The Adventures of Nataniele Randaglio — Part II

True to my word

2010-06-22T00:04:00.007+02:00

On January 18, 2010, I wrote about this blog's new beginnings, and promised that for the remainder of my time in Italy I would publish an average of one post per week.

I returned from Italy on Friday, June 18, exactly five months later. In those five months, 21 weeks and four days passed by. On my blog, 24 new posts appeared.

Which means that I did it.

In the next day or two I plan on uploading pictures from the last few months, and maybe, if World Cup soccer action gets boring, writing a final sort of What Did This All Mean To Me? post. But given that the blog was about my time in Italy, and I'm no longer in Italy, I don't plan on taking it much further.

For now, let me thank those of you who actually read this thing for taking the time to read it. For those of you who generally didn't read it but who happened upon this post, thank you for spending your time doing something probably much more productive for the world.

Now that I'm back, and regardless of your reading loyalty, I hope to see all of you again soon.

Nate

Try to guess which briefs were a birthday present from my host sisters

2010-05-31T13:07:00.003+02:00

Three for three

2010-05-31T11:54:00.006+02:00

On Saturday, May 22, Inter became the first team in Italian soccer history to win Champions League, the scudetto, and the Coppa Italia, and I -- in the spirit of a true fair-weather-fan -- officially became Interista, ending my two-year-long quest for an Italian team to call my own.

My parents and I had considered watching the game on a big screen in Piazza Duomo in Milan, but after everybody we mentioned this plan to told us we were insane, we opted for the more relaxed environment of a small bar in Crema. When I read the following day that 100,000 people had crammed into the piazza for the post-game festivities, I felt good about our decision to stay local.

100,000 Inter fans celebrating Inter's victory in front of Milan's massive gothic cathedral.

A student who had gone to Milan to witness the madness took this photo of the clean-up the following morning. Despite the chaos, newspapers didn't report any major incidents or rioting. Just general euphoria.

For the final five minutes of the second half -- after it was clear that Inter, up 2-0, would win -- we went into the piazza in Crema where several hundred people were watching. Below, their reaction to the final whistle:

Get excited

2010-05-20T12:55:00.002+02:00

FC Internazionale Milano versus FC Bayern München

Saturday May 22, 8:45 pm, in Madrid

Celebration #1

2010-05-17T15:18:00.000+02:00

Friends of mine, all devout Inter fans, celebrate after Inter beat Barcelona to advance to the Champions League final.

The metal napkin holder that the guy bangs on the table in the middle of the video was reduced to this:

Celebration #2

2010-05-17T15:00:00.013+02:00

I've spent hours trying to load the second video, but it won't get through. For now, photos will have to suffice.

From 5pm onward, Piazzas all over northern Italy were covered in black and blue.

Note the scarf.

They start young, quickly growing into the fans you saw in Celebration #1.

A bid for Italian soccer history

2010-05-17T14:56:00.009+02:00

The professional soccer leagues in Italy (and in most of Europe) do not have playoffs at the end of their regular seasons. Rather, the team that has the most points at the end of the season simply wins the title, here called the scudetto. Last year, Inter clinched victory with several weeks left to go, which made for a rather anti-climactic end of the season, and left me favoring the idea of post season playoffs in which anything can happen, and any team can win. This year, however, I was better able to appreciate the beauty of the no-playoff system, as the year's champion team was decided in the very final half of play in the season's final week of games.

Going into their matches this past Sunday, both Rome and Inter could have won the scudetto. If Rome won their game and Inter tied or lost, the title would go to Rome. However, if Inter won, or if Inter tied or lost and Rome tied or lost, the victory would to go Inter.

Both teams played their final games at 3:00pm, but not against each other. Which meant that if you wanted to know what was going on, you had to keep track of both games simultaneously. Conveniently, there was a program on TV that switched back and forth automatically, which made for an exciting but frenetic 90 minutes of having your attention launched uncontrollably from game to game, and goal to goal.

In the end, both teams won, which left Inter with its fifth scudetto in a row. The celebrations, which ensued all afternoon and evening in Crema's main piazza, were worth videoing. (Blogger was giving me a hard time with video loading here; if you wish to view it, see the post Celebration #2, above.)

In addition to the scudetto, Inter also won this year's Coppa Italia―the season-long tournament between all of the teams in Italy's highest professional soccer leagues (not just Serie A, in which Inter plays, but also B, C, and D). Although the team that wins the tournament is usually in Serie A (if not always; I asked some people at school who said they believed this to be the case, but I wasn't able to confirm it in my hasty search online), the lower leagues' players have the opportunity to showcase their talents to the higher level clubs.

Anyway, with its victory in the Coppa Italia earlier this May, and then its capture yesterday of the scudetto, Inter has won two of the three great honors available to Italian soccer teams in a single season. The third, and most prestigious―victory of the all-European (not just Italian) Champions League―is a feat that Inter, despite extraordinary success within Italy, hasn't achieved since 1965.

Of course, they're playing in the finals against Bayern-Munich this coming Saturday. And if they manage to win, Inter will become the first Italian team ever to win the single-season tripletta of the Coppa Italia, the scudetto, and Champions League.

For a sense of what could happen after a Champions League victory, see the video in the other post above, Celebration #1, then multiply by a factor of several million.

In short, Inter fans throughout Italy could become apocalyptical.

Scream-jump

2010-05-17T13:56:00.006+02:00

Before going to bed, I’ll often wind down my evening with a cup of chamomile. Though I like to keep my kitchen reasonably tidy, I usually won’t clean my tea mug that night, but rather leave it in the otherwise empty sink to deal with the following morning.

Last Sunday, as my coffee brewed away in the stovetop espresso maker, I reached into the sink to begin cleaning the previous night’s mug. The movement of my hand, though slight, was enough to cause a nasty old cockroach, who had been lurking nefariously in the shadows, to start running around the sink in terrifyingly precise circles, clearly calculated to mesmerize me such that I would lose my balance, fall down, hit my head on the stove, and lay unconscious on the floor of my kitchen, susceptible to attack.

Not succumbing to his evil tricks, I gathered my composure, then did what any self-respecting young man would do: I screamed in the highest pitched voice I could muster while simultaneously jumping away from the sink.

Though I’m no Bear Gryllis, I have spent some time out in the woods, and don’t tend to struggle with creepy crawlies or fuzzy wuzzies or stingy flyies. (The only exception is slugs, which I loathe.) If I find a bee in my room, I’ll do my best to relocate it outside without killing it; if I find I spider―depending on its size―I’ll usually leave it be, in the hope that it will help me manage any eventual mosquito populations.

Furthermore―and this is entirely true―when I was in the third grade, my class had, in addition to a pet rabbit and a pet turtle, a 3-inch-long pet Madagascan cockroach. Maddie (I guess somebody thought it was a good idea to give the monster a name), who spent all of her time inside of a plastic container, didn’t give me any trouble, and as the year unfolded, we learned to respect each other from afar. Although I was never the kid who signed up to bring Maddie home during school vacations (my peers―who must have all been only children―actually fought for that responsibility), in time, I developed a tolerance for the creature.

On Sunday, as I mercilessly (but quickly―I’m no sadist) ended the life of the hideously shiny intruder who had made its way into my sink, I learned that my former tolerance has since vanished, and that my general ability to deal cool headedly with bugs doesn’t apply to cockroaches.

Although I haven’t seen any other beasts since the incident, on several occasions in the last week I have mistaken inanimate objects for insects. On Wednesday afternoon, moments after cutting the dark green stem out of a tomato, I saw the stem sitting on the counter next to my sink, presumed it was a cockroach come to avenge its fallen comrade, and scream-jumped. The following morning, when I saw what turned out to be a black pen cap, I scream-jumped again. Just last night, after returning home from a trip to visit the host fam in Castelleone, a small scrap of cardboard cereal box fell out of my hands as I carried the recycling out onto the street. Naturally, my mind took it as a cockroach. And so I scream-jumped once more.

From this experience, I’ve learned two lessons: 1.) I need to develop a more conventionally masculine reaction to surprise encounters with bugs. 2.) I despise cockroaches.

MUSCLE

2010-05-03T13:37:00.006+02:00

When I arrived in Italy on October 1, there were three other Americans in Crema already settled in: two of them fellow English language assistants in the same program as I, one of them a language assistant’s boyfriend along for the Italian ride. My arrival, therefore, brought the total number of Americans in Crema (more formally, the Measurement of U.S. Citizens in the Local Environment, henceforth known as MUSCLE) to four.

After about three weeks, a friend of mine from Middlebury who was spending the year in med-school-application purgatory and who, via the lineage of an emigrated grandmother, had just become an Italian citizen (despite being born in Illinois and growing up in Minnesohhtah), finished up a 1200 mile bike trip across Portugal and Spain, shipped his wheels home, then flew over to Italy to live for a couple months in the extra room in my apartment while getting to know his family’s language and roots. MUSCLE now = five.

Around the same time my bicycle-riding Italian-American med-school-applying Middlebury friend moved in, a fourth language assistant, who was pulled into the program late to replace a girl who had decided last minute not to come to Italy at all, arrived in Crema. And after a few days, he became my second roommate. During this short but glorious period in late October, MUSCLE reached an unprecedented six. American flags started waving from balconies. Pledges of Allegiance echoed throughout school corridors. Orders for Thanksgiving turkeys hit record highs, and root beer floats flowed from the public fountains.

