new home sweet home

Notes to self:

1. Remember to walk around the apartment in flip flops. Italians get really weirded out when you walk around barefoot. They think it's un-hygenic. It seriously bothers them.

2. Buy a bathrobe. Italians get similarly weirded out when you walk from the bathroom to your bedroom in a towel. I don't really see much of a difference, but it's not worth protesting. These are the kinds of little things that make the difference between seeming like an alien from outer space and seeming like a nice friendly foreigner. Secondo me, at least.

So, exciting news! I write this from my new bedroom in my new apartment. Via Sciuti 55, Apt. 220, 90144 Palermo, Italy. In case you were curious.

At first I was really nervous about taking the leap and signing a lease. But now I feel a tremendous sense of relief about being done with the apartment hunt. It was seriously stressful. I think I made it much worse than it had to be with my worry that my new roommates would be my only opportunity to make friends in Palermo, and thus I felt a ton of pressure about the apartment decision. But I finally got myself to relax a little bit about it. I needed to get a little bit of perspective. My apartment is not going to be the end-all be-all of my Palermo experience... sure, it would be nice to have roommates who could become friends and introduce me to their larger social networks in town. However, I'm going to survive regardless. I can survive just about anything. And somehow, sometime within the next 9 months, I'm fairly certain I can manage to make a friend or two in Palermo.

Anyway, my apartment! Though I was seriously overwhelmed by the options and kept going over and over the pros and cons of each, at the end of the day this one felt like the only sensible decision to make. It's quite a large apartment, in a very nice building with a law office on the ground floor. It's in an upscale shopping district, a very safe area, with people coming and going all the time. It's within walking distance to both my schools. The room itself is huge -- it may be twice the size of my bedroom at home in Novato. And the landlady is a petite, well-dressed, silver-haired woman, called Signora Di Piazza. We don't need to know her first name, because we are polite and will only ever call her Signora. In brief, she's legit. She's extremely attentive; apparently she insisted on meeting the parents of the other girls who live here. And she's very concerned about things like repairs -- and above all, about the idea that one of us will have a boyfriend and the others will get huffy about it. In fact, she talks about this incessantly. It's okay, Signora, none of us have boyfriends, and even if we did, it would be fine. I've never seen so much relief on a person's face as on hers when I told her that my friend wasn't my boyfriend, and that in any case he would soon be moving to Naples. The Signora lit up like a Christmas tree.

It was difficult to turn down that place with the 5 younger girls, the art students... that was the kind of thing I originally had in mind, a place full of girls that would always be mildly chaotic, where people would be coming and going at all hours. But in the end, it didn't make sense to live so far away from my schools, when public transportation here is apparently so unreliable. The general dinginess of the apartment... and the slight sketchiness of the neighborhood (charmingly rustic, but sketchy nonetheless)... but I guess I'm not a student anymore. And in a strange city, I suppose it's better to err on the side of safety and fancy shoe stores.

I do, however, have roommates: two of them, with the possibility of a third at some point, since there's an extra room still available. I've only met one so far, Maria Grazia. The other one doesn't arrive until tomorrow -- the university's school year hasn't started yet, and in fact they don't know exactly when it will start (typical, and much more amusing now that I don't have to deal with the university system myself). Anyway, Maria Grazia is 29, though she seems much younger, and short, with very curly blond hair. She's doing a sort of masters in modern languages at the University. And she's from Palermo itself, which is unusual since a palermitano going to school here would typically live at home. Apparently, her mom recently moved to Trapani.

So Grazia has a thick Palermitan accent, and she talks super quickly, which for now is a little stressful but is essentially exciting to me, since I know it'll ultimately be an asset. Now I know for sure I'll get comfortable with the accent, and I'll pick up some Palermitan slang and expressions. I may have been able to anyway, but this way it'll happen much more quickly than it would have otherwise. I'd rather jump right off into the deep end straight away. Maybe that's just the kind of girl I am. Or maybe it only applies to languages.

Anyway, Grazia is really sweet and full of energy and very neat, it seems. She's offered herself as kind of a living encyclopedia of all things Palermo, which is fantastic and I'm sure I'll take advantage of her throughout the time I'm here. It's a little strange not to have met the other girl or to know anything about her, not even her name... but somehow I don't feel all that worried about it. Maybe I have faith in the Signora.

I have some photos to post of a little excursion to an area on the outskirts of Palermo... but as I still have to go through them, I'll put those in the next post.

Oh, and there's something else you should probably know. I'm going by Cate here, since it's a name Italians are familiar with, whereas Caitlin is truly impossible for them to pronounce. Rather than watch them struggle with like I did in Bologna and Naples, I'm simplifying things. Plus, I've always kinda wanted to switch things up a bit with my name. Cate is a pretty sophisticated name, I think. Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Kate Hepburn. All great and very sophisticated actresses. Kate Spade, Jon & Kate Plus 8... oh wait, forget that last one. Actually, my mom and several of my friends back home already call me Cate, so it's not too drastic, but different enough to still be a little exciting.

Until soon.

Caitlin. or Cate.

A dopo.