Tigre Contro Tigre

Tonight was quite fun. Andrea is leaving tomorrow for a month in Rome to work with his horses, and so Flavia (Gardenia's daughter) made dinner for all of us. Her house is a few blocks away and has art covering almost every surface. The dinner was very yummy and consisted of too much good food that was piled onto my plate for me - grilled veggies, polenta, tagliatelle al ragu', beef and chicken stew, and baguette, and a local specialty with chocolate and almonds for desert. An exciting thing was that I could understand almost everything that was said over the few hours, which was great. Flavia's husband was difficult to understand, as is Giorgio (my landlord/Gardenia's husband), but I think that's because the former is from southern Italy and the latter... is old with bad teeth, a former-smoker's voice, and some use of dialect. I'm not sure what started it, maybe the fact that we had been exchanging tongue-twisters (and no, I don't remember any yet, but will!), but Giorgio decided as a joke at one point to start repeating "tigre contro tigre" over and over as fast as he could - one of those "say this ten times fast" kind of things. Which he continued to do on and off for at least the next ten minutes among everybody joking around and joining in the joke with occasional things about tigers. This part I didn't catch everything of, but it was still amusing, and good for getting everybody laughing.

Something that did seem a little odd, although it could have just been coincidence, was that the men all sat on one end of the table, and the women/girls on the other, and Flavia's husband (I didn't even catch his name) seemed nice but said almost nothing to me, or to the females in general. When the puppy and Aurora were running around for a bit, too, they were just ignored and allowed to run in this crowded, art-filled living room almost knocking things over, and they didn't even know if Angelica was going to make it home for dinner or not - a different family dynamic than what I'm used to, at least.

Aurora, the 11-year old granddaughter, is quite amusing, and seems to really like me, as she gets really excited every time I see her. I've met Angelica, the 18 year old (last year of highschool) granddaughter a little bit before, but saw her more this evening. She seems really nice, too, but we didn't get to talk much, since she came home late from a long dance practice and was tired/ still had homework to do. Gardenia and Flavia want me to do weekly english conversations with Angelica for practice for pocketmoney, a proposition with which I have no problem. I've already occasionally helped Aurora with her English and French homework when she's been over here; it's very interesting for me to see how the English is taught (it's British, of course, although they speak with semi-american/semi-british accents), as well as the French. Angelica said that sometime we could hang out and she could introduce me to some other italians, which was good to hear. I don't have a problem with getting to know people who have a few years difference from me, as evidenced by the range of people whom I call my friends. Also, their family has a 3 month old puppy, Arturo, called Artu (said like R2, which always amuses me... which in turn created more such in-my-head entertainment since they didn't know to what I was refering when I mentioned that R2-D2 is the robot in Star Wars in explanation for my amusement...). Artu is SUPER hyper, and has a bit of a biting problem as he was bred for hunting, and hasn't gotten any proper training yet. Hopefully he'll be trained somewhat before getting big and actually being able to do more than just little scratches with his teeth.

Gardenia has almost never asked me questions about my family, home, school, anything - which is really weird, since it's not like she's been unfriendly or distant or anything. Tonight she did a bit, though, almost mostly as follow-ups to things Flavia or Andrea were talking to me about. But hey, conversation is always good. She also said she would be glad to teach me how to cook some traditional food, which was fantastic news! That is something I was really glad to hear her response about. Yay! I'm going to have to pursue this, to make sure that I don't let the opportunity slip by. We had been talking about the changing situation in Italy with dialects versus the "standard" Italian language, and Gardenia expressed the sentiment that although it's very important to be educated and learn the standard, that most of the generation of even her children Flavia and Dario not only don't learn the dialects (they're considered a sign of lower class or provinciality), but don't learn many traditional recipes and skills, and how it's a confusing and saddening situation for the loss of culture.

Gardenia has one of the accents that is more understandable to me (thankfully, since I talk to her more than others) since she's well educated, but I think she also knows the dialect of her mother. Andrea has been teaching me different ways of saying "let's go" in various dialects, which is fun. This came out of my comment that I have trouble understanding old people I run into in town, probably because they use some dialect, and teenagers, because they use some dialect, a lot of slang, and just plain don't speak "proper" Italian with good enunciation (no surprise, it's the same in any language, I guess...).

