welcome back

the new school year has begun with a rush of cooler temperatures in milan, and i am finally posting several months after my last blog.  as my pots of homemade chicken stock and lentil soup simmer on the stove and keep the cold outside at bay, this will be the first of an attempt, no, a resolution, to post as prolifically as my little fingers can handle this coming year. 

i am now happily in central milan, where everything is faster, a lot bigger, and there is no more smell of cows to greet me in the morning (despite how charming tiny crema was).  the move to milan was definitely what my inner adventurer wanted - a place where the sights, smells, food and culture of a more cosmopolitan italian city could overwhelm my senses.  so far so good.  i moved here in july after having searched hopelessly for work for 3 weeks before stumbling upon a job in an english pub working as a waitress during their 11-4 lunch period.  though deliciously under the table and slightly underpaid, it (barely) paid rent and food for the duration of the summer before my internship started again.  more importantly i am content and have met some incredible people.   

as far as my permesso di soggiorno and visa, while it seemed as though i could deal with everything from italy, 2 months after all of my papers expired i was told by the questura in crema that that was, indeed, not the case.  though not really a surprise, it left me reeling as to the reality of the immigration system in italy that gives you an appointment for your permesso di soggiorno after said permesso has already expired, and furthermore makes you wait 2 months to tell you that indeed, what they had told you is not actually true.  my options were waiting months for the permesso to be potentially renewed after transfers of papers from city to city all the while without a single document to justify my presence, or going back to california to re-apply for a visa.  so i found myself at the first week of september, after two separate trips to the questura in crema, buying a last-minute ticket to SD.  in the grand complex of things, i have realized that i still don't understand well enough the perfect harmony and significance of events.  in being "forced" to go back home by an impossible immigration system, not only did i have my visa in hand 9 days after applying for it, but i had a blast working in mom's cafe for 3 weeks with some great people and saw old friends and family who after a year were beginning to think i was never coming back.  and most importantly, i was able to spend some wonderful last moments with my grandfather and say goodbye to him before he passed away, as well as attend his funeral.  looking at the individual threads never allows an appreciation for the garment.

and now life marches on to the beat of a different drum, which currently means teaching at my new school (which is small, catholic, almost private, has only two amazing english teachers with whom i'll be working, and is an incredible breath of fresh air after my experiences last year) 12 hours a week in the morning before heading to the pub til 4 with a dose of lucrative private english lessons on the side.  exhausting?  when i walk in the door in the evening and plop down on my bed, yes.  not exactly what i envisioned 6 years ago when i started college?  not really.  but i smile when i realized that this is what i wanted, somewhere deep down.  not necessarily to be recently graduated, not knowing where i'll be after may, but broadening my sphere of influence, meeting amazing people, having adventures that are more difficult if not impossible at retirement when most people permit themselves the time, and teaching kids and adults not only english grammar but a way of life, waiting tables as a covert american on the side.  not exactly what i had envisioned, but perfect for the moment.

tutto fa brodo

it’s almost the end of february. as i’ve been going along in this internship i haven’t really been thinking of how eventually it will come to an end. i have been living days that run into days, class by class, punctuated by evenings and weekends. but it will all come to rest at the end of may at sraffa, and in the middle of june at the liceo artistico. after that my crystal ball has no answers, no responses beyond the infinite black that stares back up at me.

yet there are constants right now that lead me to make a fairly easy decision. my love for this country, my adoration of the italian language, my fascination with european culture, my wanderlust, and, on a practical level, the weakness of the american and world economies which makes teaching english abroad comparatively lucrative. now that things have settled down at the liceo artistico and my schedule at sraffa is calming down once again, i’m going to actively start looking for another job for september, closer to or in milan where the opportunities are manyfold, and closer to where simo is. preferably in a private school or english institution where the desire to learn english is the result of a personal decision and not an obligatory academic requirement.

i realize that some of the above-mentioned constants in and of themselves have the ability to be inconstant, but i have to make my decision, jump in, and hope for the best. i also have friends who are in italy and europe teaching, friends who are applying to this program for next year, laura and nate are thinking about staying in italy, and i have many italian friends throughout the country. i know i want to stay for at least another year, and beyond that i will have to decide at that point where the diverse factors stand.

i have also grown up a little more beyond the 21-year-old who was here the last time. i used to be intimidated by natives, by my lack of perfection in and knowledge of the language, by my unfamiliarity with conventions and traditions. yet that is all but disappearing, melting away as i stop seeking perfection (as much as a perfectionist can stop seeking perfection) and seek a natural rhythym, harmony, and connection with this place. and the more i let go, the more i receive. now at times i even forget i’m in italy, in a country thousands of miles away from ‘home’, in a country which has not bestowed citizenship upon me, upon whose soil i have lived for a mere two years, a place which has unwittingly adopted my heart and soul. now, going to the grocery store is no longer fascinating, hearing italian spoken around me no longer stimulating, rushing down the freeway no longer an experience, walking down the cobblestoned streets and gazing up at ancient buildings no longer a history session.

