Missing Home...

Living in Italy truly is a gift.  At times, like when we were swimming in the waters off Capri, I pinch myself to see if it's real.  And then there are weeks like this one.  Tom has been in Germany all week for work and I've been here alone, in a house with no AC, no phone line and 158 boxes from our move sitting on our balcony, waiting for the moving company to come take them away. 

While our neighborhood has been filling up, ever so slowly, the fact still remains that exploring everything by yourself can sometimes make you feel even more alone than you did locked up in your house.  I find myself wishing that I had the courage to go boldly out into the Italian neighborhood around me, ordering cornettos and whatever else I please without fear of sounding stupid.  Without practicing first what I'd say about 1,000 times in my head and then not completely destroying the Italian language when I actually say it.  This week feels like a roller coaster ride of emotions, the low on Monday when I left work early to meet the phone repair guy only to have them ask me "Why don't you have any Italian friends who can help you?"  Trying not to cry in front on a random Italian man and having him acknowledge how lonely I feel was yet another terribly humbling experience. 

Tuesday felt like a high as I effectively asked Gianni, the gas attendant, to change the oil in my car.  Gianni thinks I'm kind of tragically lost in his Italian world and is always SO nice to me!  I find myself smiling every time that I see him, even when he's checking out my butt as I walk away.  That's cool, Gianni, it helped my self-esteem that day! 

The cause of most of my frustration is the sheer oddity of my surroundings.  I was reading a book this week, because I blew the fuse box to my apartment so many times trying to turn on our TV that I figured it was a sign from above that I should pick up a book, in which an American woman goes to live in Ireland on a home exchange deal.  There was one line, near the end, when she too felt alone and lost in the other land, noting how strange it was hearing little kids cry out to one another with Irish accents.  It's very much the same here.  Living practically on top of one another, with courtyards that face courtyards of open windows, dinner conversations, yowling dogs and crying children in the evenings.  Listening to a 2 year old child speak better Italian than I do and hearing the soothing voice of mothers telling them it will be alright.  Cars that honk their horns or drive past far too fast at 1 AM or the fireworks that go off at the oddest times of day.  I feel like a bratty kid during these times, when I come home and hide away from the world in my cocoon of the hottest apartment alive with my cats and a bottle of wine.  I think about how much easier it would be with Tom home and also how annoyed I'd be at him for those times when he laughs at me when I do something dumb, though he always diguises it with the term "adorable." 

I suppose I am just feeling both lonely and sorry for myself, annoyed that my European dreams are not quite what I thought them to be all the time.  For the trash in the road to those first few months where you'd be friends with a shoebox, so long as it was a friend.  For those times that you just want to scream out "Speak ENGLISH!  PLEASE!" but then realize that YOU are the foreigner and in their home country, they have every right to speak their language.  For those times and for the comforts of home, of my mother and my sisters, my dad and the long days in their pool, of a good trip to Target, the ease of knowing how to drive on American streets and the long lost art of Sunday Brunch, I'm going to just be a little homesick for a while.  In time, I'll stop acting like a 5 year old and pull myself back together, hide my tear streamed face behind a coat of fresh make up and convince myself that I'm strong enough to make the most of this.  I'm just waiting for that day right now.