As it would turn out, our golden age was unsustainable.

A couple days after my second roommate moved in, one of the original two language assistants, accompanied by her boyfriend, decided to move to Milan in pursuit of a more happening social scene. MUSCLE dropped precipitously, from six to four.

A couple months later, my first roommate would heed the call of his applications and return to the States to prove to medical schools his cerebral worth. MUSCLE = three.

A few weeks after that, my second roommate would follow suit, returning to the midwest to pursue his career as a U.S. census-counter/soon-to-be-world-famous improvisational actor. MUSCLE = two.

From January on, the MUSCLE stayed level at two. This morning, though, the other language assistant at my school returned home to the U.S. Which means that I now represent 100% of Crema’s MUSCLE.

My second roommate aptly described my circumstances in a recent message:

I bet it's nice to know that you control every decision about 100% of the American population in Crema. For instance, if you want to take a walk, 100% of the Americans have to take a walk. If you want broccoli for dinner, 100% of the Americans have to eat broccoli for dinner.

Although I’ll miss the company of my compatriots, I’m looking forward to the first real full-immersion experience of my two years in Italy.

At least for three weeks. On May 21, my parents will arrive, launching Crema’s MUSCLE back to three.

Soccer madness

2010-04-20T17:23:00.014+02:00

A derby, here, is any game in sports played between two teams from the same area (not a race for three-year-old horses). In a national league, that'll mean two teams from the same city or province, as was the case in the Inter Milan - AC Milan derby I saw in January. In international competition -- such as Champions League -- a match is considered a derby if both teams come from the same country.

Some derbies are reasonably friendly. Many people, for example, consider Milan fans and Inter fans distant cousins, and the derbies usually go by without conflict. (Fans who don't agree proudly wear scarves that say "I don't have cousins!") Other derbies, such as the one between Roma and Lazio, the two teams that share a stadium in Rome, are a bit "hotter."

On Sunday, with just five games left in the season, Roma and Lazio played their final derby. Roma went into the game in second place in the league; a win would send them into first. Lazio, in 16th place of 20, was playing with the hope of improving their chances of avoiding relegation, as the least successful three teams in Serie A will get the boot to Serie B at the end of the season. Given the generally antagonistic nature of the derby, any meeting between Roma and Lazio is going to be tense, but with so much at stake for both teams, this particular match sent emotions flying even higher than normal. (At least somebody was putting European airspace to use.)

Roma came back from a 0-1 score at halftime to win 2-1. The Lazio fan base, already frustrated by a long season of disappointment, did not respond well. The following ensued:

And these were found in a car outside the stadium, fortunately before anybody had a chance to use them:

Thanks to the Corriere della sera for the photos.

Sicily

2010-04-09T12:40:00.009+02:00

Landmarks of Crema

2010-03-29T14:02:00.010+02:00

A sign outside a home supplies store near my house. If you read closely, you'll see that prices range from "€0.50 to €5.00 (ED OLTRE)." Ed oltre means "and beyond" or "and more." This means that store owners can price their products from €0.50 to... well... infinity. Every time I see this sign -- almost every day -- and think about the injustices of certain advertising techniques, a small part of me dies.

The walls of my school are covered in murals completed over the years by various classes. Some of them, such as Snoopy and Woodstock, above, are precisely what you would expect to see inside of a place of learning.

Others are not.

This one, with its warm, fuzzy, almost-correct inclusion of the popular English-language request for privacy, is a personal favorite.

Graffiti on the corner of my street. The "South Curve" refers to the part of the stadium where the diehard fans of the local soccer team, Pergocrema, sit during matches. Graffiti homage to the team, reflecting the fervent support the Cremaschi people feel for it, appears everywhere you go in Crema, even though Pergo is in just Serie C-1, the third highest professional league in Italy, and struggling to avoid getting the boot to C-2. Though fruitless trying to compare American sports leagues -- which do not involve promotion and relegation -- to their Italian soccer counterparts, seeing this graffiti, for me, is what I imagine it would be like seeing Portland Sea Dogs tags all over Boston.

With regional elections, happening today and tomorrow, come campaign posters, such as the one above. When I first saw such signs, I figured they were just very blunt negative advertising campaigns. In fact, in Italy, an "X" indicates a "yes," the way that a circle or a check would for many Americans. I encountered this confusion not only with election posters, but also in the classroom, when I included some multiple choice questions on a test. Some of my students had circled one answer, then changed their minds. To indicate their switch, they circled a different answer, then put an "X" through it. When I was grading, I saw two answers, both with circles around them, but one with an "X" through it. Naturally, I assumed that the answer with the "X" was the unwanted one. I later learned, from the justifiably indignant students whose correct answers I had marked wrong, that I was mistaken.

An advertisement for the "Lega Nord" -- the rather extreme but regionally quite popular, pro-federalism, tough-on-immigration political party -- whose office I bike by every day on the way to school. Next to the picture of the Native American, the poster reads: "They weren't able to create rules against immigration. Now they live on reserves! Think about it." The implication, clear enough, is that Italians, if they continue to allow immigration, will end up like the Native Americans in the United States. A bold comparison.

Italian thoughts on health care

2010-03-24T10:43:00.015+01:00

As the health care debate intensified over the last few months in the States, it became a popular subject of discussion here in Italy. Students, fellow teachers, friends, host family members, even this obnoxious, anti-America, hideous-moustache-sporting (far worse than the one I had) Italian guy that Michael and I met randomly at a bar in Rome, all wanted us to answer the same question: How is it possible that the United States of America doesn’t have universal health care?

People were dumbfounded. Disillusioned, even. They consider access to reasonable health care a basic right – not an incentive offered by an employer, and definitely not a burden paid for after taxes, out-of-pocket – and could not fathom America’s lack of it. No, none of the people I spoke with claimed that health care in Italy was perfect, and several of the more affluent admitted that when they wanted to see a doctor, they would often turn to private practices rather than waiting what could be many months for a visit with a public doctor. Yet, all of them were proud of their country for offering at least something to everybody, and amazed that America – America, of all places – didn’t do the same.

Despite these convictions, Italians have learned in recent days that many Americans feel differently. Yesterday, Michael was watching news coverage at his host family’s house. At one point, cameras showed livid protesters in Washington, one of whom held a sign that read “We don’t want to be like Europe!” This is the image that Italian TV viewers got last night of selected American judgments of their continent as an undesirable, socialist land where Big Government treads daily on individual freedom.

After the bill officially passed, many of the people I spoke with said things like “finally” and “you did it” and “go Barack!” – reactions reflecting the same optimism that flooded Italy when Obama was elected in 2008. The better informed, though still congratulatory, were curious – even skeptical, and reasonably so* – as to how such a large government program could possibly serve to reduce the deficit, as has been estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. Nonetheless, they were happy for America, and saw the reform as a move in positive directions.

*Impressive miscalculation: in 2001, as Clinton was leaving office, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that from the period of 2009 to 2012, the government would run an average annual surplus of $800 billion. Estimates in 2009 for the same period expected the government to run annual deficits of $1.2 trillion. That’s a $2 trillion swing! (Read here for the full article.)

Despite good intentions, therefore, it seems that forecasts of the Congressional Budget Office should not be regarded as more than potential scenarios, subject to significant change. (See here for an even more pessimistic analysis, and here for a more forgiving one.)

Yesterday, I had only two hours of teaching – the first block, which ran from 8:20am until 9:15am, and the seventh, which started at 2:00pm. My plan was to use the time between the two classes to read a bit of world news, plan lessons for next week, then eat lunch. Instead, I planned nothing, skipped lunch, and spent four and a half hours with my face glued to a computer screen at school, struggling to wade through the rhetoric and understand what is actually going on. The more I waded, the more gelatinous the rhetoric got, and the more exasperated I became.

Reading the newspapers, blogs, and reader comments that have spiralled out of cyberspacial control over the last 48 hours, desperately trying to weed out the exaggerations in an effort to develop some sort of informed opinion, I’m increasingly unclear on what to expect from this reform. Given that the last thing I want would be for my blog to contribute to the already-saturated Internet world of under-informed but nonetheless certain-of-its-own-opinions amateur journalism, I will not boast to know what you should think. I don’t know what will happen, in the long run, to the federal budget, nor to prescription drug companies, nor to the impoverished and poorly-covered Americans the bill is supposed to help. Nor am I convinced that there’s anybody out there that really has a clear idea as to what will happen down the road. Not Obama. Not Nancy Pelosi. Not John McCain. Not the 274 readers that comment every time some major newspaper publishes a new article. Most of all, definitely not Sarah Palin. But how could they?

The year right now is 2010, yet economists still debate whether the New Deal of 1933 was helpful, or in fact just prolonged the Great Depression. That was 77 years ago, and people still haven’t made up their minds. The health care bill was signed yesterday.

What I can tell you definitively is that the people, both conservative and liberal, in this small, well-educated, reasonably affluent town in northern Italy think that America’s current lack of health care coverage is an insult to America’s claim as the greatest country in the world. Ostensibly, Obama has done something to deliver improvements. Not end-all fixes, but improvements. Pre-existing conditions can’t preclude coverage, and sick people can’t get dropped from their plans for being sick. The sacrifice? America’s long-term economic strength, keeping in mind that health care reform, in the end, is just one of several factors – many of them begun under previous presidents – currently augmenting the deficit; hardly the sole contributor to our inevitable demise, as some politicians and journalists have suggested.

