Ciao Venezia... Mi già manchi!

(For those of you who need a timeline, this was written on Thursday, so adjust references to days to that)

This week has been an incredible roller coaster.  Class was a plateau, but the new girls in class are really nice and seem fun.  I am sad that I really didn’t get a lot of time with them.  I think if we would have overlapped more we would have had a lot of fun together.  Then Sanchit, Laura, Slava, and I went to the beach yesterday.  I swear I put on sunscreen!  I am still the color of the red peppers in the store that were bigger than my hand.  I had my mom email me different home remedies to relieve sunburn pain because I am pretty sure my trip to the grocery store to buy aloe was a bust.  I bought something that says aloe, but it is not forking correctly.  On another note though, after spending so much time trying to learn Italian and speaking in more beautiful flow of words, saying the phrase “american aloe” has become hilarious to Laura and I.  I do not know how to say it without sounding utterly ridiculous.

Now I am laying in my bed on a Thursday night (trying not to move so I don’t feel pain from this sunburn) thinking about how tomorrow is my last day in Venice after a month of calling this place my home.  There were times when I wanted to cry, and one time when I did, but for the most part I am thinking about how I have fallen in love with this city.  Who would have guessed that when I touched the Stone Heart of Venice the true love I would have found would have actually been for the city as a whole.  Even in the heat when I am covered in more sweat than skin (nice visual, isn’t it?  Yep, disgusting.) I just look around and am struck by the beauty of the buildings and canals and the people.  As much as I am looking forward to the other places we are going on this trip and seeing more people, I am also so excited to come back after Florence and spend more time here.

This is in large part because of the other thing I am thinking about, and that is that I am a terrible tourist when I don’t have a plan.  I have been the epitome of “Oh, I totally want to do this before I leave”, and then next thing you know it is time to go and I have done maybe 1/4th of my list.  Things I wanted to do that I didn’t:
-go to the Biennale
-take pictures in San Marco (I admit to not doing this because A. It was so friggin’ hot, B. I hate going to San Marco because it takes so long, and C. It was always crowded)
-go back to Murano and see the actual glass making
-take a tour of the mad house on that island I can never remember the name of
-take a tour of the Synagogue by my house
-get more familiar with the ghetto in general
-take the vaparetto for a full trip around the island to take pictures-once during the day and once at night

This is just a fraction of what I wanted to do, but that being said I also want to point out that I do not feel like I wasted time here.  Maybe a day or two I could have done more, especially in the first week before it got hot.  However, considering the main reason for coming to Venice was to learn the language I do feel like it was a success.  In no way am I fluent, and I wouldn’t even say that I learned a ton more in these classes than I already knew before coming here, but I am definitely more comfortable in speaking and I am starting to think faster.  I already knew a lot of grammar before I came, but I can’t hold a conversation with locales when they speak at a normal speed.  I have met a lot of people who are so patient though and willing to help.  The people who are willing to talk are always so interested to know where I am from and how I like the city.  They are also very encouraging saying that I speak very well and I don’t sound like an American when I pronounce words.

I felt so proud of myself when I actually understood Laura’s roommate Davide for the first time the other night.  Not when he was talking to me of course.  You know when you are in class and go round robin with questions to prepare for a quiz or as a game and you know the answers to all the ones asked except for yours…it was like that.  Anyway, when he asked me a question I actually laughed and just rambled back a long phrase of sounds to demonstrate that that was all I heard.  On try 3 and some help with Laura I got it.  But later in the night I actually could follow some of his dialog.  He was nice though and very patient.  He was trying to learn English so he would use slang phrases like “Cool” all the time.  And then I thought I had figured out my own phrase to use all the time “Do what you want” but he corrected it for me so that it actually makes sense (“Fai quello che vuoi“).

I can’t believe I have been here for a month.  I kept saying that because I feel like it will sink in, but it’s not.  I don’t want to leave this apartment, to Rita, or Jane (another woman who has been staying here for this last week and whom I adore).  When we come back we are going to stay where Laura has been living now, which is fine but I will miss this area.  I will have to refigure out how to get home because I still don’t even know the way to the vaparetto there.

Ok enough dawdling, it is time to pack up my stuff and move on to the next adventure.  I do not look forward to lugging this suitcase around again.  I am going to try to practice some meditation techniques and focus on the fact that we will be staying in each of our locations for at least a week for the most part.  Oommmmmmm WeAreGoingToBeInFlorenceForAWeek Oommmmmm IDoNotHaveToCarry100PoundsIn100DegreeWeather Oommmmmm. That was me doing a buddhist monk chant, just in case that didn’t translate.