As a record for myself, I'm going to list the ones I remember of what he told me on here. So, "andiamo cene" would be the imperative, and "cene andiamo?" the interoggative, for "let's go" and "shall we go?", respectively. Napolitano: Iammo scenne. Genovese: Scianemmo. Piemontese/Milanese: Anduma. Ferrarese: Andem. There were some more that I forget... And some other things, although I don't remember which dialects they are from: ca vulite fa = cosa volete fare (what do you want to do?), c'ammo a fa = cosa vogliamo fare (what do we want to do?), insci = cosi (this way), te vuri minga = io non ti voglio (I don't want you).

On one hand, I'm glad that I can talk to people usually well enough without having to learn the dialects, unlike in Arabic, but on the other hand, they are really interesting, especially since they can vary between towns that are only 10 minutes apart by car, sometimes, and are often unintelligible if you only have my level of experience with the standard. The more unintelligible ones I've been told are not above, since I couldn't even remember them yet. I'm regularly amazed at the diversity of how the same basic phrases transform in the dialects. I'm taking a class on linguistics and dialects of Italian, which looks like it might be kind of hard, since I'm not a native speaker and don't have anywhere near the appropriately wide reference vocabulary nor a sense of a dialect. However, it also looks very intriguing, the professor is friendly and unlike Leah's other linguistics prof. didn't freak out at me for being a foreigner in a linguistics class, and taking this will likely help my understanding of the structure, development and vocabularly of Italian = I'm sticking with it. I've always loved linguistics, but have never gotten a chance to study it formally or learn a huge amount about it, so this should be a good opportunity. I can already tell that my previous experience with French is going to be a help, as so far she's given a number of examples in class comparing the development of the various romance languages to the original latin. This will certainly be interesting once we actually get into Italian dialects, for the above knowledge reasons, for bad and very good. So, I'm happy about the start of that course.

I can tell that my comprehension skills have jumped hugely in the last two weeks, which is fantastic, as it means less stress in class. I can understand waaay more than I can say, and I still make grammatical mistakes (agreement, subjunctive - especially in hypothetical clauses...), but less so than before, even if most of the others in the Midd program are better than I at speaking. But I realized something - I am one of the very few (or maybe the only one?) in the group who neither has 3 years of experience, went to language school for level 2 or 3, or lived in the Italian house. Which was something of a relief to notice, because it makes a lot of sense that everyone else has, duh, a lot more time-experience speaking in Italian, even the others who only have 1 year during the year and 2nd year during Summer School, like Leah. I of course want to keep improving, but at least I can accept being behind them somewhat, having realized this. As long as I can do alright on my finals and make significant progress while here, I'll be happy, given that I won't be able to get fluent after only 5 months here.

I can tell that a communal, delicious meal, as well as getting to talk to Will a little earlier today and seeing some extended family last weekend, in Venice for dinner on Tuesday, and tomorrow in Florence is all doing a lot for my mood. It's very easy to feel isolated here, even with Leah here and me getting to know the other girls in the program a little better. Hence me being so homesick last week. I am so glad that this week has gone less stressfully, between being around other people more and having less trouble with my classes. I like alone time, but also need good conversations and regular interaction with other people, as being here is making polished and shiningly clear. Affection and more hugs would be preferable, but you can't have everything all the time, can you? More social interaction, though, should become a higher priority.

Geography class feels like a joke sometimes, so I'm thinking of finding another class that starts in the second half of the term and doing that instead. We'll see. On the good side, I can understand almost everything that the professor says, despite a lot of words I've never heard before (they're similar enough to things I have heard or to English). On the not so good side, the extended-storytime style of giving examples without going into much depth means that we take a very long time to cover relatively simple material, the reasons for some examples or points aren't clearly delineated from the examples (admittedly, this could be partly due to my language level, but I don't think it is completely), and the concepts we are going over are mainly common sense and many of which we actually talked about in middle school or in high school history side-notes - which is highly uncool in my view. The teacher is friendly, and often pretty funny, and it's nice to have one class in which I can understand most things and just enjoy learning new words and noticing cultural differences. Maybe the increased ease for me when I eventually can find the textbook and have to study for the exam, which would therefore facilitate studying for the other 4 exams, would be worth not getting as much out of this one class? What do you guys think? I had been looking forward to getting to do a geography class this fall, but this is the only one in the Faculta' di Lettere (where we are encouraged to take our classes), and so it's not like I even have another choice of a geography class. It's sometimes interesting, but conceptually so easy it feels bizarre, actually... Any opinions?