So, is it worth it? From a moral perspective, yes. I’d much rather live in the second, or the third, or the 18^th-most-powerful country in the world than have compatriots who must choose between paying for their houses or their diabetes medications.

From an economic perspective, I don’t know enough to say. But given the moral perspective I just mentioned, should the economic perspective matter? Granted, I’m a naive, 23-year-old, former film studies major teaching English in Italy. But aren’t there some issues more important than long-term national economic security, like the fact that right now, 15% of the country's residents don’t have health insurance, and are, as a result, more likely to die earlier? (Though all the pieces in this link are worth reading, Dr. Manoj Jain, the penultimate in the collection, is my source here.)

Others might argue that the issue isn’t morality, nor economic wellbeing, but the simple principle of small versus big government. We know where the guy on Italian television with the “Europe sucks” sign stands on that one. Where you – the poor fellow who came to read something about Italian food or language gaffes and wound up reading an op-ed on health care reform – stand, I won’t ask.

The one thing I’m left certain of after reading through various coverage of the health care bill is that rhetoric, from both sides of the American political spectrum, is exhausting, frustrating, and terrifying. But we should thank our lucky stripes and stars that in America, when we’re angry about domestic issues, we still resort to rhetoric. People in our country who get worked up about domestic affairs write letters to their senators, submit reader comments to their favorite online news providers, and wave signs outside capitol buildings. Take a whiff of the tear gas in Greece or the gunpowder in Nigeria, and consider that not all countries today are so fortunate.

Then again, I hope I'm not once again speaking too soon. I'll touch some iron, just to be safe.

Speaking too soon

2010-03-23T10:52:00.008+01:00

.
About an hour after I published my previous post, I learned from a fellow teacher that, while I was in Rome, celebrating the model behavior of adolescent Italians, several of the school's first-years -- 14 and 15 year-olds -- who had gone on a different school trip that same week were busted in their hotel rooms with hashish.

Whoops.
.

Photos from the last couple months

2010-03-15T12:46:00.026+01:00

My third attempt at legit Italian lasagna in the last two years. The true test came when my former host dad, Gianluigi, gave it a try, not knowing that I had been the cook. His verdict? "Not bad." Coming from Gianluigi, this represented culinary praise, however modest, of exceptional rarity. I was honored.

Cleaning up as my lasagna baked in the oven, I noticed that the spoon floating in the soapy water had taken on an almost supernatural mien.

My bike of the last six months, a beautiful, hand-painted (not by me) monster of the roads, died last week when several of the rear spokes decided to snap as I tried to accelerate out of my courtyard (yes, I have a courtyard). Although I was devastated to see its passing, many of my students feel less sympathetically. This was one of the conversations I had regarding my bike, several months ago, while it was still in top form.

13-year-old student: Hey Natan, nice bike!
Me: (thinking she's being sincere) Thanks. I like it too.
13-year-old student: Where'd you get it?
Me: A family over in Castelleone.
13-year-old student: I thought you'd say the dumpster.
Me: ...

I got totally burned. By a 13-year-old.

Last week, I spent four days on a school trip in Rome. On the final night, several of the students went to a discoteca, while several others paid for a limousine ride around the ancient city. The students in the limo, accompanied by one of the other teachers (not a lowly language assistant, but a real, adult, full-of-responsibility teacher) told me the next day that they passed the time sipping on a couple bottles of champagne. With their teacher sitting with them the entire time, who even joined them for a toast in the beginning. The students at the discoteca, also accompanied by a teacher, shared a similar story.

I wrote about this a bit at one point last year, but I want to come back to it again. Can you imagine that in the U.S.? Because there's no real drinking age here (in theory it's 16, some supermarkets say it's 18, but nobody really adheres to either of the two), the rules of drinking, especially while participating on school functions, are radically different. Kids don't hide the fact that they drink from their teachers, and sometimes, they even participate in the act together. And nobody bats a ciglia (I just learned how to say eyelash and wanted to flaunt it). On the trip in Rome, none of the kids got drunk, and none of them did anything stupid or irresponsible. Of course, the country is not perfect; Italy too must cope with kids who drink too much, drunk driving accidents, house parties, etc.. But far less than in the U.S..

Would lowering the drinking age in the U.S. suddenly alleviateAmerica's binge drinking problems? No. At least, not suddenly. At this point, excessive drinking is so engrained in young American culture that an increased access to booze would lead to immediate catastrophe, on the roads, at high school parties, and beyond. The president emeritus of my college outright disagrees, and my brother, while not going that far, notes that the law presents some tricky questions. But being here definitely makes me wonder if a lower drinking age in the U.S. might yield, with time, positive benefits.

On the other side, England's drinking age is 18, and though I've never witnessed it personally, I've heard that British kids drink just as much as American kids, if not more. So it's hard to say.

Something to chew on as you check out these pics from Rome.

Some real old stuff.

Lone tree on the Palatine hill.

Fontana di Trevi.

Still Trevi.

Rainbow #1 of the day. Kind of ridiculous.

Rainbow #2, taken with St. Peter's at my back.

Pencil erasers, manual labor, and lobsters

2010-03-08T13:27:00.015+01:00

I actually wrote this a week ago, then decided not to publish it, because I was embarrassed of its content. In the pursuit of journalistic integrity (read: last night I watched Julie and Julia, and got inspired to blog) I've since changed my mind. But let me lay down another quick preface: I don’t spend all day thinking explicit thoughts or telling lewd stories. Really. I don't. But given my February post about making errors in Italian, I just couldn't resist.

That said,

One of the teachers here at school was with Michael, alone, in her office. The teacher had written something with a pencil that she wanted to modify, but she didn’t have an eraser. Pausing, she looked at Michael in the eye, winked,* and said: “Hey Michael, do you have a rubber?” He says he was able to respond with a straight face. I don’t believe him.

*She didn’t actually wink.

Later that week, he and I were standing in front of the American Week class conducting a Jeopardy review game. One of the students was trying to explain the types of jobs that the many uneducated Italian immigrants performed when they first arrived in the U.S., only she was struggling to remember the term. “Ahh, how do you call them… lavori manuali… yes… jobs they did with their… hands … you know… hand jobs?” Quickly, we told her that the early Italian immigrants – at least most of them – were not sustaining their families via those.

(A more PG example): As an answer to the bonus question of the American Week test, one of my students wrote that it was a decision about lobsters, and not lobbyists, that caused Obama to chastise the Supreme Court during his State of the Union.

It’s nice to know I’m not the only one here struggling to communicate.

Bumper sticker idea

2010-03-08T13:07:00.007+01:00

I’m not sure why this just came to mind, but it did, and now I have to write about it.

Preface: I swear I'm not an insensitive person. I'm just a committed (you can be committed without being prolific) blogger attempting to share his real-life Italian teaching experiences with the world (ok. a small group of friends and family).

This fall, I taught a unit with the second-years about issues of global water access, especially in developing countries. As part of the unit, we watched a short video about this team of service-workers who build latrines in African communities that lack basic hygienic services. In the video, this guy talks about how public defecation causes the introduction of nasty bacteria into a community’s water, the consumption of which can cause terrible, even fatal, diseases. As the video shows, an action as simple as building an outhouse can save lives, while also fostering community development.

As with most of these units I teach, the students concluded our time together by demonstrating what they’d learned in a small test. In one of the questions, I asked students to explain why public defecation was so dangerous in the countries we had looked at. The best answers talked about how when citizens of more developed countries, such as Italy and the U.S., get sick with maladies like diarrhea, they can usually recover quickly via simple rest, maybe some over-the-counter medicine, and – most importantly – hydration. In communities that lack clean water, such recovery services are not available, and people suffer, even die, from the medical complications that ensue.

One of the students, in an effort to convey this idea, wrote the following four words:

“Public defecation is deadly!!”

Just like that, complete with the two exclamation points.

That was his entire answer.

Though a bit too concise to earn him full credit, it did cause me to chuckle when I read it at my kitchen table that evening. Not because the subject matter is funny; of course, it’s serious, and tragic. Despite that, the way this student had chosen to address such a serious and tragic matter was, I thought, hilarious. My former roommate Jimmy, a fellow English assistant in Crema, was also grading tests, and the two of us were going back and forth, exchanging tales of our students’ interpretations and adaptations of the English language. This one in particular ignited a lively conversation, not because the sentence was grammatically unsound, but because it seemed like the student was trying to spread a message to the world.

After a couple minutes, Jimmy and I decided that “Public defecation is deadly!!” needed to be on a bumper sticker. Can you imagine it? You’re driving north on I-95 when some SUV pulls in front of you. On the left side of the bumper you read something like “Free Tibet” or “Save Darfur.” In the middle, you read that “My daughter is an honors student,” followed by “This car climbed Mount Washington.” Finally, waiting for you on the right, you learn that “Public defecation is deadly!!”

We thought it was a reasonable idea.

Maybe you had to be there.

Italians and baseball

2010-03-08T11:47:00.018+01:00

Two weeks ago, Michael and I taught school's second annual American Week seminar – a so-advertised “full-immersion” in U.S. history, politics, literature, music, art, sports, and beyond. Last year, the seminar was two weeks long and included three full classes of the language-focused fifth-years, but this year it was cut down to just a week, and was offered only to the students from those three language-focused fifth-year classes who didn’t have any unsatisfactory marks to make up in their regular materials.

