Paul and I have decided that a great analogy for my experience here so far is, well, starting your life all over again. OK. Probably a bit of an obvious analogy but let me take you through it....
First you start in the womb (the aeroplane) where it's warm, the air is filtered, you're crammed in but generally pretty comfortable, food just turns up in front of you, and the sights and sounds of the outside world are buffered. You are completely dependent on your carrier....ain't no getting out until they let you!
And then all of sudden, you are getting ushered out!! You don't really know where you're going, you just go with the flow and head towards the light. Through the gates (ahem) and you are confronted with all these people who are excited to see you.....but the light is too bright, it's too noisy, it's cold and nothing looks familar - apart of course from your dependent other who is strangely familiar! All you want to do is sleep and eat at strange times of the day whilst your dependent other is intent on introducing you to everything and everyone.
For the first week, all you can do is make noises - not even intelligible words, and you can't understand anything going on around you. You are completely reliant on your "dependent other" to navigate your way around.
In the second week, you move into two-word utterances.....telegraphic speech if you will. Then before your know it....
THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!
Excitement. Fear. Packing your backpack the night before. Separation Anxiety as your dependent other leaves you at the door and you have to try to communicate all your needs to strangers. And then you meet your teacher!! And you're instantly in love!! Funny, considerate, SPEAKS SLOWLY, young and handsome. He will be your saviour! He will be your guide in this crazy world! He will bring structure and meaning! Instant bonding! Hurrah!!!
Only, he's not your teacher afterall. He was just your teacher for the orienation. Separation anxiety all over again. New teacher scary and strict. And what about all those "friends" I made in the orientation? Now I have to start all over again. Will I be accepted?
Day 2. Meet teacher number two who will teach half of your classes. In love again! Like a primary school teacher, sweet, pretty, wears funky clothes and SPEAKS SLOWLY!! Ahhhhhh. Better. Exaggerates her speech and gestures...."Vaaaaa beeeeene?? Okaaaay? D'accorrrrrdo?". And you're covering all those basic subjects - family, clothes, types of work, animals etc. No dictionaries allowed.
What's really frustrating is knowing that your teachers and the whole class can speak English (these Europeans speak English better than me - not hard, I know) but we can only hope to understand the meanings of Italian words through our teachers' explanations in Italian, gestures and pictures.
Anyway - I'm in week 3 at the moment. I imagine I've learnt a lot but everyday I'm confronted with how much I still don't understand. One of the students gave up trying to conjugate a question with the correct tense, subjects and articles today in our class (strict teacher), so she just said "biscotto" instead. It was hilarious because it wasn't relevant at all to what we were discussing. I feel like that often too. i.e. "Here's a word I know in Italian - you figure out the rest cos 'biscotto' is all I have to offer right now - leave me alone".
After school I often go home, have lunch and watch my favourite show "Ciao Principessa". Yes, it's a children's show....but it's at my level! And she has a dog called "Scruuuf". I like Scruff. Of course, Scruff doesn't speak.
Okaaaaaaaaaaaay. Vaaaaa beeeeene. Only one more week of school left and then I enter the real world. I'll keep you posted!
Ali
Wednesday 23 January 2008
Sunday 20 January 2008
Yesterday Mirano, Today Murano, Tomorrow Merano?
Hey folks,
Just a quick update to let you all know what we've been up to. After Capod'anno we were chilling out back in Venice before I had to go back to work and Ali started her intensive italian course. We took a daytrip up to the ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo, which was very nicely covered with snow that made the whole place pretty, but slippy. Ali has fallen in love with snowflakes and the amazing way that they actually look like what they're meant to look like on tv - all 120ยบ angles , inverted hexagons and the like. We went up a cable car to one of the ski lodges, crazy fashions on display and brave parenting - people sending their youngest children down olympic slalom runs with nonchalance - now we know why italy is suffering negative population growth!
Ali's halfway through her intensive italian course, which she can tell you about in another blog, and I'm busy at work, preparing lectures and constructing a cleanlab for the rest of my project. We're planning an Australia day celebration and maybe going to visit Ali's rellies in the UK next month.
