and then it's my first day of school tomorrow! wish me luck.