Because Italian schools don't believe in breaking students up based on varying abilities in different subjects – the same group of 25-30 kids studies all of their subjects together, regardless of who excels at math or struggles with foreign languages – I usually see a wide range of levels in each group of kids I teach. During American Week, however, we had what was essentially the first-ever “honors section” to walk the corridors of I.T.C.G.P.A.C.L.E. Luca Pacioli. And it was awesome.

For 21 hours over the course of five days (the school week at Pacioli consists of 33 teaching hours, but the American Week participants still had to spend some time moving forward in their normal courses), we got to work solely with this group of 32 motivated, engaged, bright, and more-or-less-good-at-English students who asked pertinent and informed questions, listened to us when we lectured, took notes, willingly debated controversial issues, and even studied, sort of, for the review test that they had to take on the final day. By far the most satisfying week of teaching I've had here in Italy.

The highlight came on Tuesday afternoon when we tried to teach the group how to play baseball in the gym. The P.E. department at Pacioli actually has a great set of baseball gear, complete with bats, gloves, even rubber bases. The only problem is that nobody really knows how to use any of it. I’d like to say that after an hour and a half with Michael and me these kids were getting the hang of it, and that the equipment was put to good use. But I don’t want to be dishonest. So I’ll put it this way: Italians are great at many things. Cooking, art, talking about politics, playing soccer, singing opera – the list is long and accomplished. Learning how to play baseball in gym class is not on it.

Granted, it wasn’t my students’ fault. Baseball is a ridiculous game, full of complications and exceptions that make it difficult for anybody to learn, even without the additional difficulties of a language barrier. In the U.S., our daily lexicon is full of baseball jargon (three strikes and your out… homeruns… “way out of left field”), which makes explaining the rules to somebody who’s never played it a bit more manageable. Trying to teach a group of people entirely unfamiliar with the sport how to play it, though, was like how it would be trying to explain the theory of evolution to somebody who knows for a fact that the world was created 10,000 years ago, or the theory of anthropogenic climate change to certain U.S. state legislatures. Good thing we don’t ever have to do that.

The general concept of “hit the ball then run around the bases” was simple enough for the students to understand, but the problem was that nobody could really figure out when to stop running. As soon as the batters made contact with the ball, they would set all of their hopes on rounding the bases and arriving back at home plate; something as insignificant as a groundout or a pop fly wasn’t going to stop them. As a result, Michael and I had to play the role of traffic directors, screaming “stop!” and “run!” and “no, no, go back!” throughout the afternoon.

Needless to say, baseball with the students was a hit.

On learning Italian

2010-02-08T14:21:00.008+01:00

After spending 12 of the last 16 months here in Italy, I’m beginning to experience these moments of great linguistic satisfaction. I’ll string together a couple fluid sentences, use a real cool grammatical structure, flaunt some pedantic vocab word that I, as a non-native speaker, have no business knowing. But then, two minutes later, I’ll struggle with the simplest concepts.

The other day I was talking to a friend, and I mentioned that something was a bit “euphemistic.” The word in Italian, eufemistico, is so similar to the English version that it’s not a particularly difficult one to remember. But my friend, not knowing the likeness, was impressed. Until later in the conversation, when I continued to talk about “the plastic things that move on the front glass of the car to clean away the rain and snow,” because I didn’t know how to say “windshield wipers.”

Learning a language when you're no longer a small kid is strange, in that it's spotty; your vocabulary can be extremely specific in some areas, and embarrassingly limited in others. Both last year and this year, I taught a unit here at school on renewable energies. Consequently, my green technology vocabulary isn’t bad. Additionally, spending a good chunk of my time hanging out with a 13-year-old former host sister, I’ve developed a decent grasp of adolescent jargon. Ask me, however, to talk about farming, or sea food, or simple fashion – topics that a six-year-old Italian could handle – and I’ll be toast.

Italian is a crazy language, full of nuances that make it beautiful, but tricky to master. Tavolo, for example, is the word for a table. As soon as that table is set and ready to be eaten upon, however, it becomes tavola. I now understand the distinction, but only after tens of evenings of mistaking one for the other. Another example: A goccio is a drop of something that you will drink. A goccia, instead, is a “drop,” in the generic, physical sense – that is, a small amount of some liquid, usually shaped like a tear. So, if you want to drink just a drop of wine, you ask for solo un goccio. If a drop of that very same wine falls on and stains your shirt, it has become a goccia.

Wild, right?

As a result of such subtleties, many of my speaking errors are nothing more than innocent mistakes, easily fixed by the person I’m talking to. Or, if I don’t know a word, but can explain an idea, the person can tell me how to say it, and we’ll harmlessly move forward. (Windshield wipers, I now know, are called tergicristalli.)

Other times, my mistakes or lapses in vocabulary are more problematic, and will limit my companion’s comprehension of the point I’m trying to get across. Often, when I try to get into more complicated discourses, or when I get really excited about something, the first response I’ll receive is an eyebrow-furrowing, followed by a “Natan, sorry, but I didn’t understand a word of what you just said.”

And even other times, I manage to outright humiliate myself.

If you’ve ever studied Spanish, you may have discovered the awkward consequences of trying to use the word “embarrassed.” Embarazada, contrary to intuition, does not mean “embarrassed,” but rather “pregnant.” My friend Alex (don’t mind the androgynous name; he’s a dude), traveling in South America, once made an unintentional reference in Spanish to the male reproductive system. When his blunder was revealed by another American friend with greater Spanish proficiency, Alex, as the legend goes, turned bright red, then attempted to apologize.

Lo siento, he said. Soy muy embarazado. (“I'm sorry. I'm very pregnant.”)

Of course, this didn’t help.

I’d like to say that Alex’s type of mistake is something I’ve never known personally, but in a language in which letters can drastically change significances, gaffes are inevitable.

Some illustrations.

Zoccolo, ending in an “o,” is a clog. Zoccola, ending in an “a,” is a prostitute (likely derived from the clogs that prostitutes used to wear back in the day to attract attention on the streets they worked).

This past December, as I drove to a hotel /wellness center in the Dolomites with my boss and her family to go skiing, the following conversation ensued:

Paola: “What’d you pack this year, Nathan?”

Me: “Well, last year, it was a hassle not having anything to use in the hotel when I was hanging out at night, so this year, I got a little creative.”

Paola: “Yeah? How so?”

Me: “I brought a pair of prostitutes.”

Paola: “A WHAT?!?”

Me: “A pair of prostitutes. You know, like, for after we go in the sauna, or to have at dinner. They’re beautiful. You’ll love them.”

Another conversation I had, this one in October of 2008, about peanut butter:

Friend: “So you like peanut butter, huh?”

Me: “I love it.”

Friend: “Do you have a favorite brand back in America?”

Me: “Of course. Skippy. Some people prefer the all-natural peanut butters, which are probably way healthier, but for me, it’s gotta be Skippy.”

Friend: “What do they put in it that makes it not as healthy as the organic ones?”

Me: “Condoms.”

Friend: “WHAT?!?”

Me: “Condoms. Lots and lots of condoms. You know. The things they put in foods to make them last longer.”

Turns out, the English word, “preservatives,” in Italian becomes conservanti. Preservativi, I quickly learned from my friend, are something very different.

Another word to use with caution: eccitato, which means “excited,” but usually in the sense of physical arousal. One of the first – and probably most memorable, for her – conversations I ever had with my intro Italian teacher three years ago was about how “turned on” I was about the upcoming weekend’s heavy snow forecast.

Not all of my blunders, of course, have sexual implications. They’re just the most fun to write about. But there have been many, many others. In Italian, the word for “grapefruit” is pompelmo. “Firefighter” is pompiere. On more than one occasion, I’ve told listeners that throughout my most formative childhood years, I dreamed of being either a professional soccer player or a grapefruit.

When these blunders escape from the bowels of my mind, all I can do is laugh (as soon as I figure out why everybody else is laughing), learn from my mistake, and move on. The people that hear them, though, usually seem to have a harder time letting them go. Upon our return from the mountains in December, Paola told everybody about the brown, suede, Birkenstock prostitutes I brought into the mountains for heightened post-sauna comfort and relaxation.

What can I say? They did the trick.

15 minutes of Italian fame

2010-02-03T11:40:00.004+01:00

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http://www.cremaonline.it/articolo.asp?ID=9920

The principal of my school here is convinced that I graduated from Harvard, and continues to tell this to journalists who write about the program; this is the third article in the past two years that has said as much. Apparently, not many folks in Italy have heard of the 2400-student, central Vermont college of Middlebury.

President Liebowitz, if you're reading this, I apologize for letting such a great opportunity for global publicity go botched.

Quick thought about babies in movies

2010-02-01T16:45:00.004+01:00

Let me paint a scene for you. You’re watching a movie, and at some point, there’s supposed to be a newborn baby. The tiny little infant actor will be spitting up, sleeping, laughing, breast feeding, or crying (those are the only five actions available to newborn babies in movies), and you’ll be thinking, “wow, that’s a cute little baby.” But not the person next to you. Nay, the person next to you will all-knowingly say something like, “Who are they trying to fool? There’s nooo waaay that’s a newborn.”

Unbelievably, this scene happens just about every time I watch a movie in which there’s supposed to be a recently-birthed character. I had hoped that the trend wouldn’t carry over to Italy, but last night, as I watched Baciami ancora at the theater in Crema, there was a birth scene, followed by a mother-nursing-her-baby scene, followed by a baby-sleeping-as-the-mother-lovingly-watches scene, after which the audience member next to me said to her friend, making no effort to hide her disdain, “definitely not a newborn. Look at how big it is.”

