Last week, my co-worker, Maurizio, asked me if I'd practice English with his friend, Assia. I told him that I'd do it happily (and for free) if she would help me to learn Italian. I've had this idea in my head for pretty much the entire time here, that I would find an Italian who wanted to learn English and with our powers combined, we'd become this bond of Babel and teach each other the intricacies of our languages. Well looky here! It worked!
Last week Maurizio facilitated our discussion and said "In Englese!" to Assia and "In Italiano" to me over and over and over again as we struggled to put our jobs, significant others and interests into child-like sentences in another language. This week, Assia's boyfriend, Massimo, did the same thing, except that his English is really good and made the whole process VERY easy for me! We keep finding a third party who speaks both languages well enough to make the whole process easier on both of us.
Assia, Massimo, and I sat around for an hour on Friday night, sipping caffes (read: espresso. Read also: I didn't sleep that night) and chatting about our travels, lives and their very dedicated system for learning English. They've been taking lessons with an Irish girl, an Australian girl, and a guy from Texas and have decided that my middle-America accent is the easiest version of English to understand.
It was very comforting to have our mutual struggles to work through. Both Assia and I pretty much only know present tense of English/Italian (respectively) and have been helpful in learning the details and pronunciation of some of the more complicated words. (For her, as well as many of my co-workers, the difference between Tuesday and Thursday is ALWAYS difficult. For me, "prossima volta" (which means "next time") is the phrase I could not remember at all!) It's funny that we both feel like we have a mouth full of marbles when speaking a new language. For the whole year here, I have felt like my mouth is just too confused to form words correctly. Or that the words that I thought I was always saying correctly get a very common "huh??" from my co-workers/waiters/grocery store attendants.
I'm hoping that the weekly chats with my new friend will help open my eyes (and my ears) to the intricacies of living here and help me to understand the culture on a deeper level. I'm finding that Italy is more than just pasta and wine, old buildings and crazy lines. The more time I spend here, the more mothers and children that I see interacting, the more times I hear church bells and see a family of 40 having Sunday dinner together, the more that it warms my heart. Life abroad is now cake walk. It's often frustrating and confusing and leaves me exhausted and homesick but then, there are the times that you can share an hour with a new friend and just talk and just learn about how life is different from their point of view. It just takes little longer when you have to Google Translate every 5 minutes. Let's be honest, every 2 minutes.
Buona giornata! (Have a good day!)
Lynne
Assia, Massimo, and I sat around for an hour on Friday night, sipping caffes (read: espresso. Read also: I didn't sleep that night) and chatting about our travels, lives and their very dedicated system for learning English. They've been taking lessons with an Irish girl, an Australian girl, and a guy from Texas and have decided that my middle-America accent is the easiest version of English to understand.
It was very comforting to have our mutual struggles to work through. Both Assia and I pretty much only know present tense of English/Italian (respectively) and have been helpful in learning the details and pronunciation of some of the more complicated words. (For her, as well as many of my co-workers, the difference between Tuesday and Thursday is ALWAYS difficult. For me, "prossima volta" (which means "next time") is the phrase I could not remember at all!) It's funny that we both feel like we have a mouth full of marbles when speaking a new language. For the whole year here, I have felt like my mouth is just too confused to form words correctly. Or that the words that I thought I was always saying correctly get a very common "huh??" from my co-workers/waiters/grocery store attendants.
I'm hoping that the weekly chats with my new friend will help open my eyes (and my ears) to the intricacies of living here and help me to understand the culture on a deeper level. I'm finding that Italy is more than just pasta and wine, old buildings and crazy lines. The more time I spend here, the more mothers and children that I see interacting, the more times I hear church bells and see a family of 40 having Sunday dinner together, the more that it warms my heart. Life abroad is now cake walk. It's often frustrating and confusing and leaves me exhausted and homesick but then, there are the times that you can share an hour with a new friend and just talk and just learn about how life is different from their point of view. It just takes little longer when you have to Google Translate every 5 minutes. Let's be honest, every 2 minutes.
Buona giornata! (Have a good day!)
Lynne
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