In the meantime, Carnevale is coming up real soon - more or less from the last weekend in January to the first weekend in February - Cassius will be playing the opening party! I was hoping to write a little bit about the Naples rubbish hoo-ha and the University of Rome's Physics Department cancelling a visit by the pope, but it's just too complicated, and as I mentioned, we're off to Murano soon. Oh, yeah, the post title refers to three different places here in the northeast of italy, all exactly the same title except for one vowel, and painfully easy to confuse...yesterday we went to the town on the mainland called Mirano, where Ali went boot-shopping, today we're going to the Island of Murano here in the Venetian laguna (famous for it's glassmakers being kicked off Venice for starting too many fires) and Merano is a city up in the Alps on the way to Switzerland, which we're not planning to visit tomorrow, by the way.
OK, so now the blog is up-to-date and the website was updated yesterday, so drop us a line and let us know what you're all up to...
Ciao, Paul.
Just a quick update to let you all know what we've been up to. After Capod'anno we were chilling out back in Venice before I had to go back to work and Ali started her intensive italian course. We took a daytrip up to the ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo, which was very nicely covered with snow that made the whole place pretty, but slippy. Ali has fallen in love with snowflakes and the amazing way that they actually look like what they're meant to look like on tv - all 120ยบ angles , inverted hexagons and the like. We went up a cable car to one of the ski lodges, crazy fashions on display and brave parenting - people sending their youngest children down olympic slalom runs with nonchalance - now we know why italy is suffering negative population growth!
Ali's halfway through her intensive italian course, which she can tell you about in another blog, and I'm busy at work, preparing lectures and constructing a cleanlab for the rest of my project. We're planning an Australia day celebration and maybe going to visit Ali's rellies in the UK next month.
In the meantime, Carnevale is coming up real soon - more or less from the last weekend in January to the first weekend in February - Cassius will be playing the opening party! I was hoping to write a little bit about the Naples rubbish hoo-ha and the University of Rome's Physics Department cancelling a visit by the pope, but it's just too complicated, and as I mentioned, we're off to Murano soon. Oh, yeah, the post title refers to three different places here in the northeast of italy, all exactly the same title except for one vowel, and painfully easy to confuse...yesterday we went to the town on the mainland called Mirano, where Ali went boot-shopping, today we're going to the Island of Murano here in the Venetian laguna (famous for it's glassmakers being kicked off Venice for starting too many fires) and Merano is a city up in the Alps on the way to Switzerland, which we're not planning to visit tomorrow, by the way.
OK, so now the blog is up-to-date and the website was updated yesterday, so drop us a line and let us know what you're all up to...
Ciao, Paul.
Saturday 5 January 2008
Cappo D'anno
Buon Anno Nuovo!
After the usual pre-New Year's Eve shifting, moving, negotiating, haggling and bargaining, Paul and I decided to take-up an offer from one of his Venetian friends (Marco) to hang-out with his crew in Trieste. Trieste is a pretty coastal town near the border of Slovenia along the north-east coast of Italy and was formally a part of Austria until WW1. Vodaphone was first to notify us of our proximity to Slovenia by incorporating us into their Slovenian network.....so welcoming!
We went a day earlier than the rest of the crew to do some sight-seeing, taking-in Miramar Castle, Roman ruins and a quaint afternoon tea in one of the oldest cafes in the town operating since the early 1800's, "Cafe degli Specchi" (cafe of the mirrors).
We then met up with Marco and his friends....two of whom live in Trieste - Marta and her partner Lorenzo. After witnessing a nasty scooter accident in the street (I wanted to offer assistance but realised that communicating first aid needs through mime would not have been useful), we spent a few hours in Marta's apartment before heading off into the mountains to a restaurant specialising in "food from the forest".....i.e. deer, snails, frogs, goats etc. My italian was under a lot of pressure but luckily one of Marco's friends, Daniele could communicate at my level....his main topics of conversation seemed to revolve around when we would be eating, how much, when sweets would be served and when we would sleep.....my kind of Italian.
So I tried some frog legs....tasted like chicken. Trieds some snails....tasted like garlic butter... chicken. Ahhhh but all the food was truly amazing! I think about 8 courses in total. One of Marco's friends was very convincing in lying to me that we would then all have to do a second round of all 8 courses as it is a New Year's Eve tradition. I was freaking out.
From there, things got interesting. After welcoming in the new year with champagne and double the usual amount of kisses, everyone disappeared outside. Now I'm all for firework displays, and call me wuss if you will, but the idea of drunk unsupervised people randomly letting off explosions in a carpark makes me a little uneasy. The display was of course spectacular (after I stopped screaming, laughing and running around the carpark looking for cover......hmmnn. Pick the tourist).
