apartments, round 2

confession: i haven't been to school yet this week. so i was sick, yes, but it was only a cold, and since you need a massive fever to be considered sick enough to miss school in italy (in fact they don't even say 'so-and-so is sick,' they say 'ha la febbre,' or so-and-so has a fever..), i exaggerated it a little bit.

i mean, it was a fairly bad cold, but still i felt guilty when antonella showed up at my door to pick up the exams i graded for her over the weekend, with an equally bad if not worse cold herself, but full of anxiousness and concern for me and my fever. oops. i fully expect to be struck down by a bolt of lightning any minute now.

the truth was, as they say constantly here in italy, che non ce la facevo ad andare a scuola questa settimana. non ce la faccio is a conveniently vague expression that can mean anything from i can't do it (there's some serious obstacle in my way) to i'm not up to it or i don't feel like it (for no other reason than my passing fancy). and, especially if you're like me and like to pretend to be immune to social awkwardness in a foreign language, you don't really need to follow it up with any specifying explanation.

anyway, as you could probably tell from my last post, i've been in kind of a funk lately, and i took my cold as an excuse to become essentially comatose for the past five days. i crawled out of bed all of two times, once to attend my first spanish class and see an apartment directly across the street from the high school, and the second time to see another apartment. both of the apartment viewings, i'm ashamed to say, were entirely coordinated by paola and italo, who've taken over the reins of my apartment search after i sort of ran out of steam.

also i discovered, unfortunately for my work ethic, that on kindle there are all these books available for free that can be downloaded within seconds to my ipod touch... so i've spent the last five days sleeping, subsisting on soup and tea and these dreadfully good little tea cookies i've been consuming in obscene quantities, and reading no less than four victorian novels. sending occasionally text messages to my co-teachers that while i was getting better and there was no need for concern, i wasn't quite well enough yet to go to school.

but it's done, don't worry. with the end of my last wilkie collins novel my coma is officially over. this morning i actually took a shower (which i haven't been doing much of, both out of laziness and fear of getting reprimanded by my roommates for excessive consumption of hot water) and blow-dried my hair and everything, and i'm waiting for paola to pick me up to go see another apartment, and tomorrow i'll go to school, and by next week i'll have the first of a series of black-history-month-themed lessons planned out to a T. i even get to interview an italian applicant for brown, which is absurdly exciting.

anyway, the apartment hunt is coming to an end, i think, only it's not clear yet what kind of an end it'll be. basically i should get out of here before i have to pay another month's rent, on the 1st, and since paola and italo are both going to be around this weekend, paola's plan is to take the place by storm saturday morning, and with all three of us, plus paola's suv, to have my stuff completely moved in a couple of hours. then paola plans on "handling" my landlady over the phone, which promises to be dramatic.

only that i don't yet know where i'm going. by now it's come down to two places, the last two i've seen, which are the only acceptable possibilities i've come across. but i don't know which i ought to choose -- they both have their pluses and minuses -- and any confidence i may have once had in my apartment-choosing abilities has been completely shattered by my experience with this place, which i was substantially excited about in september.

one of the two is right next door to the school where i work on tuesdays and thursdays, galilei, and as i mentioned, right across the street from the other high school where i'm taking my spanish class. it's also even further to the north than where i am now, which means further from the city center, and deeper into this largely residential area. there'd be two roommates there, of whom i met one, and she seemed very quiet, low-key, a little aloof maybe. the other one is apparently hardly ever there. they're both gone on weekends. the apartment is plenty big, fifth floor, lots of storage space.

and then the other one, in via costantino nigra, is practically next door to my other school, CEI, where i work monday/wednesday/friday. it's also across the street from the apartment of paola's sister, whom i met when we went to see it. it's a bit of a hike to my other school, but it's much closer to the city center, a more lively area, close to the port. there'd be 7 people (including me), of whom i only met two: the one who showed us the house, very energetic and thorough, and an english girl. the available room is pretty small, and one of the walls is essentially a piece of cardboard that divides it from the next room, the english girl's. basically the same situation i have now, where it's a former living room converted into two bedrooms, and you can hear absolutely everything that goes on in the next room. only now i don't have to worry about what i say on skype, etc., since i know alessia doesn't understand me. whereas in this other room the girl would understand me. not that i'm divulging state secrets in my skype conversations or anything. i don't know. it's by no means a big place; the kitchen is teeny, there's no living room.

