On Families and Foreigners

Hmm, I just realized that blogspot’s clock thinks I’m still on the East coast, although it automatically changed my language to Italian. Huh. Again, please look at the link to my photo-gallery on flickr and the request for recipes at the beginning of the post called “Arrival in Italy.” Food suggestions would be fantastic. Grazie.

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Here, they call me Elisabet(h). Or Elisabetta, depending on how Italian their English sounds. It’s really very strange for me, since I have never been called by my first full name for very long at all in my entire life. I’m sure you are asking why, therefore, has my name changed here? It seems to be because Gardenia noticed that the name associated with my email address, from when we were arranging for me to rent her room, began with Elisabeth, regardless of how I signed my emails, or the comment I made about how I’m usually not called that. So here I am, having been told about to several people in Gardenia’s family who looked confused when I introduced myself as Emmons, until I said “o Elisabetta” in the fatigue of my first day, just to avoid too much hassle. Despite the fact that I have been called Elisabetta by several of the Italian professors at Midd, and I picked it for my name on this blog, it still feels strange. It is yet one more thing that makes being here feel somewhat surreal, like this is a life completely apart from that in the United States. This sense of walking in a dreamland of beautiful words and Renaissance houses became confused even further today, by the thankfully safe arrival of Leah (who, for those of you who don’t know, is one of my friends from Middlebury who is also studying here for the fall), bringing a piece of home (well, my Middlebury home) in the form of a friend. We talked for hours in Italian, walking around and eventually getting dinner; it was reassuring to see someone familiar, a good friend, but it also reminded me of how much we are simply visitors to this place for 5 months, as well as it mixing up these worlds. However, I’m definitely glad she’s here.

I’m also glad for the ability to communicate so quickly with you all across the ocean through the internet. Receiving some responses to my pictures and posts from yesterday, and general messages this week was very reassuring, and made me feel loved. Thanks, guys.

I have already been experiencing what the Italian definition of family means: lots of interaction. Beyond Gardenia, Giorgio (whom I still have hardly seen), and Andrea, I have met Flavia, the daughter of Gardenia and Giorgio, and one of her daughters, Aurora. Aurora is 11, while her other sister, gone for a few days with some friends before the start of her last (5th, I think) year of highschool, is Angelica and is almost 19. On Wednesday, I was roused from my leasurely lunch of cold pizza to go shopping and to begin the search for a cellphone for me. This of course had to include all the above mentioned family members, for some unknown reason, meaning my introduction to Flavia and Aurora. Flavia is an artist, although because when I asked her about it she replied along the lines of “Well, sort of…” I’m not sure if she does a lot of art but has another job, or is just humble about it. Aurora is very sweet, and helped me do some shopping, giving me recommendations on cheese and prosciutto and translating fruit juices for me. I think I know now a little of how the Japanese teenagers who came to stay with us when I was younger felt about hanging out with a kid who wasn’t even a teenager yet but was interested in their culture. I like talking with her, but it’s an odd feeling to be at such a lower language level than someone barely more than half my age. I haven’t spent much time with her, and haven’t met her sister yet, but hopefully we’ll get along alright. They’ve showed up at the house several times in the last few days, so I assume I’ll have plenty of time to get to know them all better.

None of the stores we looked in had a cellphone at a decent price, so eventually we all went our separate ways. Flavia first offered to bring me to the ocean sometime soon if it works for her schedule, which would be awesome. If it doesn’t, I’ll just find some other way. Boh, as they say in italiano. We were at her house for something yesterday, just a few blocks away from here, after which Flavia took me home on her scooter! Pretty fun, but I expect it would have been scarier if we were actually going on the main road for more than a block, given the speed some of those go around town. At some point Wednesday afternoon, I ended up going exploring and taking most of the pictures that I put up on flickr yesterday. It was fun to do so, and helped me to feel a little more aware of where it is I have landed for 5 months. After so much sitting on the way here, and not knowing much about this place, I’ve been kind of restive to explore. As I mentioned before, that first afternoon I wandered down to the city wall and back up around the castle for a few hours, just kind of being amazed by the buildings and sounds and smells and the fact that I’m actually in Italy. I took another long walk yesterday, and then today before meeting up with Leah, and then with her, slowly expanding the area through which I’ve been and gradually getting past the fact of being here towards noticing more details about my surroundings: the different apparent shopping districts near here (today we found one with a bunch of fruit/vegetable vendors!), the way the bikes mostly look really old fashioned, even the new ones, the way even the Italians’ casual clothes like t-shirts have a higher standard of fashionable-ness than we do in the US, the languages different kinds of stores pick to have for their multi-lingual options, the way kids pile onto bike handles and the bike-riders shoulders (with no helmets in sight whatsoever) 2 or 3 at a time, the way people ignore each other absolutely and completely as they walk through the streets like true city-people, but greet many of the shopkeepers with such affection as to make you think you’re in a small town where everyone knows everyone and everyone knows what everyone is doing. The sidewalks are often either surprisingly wide or ridiculously skinny, and some roads cobbled with serious rocks (not bricks, not neat stones - and a great way to break an ankle), and some new and neatly paved. I’ve seen a very small handfull of rollerbladers (makes me miss mine) and even a girl riding a bike while wearing blades, beyond the scores of kids and businessmen alike on bikes. A few more trees do exist here than I had previously noticed, of course, but on the other side of the castle plaza, where I found a large park near Leah’s hostel and some fountains in plazas (piazze) scattered among the winding streets.