Then, the cultural experience got even better. Next stage, drunken dancing and singing to popular Italian songs, English pop songs circa 1989, ABBA, and Eurotrash (categories by no means mutually exclusive). We were all mesmerised by one man in particular....imagine what Bono would have looked like in the 1980's but as a 40 year old wearing a lemon yellow waistcoat and doing drunk semi-provactive dancing. He looked a bit like a mattador with no bull - but you get the idea.
After "Il Mattador" initiated a few trains through the restaurant and kitchen, enter stereotypical ridiculously 'hot' and sassy Italian woman. I might blush if I describe in too much detail what she looked like....but let's just say she was wearing a dress that I'm pretty sure was meant to be a jumper. Then the music went too classy and instrumental and she along with everyone else left the dancefloor. When ABBA was cranked again, they all returned and "Il Mattador" decided to impress a new female entrant with his quasi Cossack dancing......but managed to impress himself more on the tiles when he subsequently put a hole in the floor. Ahhh it was brilliant.
So after much laughter, some Grappa (had to try it but probably won't again) and a debate with Daniele as to whether one of the Italian pop songs uses the same melody as "Let's get Physical" (I think I offended him), my first Italian New Year's Eve was over....and definitely one to be remembered.
After the usual pre-New Year's Eve shifting, moving, negotiating, haggling and bargaining, Paul and I decided to take-up an offer from one of his Venetian friends (Marco) to hang-out with his crew in Trieste. Trieste is a pretty coastal town near the border of Slovenia along the north-east coast of Italy and was formally a part of Austria until WW1. Vodaphone was first to notify us of our proximity to Slovenia by incorporating us into their Slovenian network.....so welcoming!
We went a day earlier than the rest of the crew to do some sight-seeing, taking-in Miramar Castle, Roman ruins and a quaint afternoon tea in one of the oldest cafes in the town operating since the early 1800's, "Cafe degli Specchi" (cafe of the mirrors).
We then met up with Marco and his friends....two of whom live in Trieste - Marta and her partner Lorenzo. After witnessing a nasty scooter accident in the street (I wanted to offer assistance but realised that communicating first aid needs through mime would not have been useful), we spent a few hours in Marta's apartment before heading off into the mountains to a restaurant specialising in "food from the forest".....i.e. deer, snails, frogs, goats etc. My italian was under a lot of pressure but luckily one of Marco's friends, Daniele could communicate at my level....his main topics of conversation seemed to revolve around when we would be eating, how much, when sweets would be served and when we would sleep.....my kind of Italian.
So I tried some frog legs....tasted like chicken. Trieds some snails....tasted like garlic butter... chicken. Ahhhh but all the food was truly amazing! I think about 8 courses in total. One of Marco's friends was very convincing in lying to me that we would then all have to do a second round of all 8 courses as it is a New Year's Eve tradition. I was freaking out.
From there, things got interesting. After welcoming in the new year with champagne and double the usual amount of kisses, everyone disappeared outside. Now I'm all for firework displays, and call me wuss if you will, but the idea of drunk unsupervised people randomly letting off explosions in a carpark makes me a little uneasy. The display was of course spectacular (after I stopped screaming, laughing and running around the carpark looking for cover......hmmnn. Pick the tourist).
Then, the cultural experience got even better. Next stage, drunken dancing and singing to popular Italian songs, English pop songs circa 1989, ABBA, and Eurotrash (categories by no means mutually exclusive). We were all mesmerised by one man in particular....imagine what Bono would have looked like in the 1980's but as a 40 year old wearing a lemon yellow waistcoat and doing drunk semi-provactive dancing. He looked a bit like a mattador with no bull - but you get the idea.
After "Il Mattador" initiated a few trains through the restaurant and kitchen, enter stereotypical ridiculously 'hot' and sassy Italian woman. I might blush if I describe in too much detail what she looked like....but let's just say she was wearing a dress that I'm pretty sure was meant to be a jumper. Then the music went too classy and instrumental and she along with everyone else left the dancefloor. When ABBA was cranked again, they all returned and "Il Mattador" decided to impress a new female entrant with his quasi Cossack dancing......but managed to impress himself more on the tiles when he subsequently put a hole in the floor. Ahhh it was brilliant.
So after much laughter, some Grappa (had to try it but probably won't again) and a debate with Daniele as to whether one of the Italian pop songs uses the same melody as "Let's get Physical" (I think I offended him), my first Italian New Year's Eve was over....and definitely one to be remembered.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