but in both of these places there's both a washing machine and heating, which makes them infinitely better than my current place. so i don't know, it's a tough call. in both places i'm next door to one school and far from the other. one's next to a mountain (the galilei one); from the other you can practically see the water. i guess it comes down to whether i want to live with two people or six people. in bologna we were in six; same with the red house last year at brown. in both cases i loved coming home to a place where there was sure to be somebody at home, something going on, someone making tea, wanting to chat. but in both situations they were mostly, if not all, americans. and another consequence of this stint in my current place is that my confidence in my odds of making friends with sicilian girls has also been shattered. it'd be unfair to sicilian girls to imagine that my experience with these two is any reflection on the population as a whole, i know, but i can't help but feel a little pessimistic.

paola also told me, as a way of being comforting, that her mother came to palermo from veneto (the region venice is in, up north) at 19 or 20, the spitting image of grace kelly, and never her whole life managed to make any female sicilian friends. the implication being that they were all jealous of her, as an outsider, and a pretty one. now, clearly i'm no grace kelly, and paola was just flattering me. even if i accept the comparison, it's a reassuring excuse, but it's also pretty depressing. anyway, who knows.

so, feedback! i'd like some, as always. which apartment should i go for, if either? no, i'm pretty set on leaving this one, so it's between the two. give me your thoughts.

update

hi everyone,

i know it's been a while since i updated. most of you know, i think, that it's because i've been a little preoccupied lately with looking for a new apartment.

basically i came back from my christmas break at home all re-energized and ready to make sort of a fresh start here in palermo. and then within a week i found myself feeling strangely low, totally discouraged. and it took me a bit to realize that it was because of my housing situation.

i mentioned here earlier that before the holidays we'd had a couple of disagreements. but ever since i got back it's been pretty unpleasant. i've made such an effort to appease them... for example, i basically haven't used my space heater in the two and a half weeks i've been back, even if it means i'm forced to huddle up in my bed with three pairs of socks on anytime i'm in my apartment. (forget your sunny visions of southern italy, winter is SO cold here!)

i'm not used to having outright conflicts with people. in fact, this one's kind off caught me off guard, i don't even know how to respond to it. but anyway, i've decided that it's probably best that i move. it's just not worth it to have to deal with roommate tensions after all the stress of being at school all day, planning lessons, dealing with rowdy kids, the last thing i need is to come home to more stress. to an environment where i'm constantly walking on eggshells around my roommates.

and if this were my real life, so to speak, if i were here for the next three or four or five years, i'd probably look at it differently. but i've only got six months left before my official grant period is over (though i may in italy awhile longer), and i want them to be the best six months (or more) they can possibly be. this is a rare opportunity for me; as much as i'd like to, i don't know if i'll ever have the opportunity to live abroad for an extended period again. so i want to make the most of it. if i think i could be happier with a comfier home atmosphere and friendlier roommates, shouldn't i go for it?

last friday morning, alessia blew up at me for something silly that i don't even recall, and i started thinking, maybe i should look for other places. and by saturday, i told my friend italo and we found a bunch of listings, and by monday we'd seen like four places. it just sort of evolved on its own. only that none of them was quite right. well, one of them was great, but a polish girl had been by to see it just before me and they gave her first dibs, and she ended up taking it. as for the others... one was great except it had no internet, another had a slightly overbearing landlady, another had one too many girls (plus live-in boyfriends) sharing one bathroom. i feel a bit like goldilocks, except i'm still looking for the one that's just right. i figure if i'm going to go through all the trouble of moving, it should be for a place that's going to be a significant improvement. which means a washing machine, for sure. and preferably heating.

combing through apartment listings is a pain, and really time-consuming. for every 50 announcements i look at, there'll be maybe 2 or 3 that meet my requirements, and by the time i call, i find out that the room's already been taken, or that the landlord wants a yearlong commitment, or is weirded out by the fact that i'm foreign (just my supposition, not that they've ever actually told me that).

so that's been sucking up a lot of my time, time that i'd rather be spending working on lessons. though if i find something better than this place, i suppose it'll be worth it. by now i don't care what kind of toads i live with, so long as there's a washing machine. washing clothes by hand is officially my least favorite chore of all time...

okay, well this was meant to be a couple of sentences but clearly i'm incapable of writing brief blog posts! so much for not getting into it. anyway, i'll let you know how it all works out.

buonanotte!

i'm baaaack!

hello everyone,

happy 2010! after two weeks at home for christmas (about a week and a half of which I was miserably sick, but it was still nice), i got back to palermo on wednesday night. i had a hell of a time getting here with the excessive amount of stuff i decided to bring back with me from the states... it involved having to re-pack my suitcases twice in two different airports, pay overweight luggage fees in both instances anyway, leaving one of my bags at italo's in naples to be retrieved god-knows-when, and getting off the plane in palermo with a backpack bursting at the seams, a purse so full it wouldn't close, and a plastic bag with the overflow. but anyway, i, and most of my stuff, eventually made it back in one piece. i was so relieved to see paola waiting for me when i walked out of baggage claim... i didn't have a working cell phone so i couldn't find out in advance whether or not she was going to be there. but there she was, and she was right that it would have been a bitch to have to haggle with a taxi driver in the condition i was in after that epic journey.