If you, dear reader, have ever said or thought anything like this, I should apologize. Because I’m about to make fun of you.

WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU EXPECT?!

Do you really want James Cameron to sneak into hospitals late at night and film hour-old babies? Or do you want mothers to offer their children straight from the womb to the talent scouts? Suspend your disbelief for like three minutes! You can do it!

Sorry.

I had to get that out.

Derby

2010-02-01T11:54:00.008+01:00

I’ve been lucky enough to witness some spectacular moments at Fenway Park. Remember the Varitek A-Rod brawl? I was in right field. Pokey Reese’s 2004 inside-the-park homerun? The ball rolled just in front of where I was sitting as he rounded second base. I’ve seen Papelbon saves, Ortiz walk-offs, even a few victorious playoff games. One time, when I was in elementary school, I saw two fans run from the stands to first base and rip off their shirts, revealing the giant letters M and O painted on their stomachs as Mo Vaughn chuckled nearby. At all of these contests the excitement was, needless to say, abundant. Yet none of these Boston moments compares to the experience I had last weekend watching the derby between F.C. Internazionale Milano – more commonly, Inter – and A.C. Milan.

A little over 100 years ago, the two teams were the same entity. When, in 1908, they split to form separate clubs, one of the greatest rivalries in all of sports (or so I’m told; I’m no sports historian) was born. The relationship between the two teams is made even more unique given that they share the same home stadium. Imagine how additionally intense Red Sox-Yankees games would be if New York and Massachusetts were one single state and both teams played all of their home games at the same ballpark.

Historically, Milan appealed more to the working classes, whereas Inter was the team of northern Italian society’s middle and upper crusts. Now, you can find neighbors, best friends, coworkers, even family members with conflicting loyalties. The two regular season games a year always sell out San Siro’s 80,000 seats, which makes the derby, no matter the particular year’s standings, an inevitably thrilling game to see live. The match I saw was made especially sweet by the fact that a Milan victory would have effectively tied them with Inter for first place in the league’s standings. (A win is worth three points; although Inter was six points ahead, they had played an additional game.)

Despite the sharing of the stadium, each of the two derbies still designates home and away teams. Because Inter was the home team, San Siro held far more Interisti than Milanisti. As we – Michael (the other Pacioli assistant), myself, and our two Italian friends – approached the stadium on foot, from a half a mile away, we could suddenly hear the roar of an Inter chant break out. In perfect unison, tens of thousands of soccer-crazed Italians (which is, I suppose, redundant; I could have just written “Italians”) began yelling something indistinct but undoubtedly not-nice towards the Milan fans. Have you ever been at a rock concert at which the band will stop singing mid-song and let the audience continue the lyrics together? These chants sounded like a mix of that, and hurricane-force thunder. They would persist for the next three hours.

Just outside the stadium, Michael asked me to adjust his scarf (he was wearing thick winter gloves and lacked the requisite manual dexterity). An avid Milanista, he was wearing a red and black Milan scarf. I, instead, was sporting Inter colors, not because I really cared who won, but because the secretary at my school is a huge Interista and had forced me to wear her son’s scarf to the game. As I stopped to fix Michael’s garb, he held our beers (in Italy, you can drink in public, and the four of us were enjoying a very cold (it was below freezing) brew on our walk to the stadium).

So, there I was – an ostensible Inter fan – fixing the scarf of a Milan fan, while he held both of our beers. I wasn’t thinking about the symbolism at the time, but as another group of fans walked by, one of them, amazed by the scene, remarked to his friends, “Wow. That there is true friendship.”

I had heard from everybody I’d told about my derby tickets that San Siro was an architectural spectacle. I hadn’t expected it to be any different from the other sports stadiums I’d seen, but of course, everybody was right. The stadium is made of three gigantic rings of seats that wrap their way around the field, entirely uninterrupted. Fantastically steep, it was designed so that there wouldn’t be a single bad spot in the house. The result is that no matter where you’re sitting, it feels like you’re suspended up above the field looking straight down onto the action.

After finding our seats – just left of center in the first ring of the Inter curve, 20 rows back from the field – and taking tens of pictures of my surroundings, I proceeded to watch 97 minutes of wild and crazy soccer. Inter, despite receiving two red cards, won 2 to 0, and even stopped a Ronaldinho penalty kick. Throughout, people lit noise bombs and flares. They screamed horrible curse words at the players, referees, and opposing fans. Grown men – established professionals of every sort – yelled like slightly-more-deeply-voiced schoolgirls at a Jonas Brothers concert. For the most part, I passively observed, refraining from the madness, but when Inter scored its goals, I couldn’t help but lose my composure and shriek with the thousands of people around me.

By far, the most rousing spectator experience of my life.

San Siro, just before the players came out.

Inter goalies warming up.

Ten thousand Milan fans coming together to send a message across the stadium.

The Inter fans' response. I couldn't, where I was sitting, see what was written, but I could well appreciate how monstrously big the sign was. From top to bottom, it must be at least 30 feet.

Inter 1, Milan 0.

Milan's flares. Absolutely nuts. It looked -- looks, still -- like the stadium was on fire.

Inter 2, Milan 0. (These were the friends I went to the game with.)

Finally, my permesso di soggiorno

2010-01-21T10:55:00.004+01:00

I managed to pick it up in late December, shortly before returning to the States. Even though the photo makes me look like the offspring of Osama Bin Laden and Charlize Theron's character from Monster, I couldn't be prouder.

Traveling back to the USA

2010-01-18T11:42:00.007+01:00

On December 28, 2009, after several days of Christmas celebrations in Castelleone, I returned to the States for a brief reentry into my country of birth and citizenship. The main reason for my journey back was my mother’s 30^th (yes, she was a scientific anomaly) birthday celebration at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In addition, however, I was able to see a couple former professors in Vermont, some friends for New Year’s in Maine, and even an ophthalmologist in Copley Square. A productive and thoroughly satisfying two weeks.

My luggage

In order to make this journey, I first needed to arrive at the airport. My departure time from Malpensa was for 10:00am on the 28th. It being an international flight just three days after the Detroit terrorist attempt, I wanted to arrive at least two and half hours before the flight. And to accomplish that, I would have needed to leave a train from Crema at 4:30am. Only that there are no trains from Crema at 4:30am. So it came to be that I found myself at the Malpensa airport on the evening of December 27th, my sleeping bag in hand, looking for a little nook to settle into for the night.

Initially my search proved fruitless, and was only further hindered by my two large duffels full of ski gear and edible gifts to bring back to the states. After a bit of inquiry, I learned that there was a luggage check in the airport. When I found it, it turned out that the rates weren’t even as exorbitant as I’d feared: €3.50 per bag per day. In my mind, €7.00 for a much improved prospect at a decent night’s sleep were totally worth the equivalent losses in airport pizza that they represented. So I unloaded my bags from the cart (in Italy, you get all of your money back as soon as you return the baggage carts; isn’t that great? At Newark you pay $5.00, which you never see again, but you don’t even get to keep the cart, which seems like the only way the whole affair could be financially reasonable), and handed them over to the attendant. He asked me when I would be picking them up. Tomorrow morning at 6:00am (precisely when it opened), I said.

Baggage attendant: “OK. That’ll be 14 euro.”

Me: “No, it says right there 3.50 per bag per day. So, 7 euro.”

Baggage attendant: “Yes. And your bags will be here for two days. 14 euro.”

Me: “That’s crazy! They’ll be her for less than 10 hours!” (It was 8:00pm.)

Baggage attendant: “Yes. Today is the 27^th. Tomorrow is the 28^th. That’s two days.”

Me: Exasperated sigh.

Baggage attendant: Equally exasperated sigh. He hates his job.

If there had been a sign somewhere that explained to potential customers that overnight storage counted as two days, I think I probably would have been fine with the rule. But there was no sign. (At least that I saw. Is it possible that this rule was written somewhere and I just missed it? Of course not. I see everything. I’m never wrong.) Because I had been expecting 7 euro, only to be told 14 euro, I was indignant, and refused to concede to the man. So I (politely, because I’m terrified of burning bridges no matter where I go) left, my bags in tow.

About 25 minutes later, I realized that I had to go to the bathroom. Badly. (It turns out that I would spend the next few days enjoying some sort of very-not-fun-to-travel-by-yourself-across-the-Atlantic-with stomach bug.) Here I was in the airport with four bags: two backpacks and two much larger duffels (one full of skis). It was already hard enough traversing my way back and forth across the airport searching for places to sleep; it would have been impossible to lug all of this stuff into the public restrooms. Furthermore, as we all know, it’s strictly forbidden to leave baggage unattended, and I wasn’t about to have my carefully packaged, freshly-made-by-an-old-Italian-master-chef-and-birthday-gift-for-my-mother ravioli* thrown away for fear that they might contain traces of explosives or anthrax.

So I caved in. I returned to the baggage check and dropped off my bags. The next morning, precisely at 6:00am, I very unceremoniously paid my 14 euro, then headed to the Continental gate to check-in.

