Our alarm went off at seven this morning, because on our free morning Elice and I had agreed to get up and do some work. That didn’t happen. But I did decide on an impromptu run. The sun was still coming up as I jogged along the river, and in such amazing light even the off-green water of the Tiber looked beautiful. When I was coming back up from Ponte Garibaldi, I decided to run down the stairs by the river instead of along the upper road. As I came closer to Ponte Mazzini, I realized the splashes of color I saw beneath the bridge were tents. At first I was confused about why I hadn’t noticed them until now, but in hindsight it makes sense that they would be situated exactly beneath the bridge, to make being under a bridge count at all. It was my first time going under the bridge instead of over it. As I approached, the family was just coming out. There were four tents in total, in camping shades of red, silver and green. On the ledge behind them were stacked luggage cases in various stages of disrepair. From the far tent a toddler tumbled out while his mother dumped a bucket into the passing Tiber. I made eye contact with a girl that seemed a bit younger than me as she stood by the water. Her white eyes looked startled in her dark face, and I suppose in this sense we looked quite similar. She could have been the same girl asking for coins outside the countless churches we have visited. I can’t discern their ethnicity, but I wonder if these are the same people who materialize each evening in the Campo with their well-worn instruments and provide their musical merriment in exchange for a few coins. In any case, I left them to their day and went on with mine.
After this small discovery, I packed lunch and headed for the Café Farnese for a coffee and some time to sit and work until I met up with other students to study in the Rome Center library. It was a lazy, slow Monday. After an exhausting weekend of Notte Bianca, a presentation (for me), and day trips to Pompeii and Naples, week four began with a catch-up morning for most. Several students worked on a poem or writing assignment, and a lucky few typed away at art history papers. Here Scott is hard at work on his Italian homework, going over vocabulary before class began at 12:30.
Italian class today was filled with useful sentences. Apparently now that we have mastered how to eat in Italian, we are ready to move onto what we like and dislike, how to ask the time, and basic verb conjugation. So now we will be able to talk about the right people, as long as they are acting in the present, complain about what we don't like, and be more punctual. (Although really I was fine with just the eating words.) We practiced our verb conjugation on each other by going around the room and asking questions in the ‘you’ form, then answering them in the ‘I’ form.
Di solito vai in discoteca? I asked Mark. (Do you usually go to the club?)
Si, di solito vado in discoteca, he replied. (Yes, I usually go to the club.)
Of course. I should have asked Mark something I didn’t already know about him.
Everyone says that Italian is a beautiful language, and that it is the language of love. But really, it is a hard language. It is demanding; it is always demanding that you make a choice, that you be precise. There are eight different forms of the article ‘the’. I asked Costanza how to say ‘the’ and she couldn’t answer me. In what situation, she wanted to know. Before I can say ‘I like’ something, I have to decide if what I like is a singular or a plural. Do I like one cookie, or four cookies? Sometimes, a girl just doesn’t know. Then, there are the preposition-like words. Sometimes it is ‘a bar’ and sometimes it is ‘en pizzeria’. Someone asked Constanza how to choose between them, and she said No regla. There is no rule. In Spanish, at least ‘a’ means ‘to’ and ‘en’ means ‘in’, so you know when you are going ‘to’ the place and when you are going ‘in’. I wonder how often Italians (or Italian language students) get mixed up when meeting at a designated place because half the group is waiting inside and the other half is waiting by the door. If this is the language of love, I don’t know whose relationship it’s being used to describe. Unless, of course, everything they are saying in those foreign language films is really nonsense.
After Italian class about half the students met in front of Palazzo Farnese for our private tour of the French embassy. There were several collective misunderstandings about the regulations surrounding dress code, footwear, and passport requirements, and consequently there were several mad dashes made from Piazza Farnese to the Rome center. Anyie laughed later as she recounted her experience of running around in a group of skirted girls while the Campo crowd looked on. In the end, a simple tour of the embassy turned out some amusing results. Schuyler tucked in his shirt for the first time; Joel wore Shawn’s pants; many pairs of flip flops were shod in favor of closed-toed shoes, and later Schuyler masqueraded as Scott to get past the passport check. Apparently, the French are very, very picky, but not too bright.
However, everyone agreed that the tour was worth it, even if it was all given in Italian with a French accent. I couldn’t go on the tour since I failed the requirements on account of wrong footwear, not bringing my passport, and not looking like Scott. But Elice brought me a postcard of the beautiful Caracci ceiling painting, and Christina showed me a picture she took of a postcard of the Caracci ceiling (a much more economical loophole to the ‘no pictures’ rule that forces us to buy postcards). The paintings all depicted scenes of love, and the trickery of the love-god Eros. It was a painting of lovers being described by a young French woman speaking Italian. There’s not much more you can do to get the message of ‘LOVE’ across.
After a visit to the French, the day ended with an ethnic experience from another part of the world. Seven of us went to try a rather pricey Korean restaurant just around the corner from the boy’s apartment in Trastevere. Despite the steep prices, we were willing to fork up just for a taste of Asian food, and more generally, something other than pasta or pizza. Korean food was a new experience for some of the boys, but it quickly became clear as we were ordering that Christina was a well seasoned expert. She was able to offer precise descriptions of each dish as well as her appraisal of the taste. Later as we were leaving, she even tossed out a ‘thank you’ (gamsa-hapnida) in Korean, much to the amusement of the waiters.
The most delightful part of dinner was the generous spread of side dishes that accompanied our entrees. There was kim chee, spicy cucumber, potatoes, green beans with carrots, little pancakes, nori, fried tofu, and steamed greens. By the time we were done, almost every little plate was cleaned. For dessert, some people got pastries and others got gelato. Henry, alone, got both.
Despite it being a rather slow day, it was still eventful and entertaining in its own small ways. In case you’ve skipped down, the Cliffnotes version is: I ran, people studied, we learned Italian, visited the French, more people studied, we ate Korean food, Henry got two desserts.
Ciao!
Linda
No comments:
Post a Comment