(apparently taxi drivers in palermo always try to rip you off, like most taxi drivers in naples, so taking a cab means being prepared to argue. this seems to me totally unnecessary: if they were just required to have meters, and use them, like in the rest of the civilized world, it would be a non-issue. but i guess it's just one of those nonsensical inconveniences that make italy so charming. anyway, i digress.)

i was supposed to go to school on thursday, the kids' first day back after the holidays, which conclude in italy with the epiphany on the 6th -- but i was utterly wrecked by the time i got home, around 5:30 pm, and i just wasn't going to be able to handle getting up at 5:30 am to go do my perky thing for four straight classes. so i e-mailed my advisor francesca and told her so, and naturally she didn't get the e-mail until after school the next day (wtf, why do italians not seem to check their e-mail every 30 seconds like americans do?!?!). anyway, she said it was fine, and i hope it actually was, but i think it probably was because in italian schools everybody's used to never knowing what to expect and just rolling with the punches. a little frustrating sometimes, but it comes in handy when i feel like taking a day off, which, you know, happens.

so friday was my first day back at school, with the weekend afterwards to soften the blow, thank god. no, actually, it passed without incident. the kids welcomed me back with their usual charmingly obnoxious enthusiasm. in 4B i gave an impromptu lecture on the american colonial period, only possible because half of the class was absent, and during which at any given moment only about 2 out of the 12 of them refrained from conversation long enough to catch a few words.

in 5B, they now insist on speaking to me only in italian, and do their best to get a response out of me in italian too, which sort of goes against the point of my being there, but the trade-off is that ever since they got me to admit i could speak italian, they've been ten times more tranquil and cooperative. i think they were majorly offended that, as they perceived it, we had been lying to them about this no-italian business -- though i saved myself by saying the school had made it a rule that i not use any italian, or admit to understanding any, in class. which is essentially true. so now they accept that in front of my co-teacher they must attempt to use english or not talk to me at all (it's usually the latter); though i always get to class a few minutes before she does, and during this time they're tripping over each other trying to chatter away to me in italian, and are delighted to hear any response from me in italian.

(italians in general are usually delighted to hear a foreigner speak italian, as it's a complete novelty to them; while in english we're used to hearing our language in all sorts of accents and all degrees of brokenness, to them italian isn't a language that foreigners bother to learn, and they only ever hear it spoken by natives.)

anyway, where was i? oh yes. jet-lag. everyone knows this already, but it's a real drag. i'm still completely exhausted, and regardless of when i go to bed, i'm up like a shot first thing in the morning. this morning, saturday, i woke up at 6 am, and despite my best efforts, i couldn't manage to sleep in any further. on the plus side, i'd forgotten how much i really do love mornings, though they're preferable without the side dish of exhaustion. especially saturdays. saturday mornings, i think, are the best time in palermo, but this might only be because i've hardly been conscious for any. still, palermo's quite lovely before all the traffic starts and the swarms of people take to the streets. sundays are too quiet, desolate, with all the stores closed and absolutely everybody inside for sunday lunch and then the soccer game. but saturdays are nice, because they start out quiet: things are open, and the shopkeepers stand in their doorways, and gradually people trickle out of their homes and you see the city come to life.

the trouble is how best to savor my rare saturday mornings of consciousness. there's a big open-air market near the city center that i've been meaning to go and photograph; but as it runs every morning but sunday, and i work every morning during the week, saturday's the only time i could go. this morning it was a bit cloudy, off and on, so i decided not to go, but hopefully i'll make it soon and bring back photos to share with you all.

instead i did this crazy little exercise routine my friend jen forwarded me, and i googled the historical accuracy of the pride and prejudice movie adaptations, which is something i've always wondered about (with not altogether satisfying results, however; you know how you can never believe stuff you read on the internet), and caught up on my friend gabby's blog, and then went out and took advantage of the saldi (sales) and did some shopping.

unfortunately for my dad's wallet (though fortunately for my well-being), i did a ton of shopping while i was home for christmas so more sales are sort of the last thing i need. but in italy sales take place only twice a year, by law: at the beginning of january, and at the beginning of july. and since for various reasons i was never able to hit up the saldi during my previous stay in italy, i feel sort of a duty to participate now.. you know, it may be my last chance.

