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.