5 September 2011
August was an interesting and challenging month for us. We experienced some bumps in the road and we closed the “honeymoon” portion of our adventure. However, after dusting ourselves off and having a great week in Sardinia, we are settling into our fall schedules and are still having a wonderful experience.
We remember when we were “AFS” parents and were told to expect that our foreign exchange student would have more or less a predicable pattern of highs and lows during his stay. Now, we are experiencing it, but from the perspective of the person adapting to a different culture, language and change of life.
One challenge has been simply adapting to an urban environment in a culture that has quite a lot of theft. Although there are very few violent crimes here, petty theft is a big problem for this otherwise wonderful culture. Interestingly, well-dressed people who you would not suspect often do some types of theft.
Sheila had her bike stolen in July and her purse was stolen one night in August, while we were dining. The latter felt awful for Sheila! We were inside a very nice neighborhood restaurant and Sheila had her purse hanging off her chair. Sheila had it in her lap for something shortly before. We were distracted for less than a minute while a group came by our table with two babies in a carriage. The purse was nabbed while we were gawking at the cute babies. It happened that fast! It has been a long and laborious process of replacing house keys, cell phone, credit/debit cards.
All our Italian friends and acquaintances were very sympathetic to our losses. Most had stories of their own of theft of one kind or another. Some were of the opinion that the theft problem was a result of foreigners “stranieri” rather than Italians.
The other challenge has been coming to grips with the fact that despite being “buoni studenti”, being anywhere near fluent in a few months, is a bit of a pipe dream. It is true that we probably would make better progress if we were split up and each put separately into Italian families. Then, we would be forced to speak Italian all the time and could not speak English at all. But… that ain’t going to happen.
Joe continued with four more weeks at LinguaViva enjoying his Italian studies (he loves being a student). We took advantage of a couple oshort “gite” offered by the school, to the cities of Lucca and Siena. Samuele, who was very knowledgeable about history, art and architecture, guided the trips. Joe got an “A” on his level two test (although not quite as high an “A” as Sheila did, “ma, non importante”). He is currently reading “ The girl who played with fire” in Italian, albeit with the book in one hand and a dictionary in the other.
While Joe was in school, Sheila started conversation exchanges with local Italians. She meets with Italians who want to learn English. Generally, speaking one language at a time and usually for about 45 minutes. Longer than that and Sheila says her language skills begin to deteriorate. She has had a flurry of Italians contacting her through the “conversation exchange” website, to set up exchange dates. English is an important work asset for Italians so native English speakers who are willing to teach are in demand. For the last several weeks she has been speaking with “Lorenzo” a recently unemployed engineer who decided to spend his month of august brushing up on his English in anticipation of his job search. A typical exchange would be a morning walk in the park or maybe a visit to the Mercato Centrale.
We hosted a dinner party one evening for a few “language” friends. Lorenzo came eager to meet a few of the young women from Joe’s language class. We had a couple women from Brazil and another woman from Slovenia. It was a fun night of mostly Italian, some Portuguese, as well as English (which is the default language).
August was also interesting because it is the month when Italians abandon the city. Feriagosto means holiday august and most Italians take part of, if not the whole month off. They leave the city for the mountains or the sea. Florence was dead. Our favorite little vege/fruit shop, bakery, yoga classes, etc. just stopped for the month. We were left to fend for ourselves at the places that stayed open for tourists. We did both enjoy how easy it was to get around on the bikes.
After finally getting new credit cards, we left the city when the Italians returned, for five days “of recovery” in the south Sardinia. We took the cheap airline, Ryanair, for the one-hour flight out of Pisa to Cagliari. We spent most of the time reading books under the beach “ombrello” and swimming. The area has a feel of Baja Mexico, with a Caribbean Sea (but with more pasta and less tortillas).
On our return, Firenze was once again hopping and we are beginning our fall schedules. Sheila has signed up for a “yoga therapy” workshop in Zurich, so is trying to get to a lot of local yoga classes and studying anatomy to get tuned up. She may also take a cooking class and do some volunteer work in the fall. Joe is starting to draw more in preparation for his art school starting.
We are also both looking forward to visitors in the next few weeks.
We miss our family and friends, but we sure are having a great time experiencing our new world. Like everything, it keeps changing.