*The ravioli, more specifically tortelli cremaschi, are a delicious local culinary treat. I realize that bringing them back into the states goes against FDA or TSA or whatever-government-agency-it-may-be rules, but I had to try, because they’re delicious, and it was my mom’s (and a few days later my dad’s) birthday. In the airport, customs gave me no trouble at all, but in the end, customs karma came back to bite me in the culo when I tried to prepare the tortelli for my family back in Newton. Turns out, during the trip, all of the fresh pasta had effectively melted together, and when we tried to break it apart, the filling of each tortello broke, and later boiled off into the pasta, leaving the dish flavorless and my smuggling efforts wasted.

My sleeping nook

In the end, no longer weighed down by my larger luggage, I was able to find the best airport sleeping corner that exists in all of the airports in the world. The tile floor was a bit rough on my hips (I didn’t, alas, have a sleeping pad), but in terms of privacy, darkness, and security of my luggage, it couldn’t have been beat.

(See pics, below)

Plane etiquette

Have you ever been sleeping in a window seat, your head nicely propped against the airplane-provided pillow that’s nestled between you and the window, only to realize when you wake up that the pillow has dropped into the gap between your seat and the wall? This happened to me on my flight from Milan to Newark. When I looked behind me, still half-asleep, I saw that the pillow was sitting there, just behind my seat, next to the feet of the person behind me. “I’ll get it when I’m more fully awake,” I thought, and drifted back to sleep.

When I woke more forcefully an hour or so later, I looked back towards where my pillow had been. Only to discover that the person in the row behind me was using my pillow. MY PILLOW. His was probably stashed in the overhead bin, still wrapped in the original plastic.

An ethical dilemma immediately ensued. What to do? Do I ask him for it back? Do I grab it from him when he’s asleep and then quickly hide it in my row so that he thinks it was all just a strangely realistic dream? Do I turn on the “alert the flight attendant” light and ask for professional intervention?

In the end, I did none of the above. Once again, I gave into the man. And for the rest of the flight, I was without my little plane pillow and unable to sleep to my full potential.

Seatback artifice

You know how at the end of a flight they ask you to return your seatbacks and tray-tables to their fully upright and locked positions? I figured out a way to beat the system. At least the seatback half of the system. Usually, they figure you out because your seatback is still reclined, whereas that of the much-more-rule-abiding** person next to you is fully returned to the proper angle.

However, what I’ve observed in my travels is that if the person next to you is still sleeping, and his seatback is still reclined, you can match your seatback to his. And sometimes, because of the harmony between the two, you’ll go unnoticed. Depending on the flight attendant’s level of alertness/devotion to his or her job, this trick might not work. But I did manage to pull it off on my domestic flight from Newark to Boston. Give it a try sometime, and let me know how it goes.

**Yes, I realize that I’m into this whole connect-a-bunch-of-words-to-make-them-into-a-single-adjective thing. I don’t know what’s come over me. I also have no idea what the actual grammatical rule is, and whether I’m using it correctly. I just hope you don’t find it as convoluting as I find it fun to do. Because I’m enjoying it a lot.

My flight back to Italy:

After five fantastic days of skiing in Wyoming, I flew from Jackson to Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City to Newark, then Newark to Milan. At Jackson, after checking my bags, I purchased a tasty looking little jar of locally made raspberry jam to bring back to the host family in Italy. I was forgetting that when I got to Newark, I would have to re-pass through security before embarking on the international leg of my journey. When I got to the x-ray machines, I removed my sneakers, belt, and watch, took out my laptop, placed my zip-lock bag full of toiletries into a bin, etc. Of course, I totally forgot about the jam. When they asked me to step aside so they could search one of my bags, I genuinely had no idea what it was for. A misplaced stick of lip balm, perhaps (I once had to re-go through security for that), or a pocketknife (another mistake I’ve made***). When they pulled out the jam, I couldn’t believe my error. It was a beautiful bottle, nice and fresh and bright red, and it was going to be devastating to see it thrown away.

The TSA lady, a very kind woman, perused the jar’s label, saw that it contained 11 ounces, and told me she would have to throw it away. Our conversation proceeded like this.

Me: You really have to?

TSA lady: Yes. Regulation. You can only bring a maximum of three ounces of liquids per item. The container says that this has 11.

Me: Really?

TSA lady: Really.

Me: What if I eat eight ounces worth of jam?

TSA lady: (Not even a smile) Nope. We go by the printed container size.

Me: Well, you should bring it home, then, ‘cause I’m sure it’s really good jam.

TSA lady: Can’t. Everything we confiscate gets thrown away.

Me: That’s such a waste.

TSA lady: I suppose.

Me: (Thinking maybe she’s warming up to me) You’re sure I can’t just bring the jam with me?

TSA lady: Yes.

So I left, sans jam. Of course, the rules all make reasonable sense, and I have nothing against them, nor against the TSA lady, who was surprisingly kind, despite my cheekiness. It was nonetheless a low point in my journey home.

***One time, I was flying from Logan to Colorado with a bunch of friends during Middlebury’s February vacation. Passing through security, TSA found that I had a small pocketknife in my bag. Given that I’d already checked my bags, they told me that my options were either to throw the knife away, or mail it out of the airport, which I could do at the mailing station near the entrance to security. I went to this mailing station, only to discover that it would cost much more than the value of the knife to mail it the 15 miles from Logan Airport to my home in Newton. I was ready to throw it out, when an idea came to me. What if I hid the pocketknife somewhere in the airport, then picked it up a week later upon my return? Accompanied by a friend, we exited the security checkpoint and began searching for a place to stash the knife. The first place we came upon, a small newsstand and souvenir shop, seemed perfect. While my friend talked to the vendor, I hid the pocketknife in the very back of one of the shelves, behind a large stack of mugs that I figured couldn’t possibly sell out in the seven days I would be gone.

The knife hid, we went through security once more, boarded our flight, and enjoyed an excellent trip. A week later, when I came back, I immediately went to the souvenir shop, rather optimistically, only to discover that they had reorganized all of the products on all of the shelves. My knife was nowhere to be found.

I mention this story because, in that moment at Newark, I considered hiding the jam somewhere in the airport and picking it up when I return this summer. If the line at security hadn’t been so long, I may have actually attempted it. Maybe. Or at least called my friend in Hoboken and told him to come to the airport so that I could give the jam to him. But the line at security was almost endless, and my flight was to board in less than half an hour. So, for the third time in as many weeks, I succumbed to the man, and threw out my host fam’s organic, Wyoming-made raspberry jam.

My final thought before ending this way-too-long post:

When I arrived at the gate at Newark (still on my trip back to Italy), I realized that I smelled terrible. I’d already been on two flights that day, we’d woken up at 4:15am to get to the airport in Jackson on-time, I hadn’t showered, I’d been overdressed, I’d done a lot of walking with a reasonably heavy backpack, and, in general, I kind of smell bad, even without all of these other excuses. I was about to throw on some deodorant right there in the gate (my Old Spice Classic Scent is actually, according to the label, 3.1 something ounces, but thankfully the TSA lady didn’t notice this. If you use Old Spice stick deodorant, beware the next time you fly, as you may be putting your toiletries, and your hygiene, at risk) when I rethought the situation. Do I really want to be that guy? The guy that everybody sees putting on deodorant before his flight? What if the person I have to sit next to were to see me? She would spend the entire flight judging me not by my personality, nor by my choice of programs from the in-flight entertainment system, but by the fact that I’d put on deodorant, publicly.

Glad that I’d realized my almost mistake, I went a few gates down, applied my Old Spice (still as clandestine as possible), let those people judge me, then returned to my actual gate, smelling awesome. Nobody saw me. All was well.

My nook. The flash makes it look like it was well lit in there, but check out the next picture to understand just how perfectly dark it was.

Great sleeping light. Seriously. Considering I was in an airport, you couldn't get any better. Keep this spot in mind if you ever need to spend an evening at Malpensa. Third floor, corner near the food court.

Sunrise on the 28th.

My dad looking stylish in front of a Wyoming lake of clouds.

Glorious.

New beginnings

2010-01-18T11:13:00.006+01:00

One of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips depicts a classroom conversation between Calvin and Susie, who have both just received graded tests from Miss Wormwood. It goes like this:

Calvin: "What grade did you get?"
Susie: "I got an 'A'."
Calvin: "Really? Boy, I'd hate to be you. I got a 'C'."
Susie: "Why on earth would you rather get a 'C' than an 'A'?"
Calvin: "I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations."

That, dear readers, as sort of how I’ve been treating this blog. Because I posted so seldom, you were always surprised to finally see new text. And as a result, you didn’t even bother to judge said new text’s quality. Essentially, as long as I made you wait long enough between posts and, in doing so, kept your expectations low, I never had to produce anything substantive.

But that was the old me. The me of 2009. Now, it’s 2010. A new decade (for people who don’t actually think it’s a new decade, you can take your eyes to my father’s blog (http://trudalane.net/2010/01/01/why-im-no-fun-at-parties/); here you’re not wanted). I’m a new man. A new blogger. I’ve found the blogging Jesus, of sorts, and he’s shown me the light.

So, here we go. A post a week, on average, through the end of May. That’s my goal. Have I made this goal before and failed to realize it? Yes. Is my credibility lower than a Bar Mitzvah party limbo champion? Much lower. But I’m going to try my best.

(Anybody who’s seen The Rock as many times as I have knows that Sean Connery doesn’t think much of people “trying their best.” Maybe he can forgive me.)

Okay.

I’m off.

The first couple months, in pictures

2009-12-11T09:44:00.008+01:00

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If you click on the images, you can see them in a much larger format. Enjoy.