Also, there might be a 28 year old doctor coming to live in the room connected to mine, a fact about which I am not so happy. He hasn't confirmed yet, and so I'm hoping he will decide it's too expensive to come here 3 days a week while having another apartment in Bologna. It's the whole man-potentially-having-access-to-my-room and sharing my spaces thing that makes me uncomfortable - and there are some uneasy things one has to get over when in another country, like certain customs or food or whatever, but this is something that I think falls into the make-Emmons-uncomfortable category for common sense and intuition reasons that would apply in any country. Yes, I should be able to lock the door between our rooms, and yes, he's a doctor, so he probably won't be here much. But. But.

When Gardenia asked me yesterday morning if it was ok to show him the other room, I had unfortunately just gotten back from 3 hours of traveling from the early morning (I had stayed with Gina in Sacile for the night, since after dinner in Venice it was too late to come back to Ferrara), and hadn't had much sleep the night before - and was not very good at thinking about what she was saying or responding. So I didn't decide to talk to her until late last night, at which point I was also not very good at expressing myself. However, I wouldn't know how to explain quite why this makes me uncomfortable in English, in a polite way to someone who is my landlady first and my host second.

I guess, in some ways I have some common sense reasons for it (or at least I think I do). If someone I trusted completely could emotionally hurt me and betray my trust more deeply than I imagined possible (at least from that person), as happened this summer, why should I trust a strange man to not be a creep? Also, one of the things Gardenia said, amid assurances that he seems trustworthy and nice and that she wouldn't put me in harm's way, was that he is from a respectable family, is well-educated, knows her son, has a girlfriend in Bologna, and would have his reputation as a doctor (in the hospital across the street) at stake if he did anything inappropriate.

La Signora Gardenia has obviously never seen Law and Order.

I, on the other hand, have seen waaay too many, in addition to hearing real life stories, to believe that those qualities would ensure him being actually respectable. She didn't want me to be uncomfortable, but thought she couldn't just be rude and call him up and say "sorry, I told you that the signorina was ok with this, but she isn't actually, so you can't have the room," but said that if there was anything wrong, that I should come to talk to her immediately. I understand this, and I was hesitant to talk to her in the first place about it, because they're an old couple living on a fixed income in this worsening economy, and it would be some extra money for them. But I don't have a good feeling about this, and am glad that I at least said something. Maybe I'm just over paranoid and have become more distrusting recently. But I'm still really hoping that he will decide to not live here.

So... as it is very late, I have an early class tomorrow morning and this is already another long post, I will be ending here for the evening. I need to get around to posting about my various daytrips, as well as responding to my backlog of emails, sometime soon. And doing that little thing called laundry. And writing an essay for the Scrittura/Ferrarese Literature class. Sooooo... lots to do in the near future, but that's ok. It's not like I have been able to even find my assigned textbooks to be able to start reading them, but for one. But it'll all get done somehow or other, preferabily sometime soon.

Well, I guess I'd say that in general I'm doing well, but of course unforeseen problems come up all the time, and the only one of those that is currently bothering me is this mystery man. Oh, and just so people know where I'm going, I'm going to be in Florence tomorrow afternoon through Saturday night, with the relatives again on the last leg of their trip in Italy, will have my Italian cell phone with me, and will be staying here:

Hostel: Plus Florence Address: Via S Caterina D'Alessandria15 ,Florence 50129, Italy Telephone: +390554628934 Email: reservations@plusflorence.com Website: http://www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/italy/florence/30145/

Ok, to bed with me. Be well, all. I know some of you are finishing up midterms before heading back home for fall break, or have already done so: thus, friends, good night and good luck. And have safe travels and enjoyable days.