An Ice Sculpture of My Dog In An Air Conditioned Room Would Be Lovely

Ok, so I had my first breakdown of the trip the other day.  Luckily Rita helped me through.  Basically, on Monday I got demoted from level 2 to level 1 and in Marcie ears, I heard “You failed.  You’re a failing faily failer.”  Keep in mind that Sanchit and Slava also got moved with me, so I wasn’t even alone, I had my new best friends with me.  But after talking it out and calming down, I decided I needed to make the best of it.  I needed to give it a try without just being pissed all the time.  This lasted all of two hours, but after spending a class doing colors and clothes for the nth time, I was over it again.  Today (Friday) was really good though, and I actually learned a lot of new words but I still feel like I want to make a list of the things I miss about being in the States.

1. Not being 1,000 degrees always.  Here’s the thing… I actually hate the heat. I hate being hot.  I really didn’t think this through when I was like “Oh yea, I should go to Italy this summer.”  It’s only supposed to get hotter, too.  Luckily it has not been completely awful in the shade, and there is even usually some wind.  However, I still feel like Frosty the Snowman trying to walk through the desert at times.  The other day I actually had lunch in a place that had A/C and I didn’t even realize it until I was almost done eating.  That’s how close it was set to the temperature outside.  Also, being in Venice and surrounded by water, it is so humid.  I will never take my pool for granted again. I would give anything for a quick dip most days.

2. I miss my dog.  When I was in college, I would say this too. I can always call home and talk to my family, but I waited 17 years to get a dog and I can’t talk to her (Believe me, I tried in college).  Here there are dogs EVERYWHERE.  Seriously, I don’t know how these people train them, but even Cesar Millan could learn a thing or two.  These dogs walk the streets without leashes and somehow never get lost.  The owners also never seem concerned that the dog will run away!  If Lady was here, I would not only have her on a leash at all times, I would constantly be checking that she was okay.  It’s like dogs here know that if they don’t watch their owners they could be lost forever.

3. Screens.  Here the windows don’t have screens, so when you open your window to get some air into the room, you also are susceptible to any outside intruders.  This leads me to number 4…

4. Bug spray.  I have mosquito bites everywhere.  It’s like I have spent two weeks in the woods covered in sugar water.  I get bit a lot as it is, but I haven’t bought bug spray here yet so it is worse.  The lack of screens is not helping.  I feel like I am an open target when I sleep.

5. Dryers.  Here when you do laundry, there is no dryer.  You can hang your clothes outside the window, or you can use a drying rack.  The first few loads of laundry took days to dry.  This last load only took one day though because of the heat. So, Silver Lining’s Playbook, I guess.

6. My car.  Ok, I admit it.  I am almost tired of there being no cars around.  Not because I actually need to drive anywhere I go (except maybe that one night to Mestre when we got stuck there after the buses stopped running), but because I actually really love driving and I miss it.  Even when we leave Venice though, I think I would be too terrified to drive in Italy.  I will wait until I get home.

7.  Dishwashers.  If you thought I missed dryers, I FOR SURE miss dishwashers.  I don’t even like doing dishes when I have one of those, but I have barely cooked anything here because I refuse to hand wash pots and pans. In fact, the extent of my cooking has been putting food on aluminum foil and heating in the oven.  So actually not much different than when I cook at home.

8.  Soft drinks that don’t cost as much as wine.  Really, I miss fountain drinks.  With free refills.  Everything is sold by the can or bottle here, usually for at least 2.50 or 3 euro.  I also want ice in my drink.  The other day Sanchit got a glass of ice from a cafe for us and I had never been more excited about frozen water in my life.  This includes going to hockey games.

[[EDIT: 9. Free WiFi or Data.  I am a little tired of having to go search for WiFi.]]

Even as I am writing this, the only thing that is still upsetting is the weather being super hot.  I just felt it was only fair to mention that it's not all sunshine and rainbows here.  Basically it's just sunshine...as in I have a ridiculous tan line across my chest from my purse kind of sunshine.

No way am I getting married without a hair straightener.

Venice has been the city of “Ask and you shall receive” lately it seems. (Also, “be careful what you wish for.”)
First I touched the stone heart of Venice, which is, what I believe, the smallest unknown attraction in the city.  It is said that if you are single and you touch the stone, the city will work it’s magic and find you true love within a year.  There is a longer story about the origin of it here (this is my first time doing a link, so let me know if that doesn't work).  Then a few days later, Laura and I met a guy that we ended up having coffee with.  Long story short, he decided that we were engaged, and now I have been avoiding the area where he said he works and the vaparetto stop where we first met.  Keep in mind, he did not ASK me to marry him, he was just like "And now we are fidanzato" which means engaged. It was a very weird day and I’m not sure there is any social media forum appropriate for this story.  I will just leave you with, Don’t worry, I am being cautious and smart.