My first meal in the new apartment. Not having any cooking utensils, silverware, plates or bowls, I had to get creative using the two items of kitchen equipment I had purchased last year: a giant wooden stirring spoon and a tupperware container.

Walking home one night, I came to the intersection closest to my house and saw this scene.

Looking closer, I discovered there were hundreds of candles lining the street outside the nearby church. Still don't know what was being celebrated, but it was a beautiful surprise to come back to.

Proudest accomplishment of my life?

Don't let their smiles fool you. They thought it was horrible.

A church basking in Castelleone's early evening light.

Ski trip to the Dolomites, year two.

A bit crowded, at times (those black specks are all people), but worth it.

Glorious.

A week prior to our arrival there hadn't been any snow. Fortunately for us, it dumped over a meter just before we showed up, but because all of that snow fell onto a base of grass, these small little avalanches popped up all over the mountain.

Above treeline.

The classic Dolomitian glow. For about seven minutes as the sun sets, they turn bright pink.

This particular day we skied until after 5:00pm.

Yes.

Permesso di soggiorno

2009-12-01T13:07:00.007+01:00

Here’s what I’ve had to go through in order to get my permesso di soggiorno – a permit of stay, of sorts, that declares my presence in Italy completely legit. The permesso, here, is a nebulous concept. It’s unclear who needs it, how to get it, what it looks like, even – some say it’s a paper document, others insist it’s more of a plastic card, and even others claim it to be a magical Italian elf that follows you around assuring your legality via interpretive song and dance to those who doubt it. Regardless of the permesso’s form, I didn’t pursue one last year for two reasons. First, I figured my visa – stamped in my passport by the Italian consulate of Boston and declaring that I was legally entitled to be in Italy for exactly 300 days after my arrival on September 24, 2008 – would be enough to get me through any problems I might have encountered. Second, I had been told by many that the permesso was a waste of money and time, mainly because nobody would ever ask for it, but also becuase even if I did apply, it would take so long to process all of my paperwork that the permesso probably wouldn’t even arrive before I departed at the end of the school year.

This year, however, I decided to go through with the process, not so much because I’d changed my opinion on its utility, but because when I sat down for the first time with the people who arranged the details of my current living situation, the second question they asked me was, “You’ve applied for your permesso di soggiorno, right?” After assuring them that I of course had applied for my permesso di soggiorno, the next day, I began the process.

All in all, obtaining my permesso has involved nine different stages, each of varying duration, distance from Crema, physical prowess, and mental stamina. And that’s just so far. The tenth and final step – the permesso di soggiorno Agro Crag, if you will (any Nickelodeon Guts fans out there? I hope so, otherwise this is embarrassing) – still remains. Said final step should – touching iron, of course – be the easiest one yet, but I won’t believe it until I’ve got my piece of paper / plastic card / interpretive-dancing-and-singing elf successfully in my physical possession. In theory, I could have gone to pick it up this past Saturday, but I had private lessons, so I’ll have to go another time.

Without further ado, I leave you with your very own ten steps towards easy and efficient permesso di soggiorno success. Now you, too, can join the fun and apply for your very own.

Enjoy, and good luck.

Step 1: Go to the post office and pick up the application. To do this, you must first wait in line, which you’ll do politely for five and a half minutes, unsure of where the line begins or ends, before remembering that the post offices in Italy require you to push a button on a machine near the doorway that gives you a paper ticket identifying, officially, your place among the other people in line. Actually, a very nice system that helps you avoid those awkward “who got here first?” interactions with strangers. The funny thing, you’ll notice, is that nobody bothers to sit down in the provided chairs to wait their turn. People, it seems, are so used to fighting for spots in such lines that they’ll stand in the post office lobby, clutching their paper tickets with white, angry knuckles and staring anxiously at the neon numbers counting upwards on the NBA-scoreboard-style counter in the center of the office. When it’s finally your turn, you’ll go to the postal worker and ask for the application, only to learn that there are, in fact, several buttons on that paper ticket emitting machine near the doorway, and that you pushed the wrong one, and must redo the process. On try number two you will get it right, go to a different window, and finally receive the documents to proceed.

Step 2: Reading the documents back at school, you’ll see that one of them requires a marco da bollo. Having heard stories from permesso applicants of years past, you’ll already know that a marco da bollo is an official, government-issued stamp that you must purchase not at the post office, where you foolishly assume you would get an official, government-issued stamp, but in fact at one of the tobacco distributors in town. Proud of yourself for being so permesso savvy, you’ll go straight to the tobacco distributor and spend $14.92 on your very own marco da bollo.

Step 3: Once finished filling out the application forms in either black or blue pen, you’ll go to the photocopy room at school to make the as-requested photocopies of your official documents, including, reasonably enough, your passport, which you’ll wisely bring to school with you that morning. Just as you did when you applied for your visa back in the states, you’ll photocopy all of the passport’s relevant pages – that is, the front page with your name and personal information, the page with your visa, and the page with your entrance stamp.

Step 4: All in the same day, you’ll return to the post-office, convinced that you’ll impress the postal workers with you dedication to immigration regulations. You’ll push the right button on your first try, wait (on foot, of course) with everybody else, stare at the NBA-scoreboard-style counter until it’s your turn, and then present both yourself and your well-organized folder of documents to the postal worker. When she gets to your passport photocopies, you’ll mentally notice that you did a really great job choosing an appropriate level of photocopy darkness. So content will you be with your artwork that you won’t realize the postal worker is addressing you.

“Where are the rest of the passport photocopies,” she’ll be saying.

Finally coming to. “What do you mean?”

“You need to photocopy all of the pages.”

“All of the pages?”

“Yes. All of the pages.”

You’ll chew on this for a second. “Even the blank ones at the end”

“Yes. Of course. And the covers as well. Front and back.”

Step 5: You’ll return to the school photocopy room and make photocopies of all 25 pages of your passport and both covers, thanking yourself that at least you have access to free photocopies.

Step 6: Tired of going to the post office in the city where you work, you’ll take a train back to your host family’s house and go to the post office in the city where you live, bringing your completed application, all of your photocopies, a new sense of purpose, and a refusal to give in to the man. As it turns out, the people at this post office will be much friendlier, and after demonstrating your expertise with the ticket emitting button machine, you’ll race through the rest of the process and be granted your first official permesso appointment – scheduled for 8:46am (yes, 8:46am) – at the questura in the province’s capital. In your case, this capital will be located about 40 km away, but you’ll be lucky because your appointment will be scheduled for the one day of the week that you don’t have morning classes.

Step 7: Three weeks later, you’ll hop on an early train to the province’s capital and report to the questura at 8:33am. There, you’ll find a cement lobby, empty of chairs but full of immigrants from all over the world funneling towards the glass doors leading into the immigration office. And this time there will be no ticket emitting button machine, so you’ll have to employ all the skills you learned in middle school lacrosse practices in order to stay on your feet and maintain your ground. Painstakingly slowly, you’ll nudge your way, with the rest of the crowd, towards the tip of the funnel. After an hour of waiting, and gently pushing, and waiting some more, you’ll be at the front of the line, and enter the glass doors. There, you’ll have a young immigration officer so fascinated by your American citizenship that he won’t even look at the documents you’ve worked so hard to prepare, and which have been sent there from the post office you first went to. Rather, he’ll accept them all, rush you through the fingerprinting process (yes, you’ll get fingerprinted), congratulate you on making it through the first step without any hitches, and then give you another appointment for three weeks later, once again at the questura in the capital of your province. Confused, you’ll say:

“Wait. But… sir… you just fingerprinted me. Why do I need to come back for more fingerprints? I’ll have to miss school… and take another train… and waste… I mean… use, not waste, use, an entire day. Can’t I do them now?”

And he’ll say:

“No. I’m sorry. Different machine, different fingerprints. Be sure not to miss your appointment.”

Step 8: Defeated, you’ll get a gelato in an attempt to cheer yourself up. (It’ll work pretty well.)

Step 9: Three weeks later, you’ll return to the capital of your province. This time, you’ll get there two hours early and be the first in line. You’ll take more fingerprints, as well as full-fledged palm and hand prints – before being congratulated on having completed the second stage of your permesso di soggiorno. You won’t bother telling the fingerprint technician that this is, in fact, the ninth stage. Instead, you’ll thank him politely, and leave. You'll note that even if you'd had all of the documents that second time you went to the post office, you still would have needed to make six different trips in order to complete the process. The first, to pick up the application. The second to purchase the marco da bollo at the tabacchi. The third to submit everything to the post office. The fourth the go to the questura to go over (for a second time) your documents, and then conduct fingerprints. The fifth time to return to the questura for more finger and hand prints. And the sixth time to pick the finished document up.

Step 10: You’ll go back to your home and blog about the experience so that your friends and family can understand how much incentive the system gives you to seeing these bureaucratic processes through.

Stuffed foods and English lessons

2009-11-09T15:49:00.009+01:00

Last night, as I sat down to eat fresh bell peppers stuffed with stale (as requested by the Sicilian cook book I was using as my guide) bread crumbs, ricotta cheese, ham, parsley, and parmigiano reggiano – Italy’s Cadillac of parmesan cheese – I realized something very important about myself: I love foods stuffed or cooked inside of other foods. Stuffed peppers are just one of many. Other favorites include chili in bread bowls, especially when eaten at high altitudes in ski lodges. Ice cream cakes, and, for that matter, cones. Stuffed eggplants. Hamburgers that have blue or cheddar cheese already hidden inside them. Thanksgiving turkeys. Chocolate covered bacon. (Never tried it, but just found out that it exists, and entirely sure that I would like it.) The list goes on. Bubba had his shrimp. Winnie had his honey. I’ve got my foods stuffed or cooked inside of other foods.