shopping in italy is not my favorite thing to do, actually, since frankly as chic as italians manage to look, in their own way, theirs is mostly just not my style. italian fashion also seems to be a weird disparity of two extremes: real italian fashion, the kind we ooh and ahh over in the states, is super expensive; and then the clothing that real people can actually afford to buy tends to be overpriced and of poor quality. just not well-made. and tacky. think lots of sequins and rhinestones.

anyway, though, one does manage to find some things, if one looks hard enough. i always set out to buy practical things, like in this case gloves and boots and jeans, and seem to end up with dresses: this morning i bought three, and nothing else. what can i say, i just love dresses. maybe all style-conscious people of either sex have that one thing they tend to gravitate towards. i know for a lot of girls, it's shoes or bags, and for guys i'm not sure, but there must be things. for me, it's dresses. you can never have too many, and there's such a range, from casual to slightly dressy to cocktail to formal; there are all sorts of different occasions that call for just a particular kind; and it's the one item of clothing, it seems to me, of which there are styles to flatter every body type.

okay, this is all probably mind-numbing detail, so forgive me. i never end up writing what i set out to write. what i wanted to mention, like five paragraphs ago, was this:

one. i realized on my first real day back (the 7th), that this was the exact date two years ago that i arrived in bologna and set eyes on italy for the first time. (i do tend to remember significant dates, like everybody i've ever known's birthday, and the like.) i remember how exciting it was, after having studied the language and learned the history and devoured the movies for so long, to finally be there. and how novel it all was, in the beginning, every little detail of it, from the little cars to the little elevators to the little old men that clump together in piazzas and cafes for their vigorous discussions. there's little about italy that's still novel to me anymore. which in some ways is nice: coming back to palermo i actually felt like i was coming home, to a place i knew and felt comfortable in, whereas bologna in the beginning felt like a different planet. but i also kind of miss that feeling of novelty, of those everyday exciting little discoveries.

i think i appreciate it all less now. after all, of these past two years since i arrived in bologna, i've spent just about twelve months of them in italy, so as much time in this country as out of it. maybe when i've been away for a while it'll all seem precious again. when i was in the airport in san francisco waiting to board, there was an italian family sitting next to me, naturally being louder than everybody else. and hearing italian again after not hearing it for two weeks, i was startled by how beautiful it sounded to me, and i realized that when i was here in palermo it had stopped sounding beautiful -- the way it always sounded before in the movies and from my teachers and even through my time in bologna and naples -- and had started sounding just normal, even abrasive sometimes. maybe it's a good thing, maybe it means i'm fluent enough now that when i hear it, i hear the words instead of the sounds. but it's also kind of sad, isn't it? maybe it means i need a new language to learn.

two. while i was home, a few people who'd been following my blog and/or occasional (okay, excessive) facebook-status updates said things to me to the effect of, "well, would you say you're having a good time over there?" with that note of optimistic concern in their voices and the sympathetically cocked heads. as if they were saying, "i really want to be reassured that you're having the time of your life over there but i'm not at all convinced." and i, surprised, quickly answered, "oh definitely, of course i am..." and i am, but apparently my blog postings and facebook updates don't give that impression, so i'm afraid i've been whining and complaining entirely too much.

so, to those of you who start to feel optimistically concerned sometimes, be assured: this is my version of having a wonderful time. i've been known to complain a bit sometimes (usually in private), and i think maybe everyone has a tendency to share more or to reach out to people when feeling discouraged, or overwhelmed, or frustrated. those contented moments don't tend to get recorded as much. but really -- and being at home reinforced this for me -- i do get homesick, and i miss things about the U.S., but i have no desire to live at home right now. or anywhere else in the states for that matter, just now. no, there's really no place i'd rather be, not even any other place in italy, at the moment. i was sorry to leave home, and my friends and family and dogs, after this too-short holiday break, but once i was back in palermo i was perfectly happy to be here.

almost everything about this experience has been challenging to some degree, but that's the way it ought to be. i'm young, and i want things to be slightly difficult. it builds character, right? or so i've heard. no, in all seriousness, even i've experienced enough to have learned that nothing meaningful is ever easy. so even though not every day is all sunshine and daisies, i'm having a wonderful experience.

and that's more or less what i wanted to say. so i'm out for now.

until soon,

C


P.S.: A couple of people have told me they've tried to leave comments and haven't been able to... well, i've just poked around in the settings and apparently the default was that only registered users, i.e. people with blogs on this site, could post comments. anyway, now i've changed it so that anyone should be able to; just select 'anonymous' under 'comment as' and leave your name as part of that comment. so let me know if that works and sorry about taking so long to figure that out.