Being surrounded by, well, Italians, is a little odd sometimes. In Japan, I stood out not so much like a sore thumb, but rather a broken leg in a cast. But being surrounded by Japanese people, walking streets with buildings that looked absolutely nothing like those in America, and not having even a clue as to how to pronounce most of the signs, I very quickly got used to the idea of feeling a foreigner. Here it’s a half-way zone, for a number of reasons (at least so far, with my mere 3.5 days of experience). Yes, the architecture looks neither like Mountain Lakes nor Middlebury, but the style’s not as far out of my experience as was Japan. Due to the large amount of Italians/Italian-Americans in New Jersey and New York – heck, in the US in general – plus those in my family, most of the people around here look like they could very well be American at my first impulse. The main difference (besides the fact that they aren’t American, and speak Italian) is the lack of other kinds of people. I have now seen a grand total of 6 Asians – one touristy family speaking Chinese, and some women in the restaurant we went to tonight speaking Japanese, which quite confused me for a bit - plus maybe about 10 blacks, and 3 noticeable Arabs. And that’s it. Bizarro-land compared to the human stew of the US – especially in comparison with NYC, where one can find easily any color skin or facial or body shape imaginable, and even some unimaginable. I know it’s to be expected that there be many Italian-looking people here, but it still is going to take some getting used to.

Some of the Italians, like little Aurora, are blond like me, and don’t look overly Italian or German or anything clearly ethnic in any direction beyond Caucasian. And some of them do speak English – with an American accent, mind you, which makes the first group of non-Americans I have ever met who learn American and not British. And unlike in Japan, I don’t get weird looks for appearing a foreigner right off the bat. Which is nice, but leads to momentary confused looks every time I open my mouth. Speaking of which, my Italian is already improving, thankfully, but sentences with mixes of subjunctive and conditional and hypotheticals regularly make me stumble, much as always. My agreement (gender and number) skills often fail, too, which serves to make me very self-conscious. But it’s getting better, and as long as I can communicate and deal with classes without freaking out, once they finally start in a week+, I won’t worry too much. Until the Oral Exams begin, that is. But that’s in another 4 months, so I’m mostly not thinking about that yet.

Another interesting thing about languages here: there’s ARABIC.
Not much in the city center at all, but apparently most of the signs in the hospital are done in Italian and Arabic, and I’ve already seen several official signs and advertisements, mostly outside the city center, with an Arabic translation. Several of them with ancient Egyptian style drawings, which were pretty funny. It made me really happy to be able to actually figure out the meaning of the Arabic ads I saw, before reading the Italian equivalents. In the more touristy parts of the city center, French and German, Spanish and a bit of Portugeuse, and the occasional English, abound in expected European style. But the Arabic is apparently used for the more practical and official signs due to a large immigrant population here, living somewhere out of sight, I suppose in the poorer outskirts of the city – I am told it is the largest language group here after native Italian-speakers. I was aware that there are a multitude of Arab and African immigrants in Southern Italy, but was rather surprised to hear about how many are here. When I asked Gardenia about if there was any prejudice, her first response was no, but then admitted that many people are very angry about how many jobs they take and about the influx of the Muslim culture. It sounds like they’re kind of like the Mexican/ S. American poor in the US. I’m quite curious to find out more, but haven’t had occasion to ask or see anything else yet concerning the immigrants.

So anyway. As I was saying, there’s a weird half-way feeling of being in a very different culture, whose differences I can barely see yet, but also being in one superficially very close to my own. This came up when I finally acquired a cellphone – store just like our electronic megastores, but the beaurocratic mess that I had to go through to buy a SIM card included needing proper documentation for some unknown reason – which of course I didn’t have with me. The cell phone finally works, but it took two whole days for them to process my purchase (mostly because of the documentation problems) and turn it on. I will also need to acquire a “codice fiscale” in order to make my rent contract, an official government number given to all citizens (so I’m not quite sure how I go about getting one) upon birth that goes back to all the problems with terrorism that Italy has had in the last few decades. These things and a myriad of little other confusing customs and expectations constantly remind me of my foreign-ness everytime I start to figure one thing out, or feel comfortable doing something. And that’s not even to mention the way I forget that we’re all speaking in Italian and how English already sounds out of place in public, except for the way the language just runs into wavy little dark red (and other colors, too, occasionally) fuzzy streamers in the air when I don’t pay attention or can’t understand what people say.

In short, I’m already having something of a culture shock. I’m quite eager for the months here, but simultaneously nervous for the homesickness that will eventually hit, and for classes in the more immediate timeframe. I’m still waiting for the day I’ll wake up and feel like I’m awake, preferably without the noisy cars and ambulances racing by outside. Or the day when I actually get a good night’s sleep, and can wake up without being surprised to be in Italy.

Ma sono in Italia, e intendo di essere, davvero e in fondo, qui.