Since my last post, life has picked up significantly. I’ve moved into an apartment in the center of Crema and completely stocked it, from scratch, with cooking equipment – most of it very cheap and, as a result, only moderately functional. Items I went big on included a 13 euro stainless steal pasta strainer and a 19 euro, absolutely enormous, non-stick cauldron, of sorts, in which we've already made a giant batch of soup, a giant batch of chili, and several reasonably giant batches of pasta. It goes without saying that both of these investments are coming home in my duffelbags in June.

Outside of the kitchen, I’ve started teaching two English courses for doctors and nurses at the hospital, a conversation course for teachers at my school, and a full family's worth of private lessons every week on Saturday mornings. It's a riot. I give three back to back lessons, first with the 14-year-old daughter, then with the 8-year-old son, then with the father, who is also an orthopedic surgeon / student in my Wednesday night hospital course. After three to four hours of lessons, we all join the mother for a delightful Saturday afternoon feast, which entirely makes up for the inconvenience of having to work one of my precious two weekend mornings.

In addition to teaching, I’ve got a new (not to the world, but to me) kick-A bike, hand painted red and yellow by its previous owner and with brakes harder to initiate than an elementary school slow dance. (Hah.) I’ve even found two roommates, both American – one another English assistant at a different school in Crema, the other a friend from Middlebury who managed to get Italian citizenship this summer via the lineage of a grandmother and who wanted to come pay homage to his roots.

Though a good deal busier than I was when I left here last June, I’m enjoying the new teaching experiences – as well as their financial compensation – and grateful to not just be repeating (take that for a split infinitive, Chief Justice Roberts) the adventures I had last year. All in all, all is well. Over the last three weeks, I’ve spent considerable time preparing lesson plans and activities for the non Pacioli courses, which has left me with little extra time and motivation for the blog. That said, I’m learning how to prepare my lessons faster and more efficiently, which should, I hope, leave me with more love to direct towards this site.

Thanks for checking in, enjoy the beginnings of winter, tell Randy Moss, if you see him, that he's the man, and be well.

Nate

Back in action

2009-10-12T10:51:00.011+02:00

Greetings from northern Italy.

I realize, of course, that a 12 day silence isn’t the most exciting way to kick off a year of blogging. I also realize that almost every one of the blogs I’ve ever posted contributes at least a few sentences to some sort of apology or excuse for my most recent absence from the blogosphere. Now that I really think about it, it’s almost as if I wouldn’t have anything to write about if I actually produced one of these things on some sort of a regular basis. Hmm.

That said, I’ll try to do better.

Having been here for just short of two weeks, I’m amazed at how easy it was to transition back into the life I abruptly abandoned last June. Very little this summer did I think about Italy, yet now that I’m back – and as trite as it sounds – I don’t feel like I left. Memories of North Carolina summer camps, lobsters and lawyers in Maine, Graduate Record Examinations, and day laboring gigs for Craigslist are distant; polenta, vespas, evening soccer practices, Sunday morning flea markets in Castelleone, and crazy prime ministers have soundly replaced them. Sometimes, I feel like I lead two, even three, distinct lives. Like a superhero, sort of, sans the (fundamental?) amazing powers.

But enough self-analysis. Here’s what’s been going on in my life.

Il Lodo Alfano: In 2008, when Berlusconi came back to power, he immediately passed a law that made the four most powerful people in the Italian government – the president of Italy, the heads of the upper and lower houses of parliament, and, of course, himself – immune to prosecution for as long as they remained in office. Proponents of the law said that it was a necessary step for the strength of the government, as it prevented the political opposition from constantly distracting the leaders of the country from their duties with false (true, in the case of Berlusconi) accusations of corruption. Opponents of the law argued that it was an embarrassment to the Italian courts, rendering the people most directly responsible for the law completely above the law.

The Lodo Alfano lived for a little over a year, but on Wednesday of last week, the constitutional court ruled that it went against the Italian constitution. Anti-Berlusconites are calling it the biggest blow against Berlusconi since his first government crumbled after only eight months in 1994, as it reopens him up to prosecution on several counts of corruption. One of these counts involves a British attorney named David Mills who has already been tried – and CONVICTED – in Italian courts of accepting bribes from Berlusconi himself.

For more information, check out this October 8 article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/world/europe/09italy.html?_r=1

Life as a penpal: A few days after arriving, I was in the house in Castelleone and saw a stack of English tests that my host mother’s second year middle school students had recently completed. Curious about the level of English, I starting flipping through a few. The test, I soon learned, asked the students to write a letter to an imaginary penpal and explain the same things that everybody who’s ever had a penpal/taken an elementary level foreign language class knows all too well: where you live, how many people you have in your family, what hobbies and foods and pets you like, etc..

After reading through several, I started to notice a common but entirely unexpected theme. Many of the students had written to “Nathan.” That is, to me. I had met a bunch of them last year when I went and visited my host mom’s school, and I guess they now think of me as their go-to imaginary penpal. Needless to say, I was honored, and proceeded to pretend that I wasn’t reading a bunch of English tests but rather an enormous pile of international fan mail (not male, as I'd previously posted) congratulating me on my recent winning of the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Student strike: This past Friday, I went to school at my normal hour, only to find out that my classes were all cancelled because 95% of the student body was participating in a principal-sanctioned strike. In theory, the strike was a protest against the Minister of Education Mariastella Gelmini, but in reality, it was an excuse for the students to get a three-day weekend, as only a tiny fraction of the students “on strike” actually used the day to participate in protests and demonstrations. I learned that the principal of my school is generally opposed to the current government, which is why he approved the strike. Many principals with different political ties – or, more simply, with the belief that students should go to school regardless of the political climate – had not sanctioned the strike, which meant that students at those schools who chose not to attend classes would receive official, unexcused absences.

Do things like this happen at high schools in the States?

The millipede: A few nights ago, I was watching the news with my host parents when Anna, the 13-year-old host sis, came tearing downstairs. Apparently there was a millipede on the wall of her bedroom and as long as it remained alive, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not wanting to pass up on an opportunity to feel heroic, I followed her back upstairs, only to find what was definitely not a millipede – more of a twentyapede, at most – in the corner of her bedroom. Armed with nothing but my bravery and a paper napkin, I approached the beast. As soon as I got the napkin within reach, though, the little fellow raced up the wall and out of reach, much to the terror of Anna, who, now standing on her bed, began to shriek.

Refusing to accept defeat, I grabbed a stool and a broom from the closet nearby and went back to work. My first swipe of the broom proved less accurate than I would have liked – after all, I was a soccer player, not a baseball player – and instead of gently brushing the bug off the wall and onto the floor near my feet, I regretfully took off four of its legs. A few more broom swipes later, though, the dirty work had been done, and the now-sixteenapede was removed from the sleeping quarters and sent to a better place. Poor little bugger. I would have preferred to transport it to a different room of the house, but Anna wouldn’t have let that slide, and sometime a host brother’s got to do what a host brother’s got to do.

In a few days, I’m moving out of the host family’s house in Castelleone and into a beautiful apartment in the center of Crema. Although it’s been wonderful being part of this family again, it’ll be great to have my independence back, especially in the kitchen.

Let the lasagne preparations recommence.

The Natrix Reloaded

2009-09-30T21:28:00.005+02:00

Welcome, and welcome back. If you were here for the first year and have come back for round two, thank you. I appreciate your loyalty. For those of you who are new, feel free to catch up on former adventures at http://nategoestoitaly.blogspot.com. The pictures have all inexplicably disappeared, but the text remains.

It all began last September, when I headed to Italy for what was supposed to be just a year of teaching English at an Italian high school. As I put it in the first post of my previous blog:

For the next eight months, I’ll be living just outside the small Italian town of Crema (Italian for – you guessed it – “Cream”), about 50 km southeast of Milan. By day, I’ll be working as an English teaching assistant in a high school by the name of L’Istituto Tecnico Commerciale, per Geometri e per Corrispondenti in Lingue Estere “Luca Pacioli” di Crema. (Rolls right off the tongue, right?) By night and weekend, I plan to distribute my time evenly between the local espresso bars, soccer fields, vineyards, museums, and fashion outlets, hopefully accumulating along the way a bit of culture, some friends, an authentic Italian accent and a killer ability to match tight jeans with gratuitously large sunglasses.

Gratuitously large sunglasses:

(The tight jeans I’ll leave to your imagination.)
One thing led to another — namely, subprime mortgages to a massive recession — and so I decided to return to Italy for another year of postgraduate but pre-real-life adventure. This year, I expect a lot of the same, but hope to scrounge up as many new experiences as I can as well, if not for the whole personal growth and development rationale then for the simple reason that this blog would prove fairly useless if it said the same things that it did last year.
Though I’ll do my best to make my blog output — blogput? — as prodigious as possible, I learned last year that no matter what I promise to myself or my friends and family, I’ll never write as much as I intend. For that, I apologize.
For now, time to board a plane and head east to Milan. Thanks for reading this far, enjoy your day, let me know what you’re up to as the next nine months roll by, and be well.

Fondly,
Nate