Thursday Laura and I went to Murano.  Before I left I have many a conversation with my grandma about buying glass.  They went along these lines:
Me: I really want to get something from Murano.
Grandma: No you don’t.
Me: Yes I do!  Not something big, just a little trinket or something.
Grandma:  You’ll change your mind when you get there and see the prices.  We have a set of glasses from there and they cost too much when I bought it many years ago, now it will really be too much.
Me: Yes, but you bought a set of really nice glasses, all I want is a little something to put on my bookshelf.
Grandma: Ok, we shall see… but you’re not going to want o buy anything.
Well guess what, grams… It wasn’t nearly as bad as you led me to believe.  (Not that I should be surprised.  Basically everything my grandma told me about Venice was a lie.  I have not been robbed, every locale has told me how safe Venice is, there is no violent crime here, and no man has tried to trick or deceive me-at least not convincingly, I realize that maybe I should have put this before the story of my new “fiancé”.  Grandma however tried to tell me that the trickery that the men would try to pull on me would involve telling me I had to carry jugs on my head and then they would put snakes in the jugs.  Why I would ever believe something like that, I am unsure, but alas I promised to stay away from all men who were interested in water transport that didn’t involve the canals.)  We ended up not staying long, but are making plans to go back again soon.  We also want to go to Burano.

Now remember that I had written a post about not knowing how to order food in the grocery store.  Yesterday, we learned this in class!  Our whole lesson with Marco was about food and ordering it in different stores (ex: supermarket, bakery, butcher).  I am ready to try this again, now!  I will let you all know if I become successful.  Also, Slava and I were trying to decipher a term for weather with him explaining in Ukraini (sp?) and me trying to guess in English.  Then in our lesson with Claudia that day we talked different climates and about exactly what we were trying to figure out.  The word was humid, for those of you who were curious.

Changing the subject just a bit, not everything has been great.
I washed some clothes and my new salmon and blue shirts got runs in the sheer parts.  They are still wearable but still slightly upsetting.
Also, if I thought mosquitos at home loved me, they are getting a run for their money from the mosquitos here.
Then… my hair straightener apprently could not handle the convertor to Italian outlets and has decided that it will only heat to about 10 degrees before shortening out.  So, hopefully Monday we will learn how to say “My hair straightener broke. What is the cheapest one you have?” and also handed a map on where to find a place to buy one here.  I will not make it through the next month and a half without one, I have too much hair for this activity called travel.  Plan B will be to have Laura use her hair dressing knowledge to cut it all off.
Looking back to when I packed for this trip, I also should have been more proactive in planning outfits.  I simultaneously feel like I brought too many clothes and not enough.  This would have been prevented if I brought a few more sweaters, I could have cut a few of the shirts and had a good deal more outfits.  The silver lining to the last few of these things is that I will have less to pack up in my suitcase to bring home.  I will ship some clothes home before I agree to cart around my suitcase if it weighs as much as it did on my trip here.

Maybe today I will check postage prices.

What's harder? Trying to make a joke or buying food.

I have a new respect for how my grandparents and other immigrants learned to speak English.  It is one thing to learn a language in your native country with a professor who also speaks your native language.  It is a completely different situation to try and learn a language in a foreign country, with a group a people who come from even more different countries, and there is none of your native language spoken during class or while walking around the city.  (Ok, so that last part is a lie, because a lot of people here do speak English, but they are more willing to help you when you speak Italian).

In the class, there is one girl from Spain, two girls from Brazil (one does speak English though, she went to school in Philadelphia), a boy from India, a lady from France, a guy from the Ukraine, and then me and Laura.  There were a few more on the first day but they got moved to the advance level. I have never felt more stupid than I did on that first day of class.  It seemed like everyone else was following along perfectly, and I was sitting there trying to copy off Laura just to see what it was we were supposed to do.  It was rough.  I don’t remember a lot from the movie Lost in Translation, but I’m pretty sure I can now relate to Bill Murray.

After class we met Karan, one of the students who got moved to the advanced level.  He has become a savior to Laura and I.  He has been studying Italian for 5 years and it fluent, and he is from England so it is amazing for us when we want to know how to translate things.  Tomorrow he leaves, and Laura and I will have to fend for ourselves again.

However, it has been a week now (I am writing this on Friday) and I feel a lot better about speaking.  The one thing I will say about this class though, is that while we see some new vocab when we do worksheets, I don’t feel like I am incorporating it into my knowledge base.  We are reviewing a lot of grammar but without words to use, what is the point?  The best way to improve is to get out and use it, right?  So that’s what we are doing.

Monday night, Karan, Laura, and I were going to see The Great Gatsby in Italian, but then Laura didn’t think she would make it to the vaparetto (water bus) in time, so we went to grab a drink instead.  We ended up meeting a couple locals and spending some time talking to them.  The woman had studied in New York for her Master’s, so while she did mostly speak to us in Italian, she was also able to speak in English when we would get stuck.

Wednesday morning Laura and I tried to get me hooked up with WiFi for the apartment, and get Laura a phone.  Neither one of them came about as we thought they would.  The guy in the store did not know what I was talking about when I relayed the message Rita told me in order to get myself set up and the phone guy needed Laura’s passport in order to set her up which she did not have.  We did however get to a cafe with WiFi and that was when I uploaded my last post.

Yesterday morning I FINALLY made it to the grocery store!!  This was so exciting for me…until I got there.  Buying dry food and food off the shelves is the same anywhere, but the problems I had where more so like “Where did everyone get the carts and baskets?” “How do I buy fresh mozzarella/seafood/chicken from the counter?” “What is the difference in these milk containers? Do they have 2%, skim, and whole?  This one has a baby on it and this one has a woman on it, but the words are all the same…what does that mean?”  These are all thoughts I had but could not even begin to communicate.  I found the carts on my own, I chose a milk that didn’t have any picture on it and it tastes fine, just slightly different than 2%, and I forfeited the idea of getting fresh food from the counter.  I will leave that adventure for another day.

((I have started to make a list of small goals for my Italian.  They are things like “Becoming fluent enough to be funny.” It is sooo frustrating to me to have a funny thought and not be able to say it because I either don’t know the words or know it won’t translate the same.  Another new goal is “Learn how to obtain all things in a grocery store that I am looking for.”))

Last night, most of us from class were going to go out together, but it was raining and one of the girls lost her bus ticket, so a few people bailed.  It ended up just being Karan, Laura, Sanchit (India), Slava (Ukraine), and I who got together.  I had a great time!  It was one of the bigger tests of Italian that I have felt in all of my studying. Sanchit speaks English really well, and Slava knows more English than he thinks, but it was still easier to speak Italian and harder to communicate, if that makes sense.  Italian was easier because it is our common base, but harder because I always want to default into English.  Between the five of us though, we made it work.  As we parted ways for the evening, Slava and I headed towards Piazza Roma so he could catch his bus and I the vaparetto towards where I live.  This is where I am really proud of myself (and Slava), because without help we were able to discuss how we were both trying to study in Florence, what we wanted to do, and the problems that we faced in getting to do so.  At the bar, we had also been able to discuss what we had previously studied and where we worked.

Today, I was supposed to try and meet up with Laura and Karan again, but I don’t know if my texts are going through. They haven’t responded in a way that makes me think they are receiving what I am saying.  So instead, I am typing this up.  Now I must leave to go to class, and see what is going on with mine and Laura’s phones.

Saturday morning addition:
Laura and I figured out how to make our phones work!!  Success!  I ended up not being able to meet up with Karan and Laura yesterday because our phones refused to contact each other.  After class, the same five of us went out again and I really feel like A. I have made some great new friends and B. that I am really starting to think in Italian. You can add to my list of little goals: “To have a dream in Italian.” “To think in Italian without having to do the full translation part of it”

Over the past week some things have happened to me that I find super exciting, but I am sure no one else would be as amused.  The first is that I get sooooo excited when other tourists think I am a locale.  I have finally figured out some of the roads and the vaparetto system, or at the very least, the main ways to get places.  One night this week, I got stopped by a family from Malaysia because they were lost and trying to find the train station.  I was able to lead them to where they needed to go (not too hard since I was headed in the same direction) and we got to talking.  They spoke some English and kept asking me questions like “Oh, you are a student?  We thought you lived here!  How long are you here for?” “What are you studying?” “Why did you want to study Italian?”  It was weird because I heard myself start speaking English as if it wasn’t my native language.  I was speaking broken English as if I was Italian trying to speak English.  Also, I kept responding in Italian when they would ask me a question.  It was both exciting and weird.  Exciting that for once I was defaulting to Italian, but weird because they didn’t speak Italian and actually wanted me to speak English.

I have also helped a few people figure out which vaparetto stop they needed, how to avoid the street merchants that will literally stalk you if you make eye contact or show any interest in what they are selling, and how when ordering food there is a difference in price when you order at the counter than when you sit down.

That is all for now, as I need to use my computer to look up train tickets for weekend trips and other exciting things before my battery dies.  Also, I PROMISE to post pictures soon.  I just haven't taken that many yet. Ciao!