it’s a life lesson that teaches that eventually, tutto fa brodo. eventually all is seen for what it really is. eventually, it’s all the same in the end. the difficulties and frustrations come out from behind the scenes and onto center stage, and sometimes it’s even difficult just to get out of bed when the alarm goes off and all you have to do is confront another day. even that which glitters and shimmers becomes ordinary and quotidian at best. it’s no longer gelato and pizza and wine, the golden fields of wheat bending in the wind and the sun that shines upon your face that is italy. it’s the tired bus driver, the bum who ask for change in the train station, the saleswoman who barely looks at you when asking if you want bags for your groceries that cost you 5 cents each, 4 euro shampoo, walking up and down the central street in town on saturday evenings, the piazza as a meeting place, the economy which never seems to let people get ahead, old women on bicycles, the banks on every corner, the different academic system, the kids you try to inspire, the crucifixes in public schools, the piercings and ripped jeans and wild hair, the lack of a concept of a proper line, the postal post-office workers, the lack of clothes driers, the tiny fridges, the fiercely-strong family bonds. all that and more, as well as the normalcy of getting up in the morning, drinking coffee, and going to work. and it’s bittersweet, that crossing of the invisible threshold to a place where the wrong can’t always be made right, where normal often goes unnoticed, where abnormal becomes absorbed. it is bittersweet because i’m not able to look at it all with the same eyes that i once did. it has simply become a part of who i am.

yet there are some days, like this morning, that i get glimpses of how it was all over again. it’s days like this, the sun making a rare winter appearance, rising above the various colored buildings around me and rays hitting off the side of my balcony, that old stereotypes come back to visit and forgotten feelings are stirred. reminding me of a time when this was how i imagined it all, when the complexity of it all was limited to what i had learned in text books and films. and it’s days like this that i relish in the gaiety that envelopes me, the delight that surrounds me, the particular bounce in my step as i walk down the cobblestoned streets, staring up at the buildings that seem to lean in a little closer, that have something important to tell me today.

catching up

i have been a bad blogger.  i've learned over the course of the years that you know you're a blogger when your thoughts are constantly turned into posts in your head.  yet even the best of intentions often get left to the wayside, and as life has been incredibly busy lately i haven't been good about writing.  that will change, however.  i want to remember these thoughts and events and emotions and what they mean in the moment and in the larger scheme of things.

to catch up since i last wrote, the holidays came and went.  they were bittersweet, as i enjoyed being in italy but would have loved to be home with family and friends.  yet i enjoyed my almost month of total relaxation that largely consisted of sleeping in til 11 and 12 and eating.  simo and i were alone on christmas after things fell through with other people and others were with family.  had we known, we would have planned better and gone down to sicily to his mom's place, but we only found out on the 24th.  so we solved our loneliness with a 4 course meal which took all of christmas day to prepare and several hours to consume.  we exchanged gifts as well, and were like little kids on christmas morning.  simo wanted to open them up right away that morning, but i wanted to preserve the christmas magic and made him wait until after breakfast.  i had gotten him a pair of sunglasses, the same sunglasses that had been stolen from his car this fall, and a really nice bottle of rum that he likes, and he got me a really beautiful bracelet watch.

after the holidays it was back to crema and into the new apartment.  i spent the first day putting my room in order and assembling my "closet", a sort of hanging apparatus that i got at ikea.  i really love my room, a mixture of antiques that were already in the room, and more modern pieces like the bed and the closet which i bought, with my colorful tapestries hung on the walls.  i have a balcony which will be fabulous for dinners in the spring.  i also have an antique piano which needs to be tuned in my room, and which i can't play and is therefore like torture, but it makes a nice bookshelf in the absence of it's musical capabilities.  the apartment is cozy and cute, with a kitchen that's definitely too small, but when we have more than 3 people at dinner, our entry way becomes the dining room and we put my desk and the kitchen table together.  our system works well, and we've tried to buy stuff to make the place seem more homey.  it is definitely a far cry from my other apartment, where i regularly stayed in my room and didn't get along with my roommates.  this place is drama-free and english and italian friendly, with good food and wine flowing freely and where dinners are frequent.  

over break, i was contacted by the principal of the liceo artistico, the high school attached to sraffa.  one of their english teachers went on maternity leave and they were desperately searching for another english teacher.  i agreed to do it, and after a few minor snafus over my not being officially "legal" yet and other things, i had the job, with another 600 beautiful euro a month at my disposal, january's sum of which, i found out later, i will be getting in mid-march because they're having money issues like the rest of the world.  the job has been interesting so far on a professional level because the kids, while at a "high school" and not a professional or technical school like sraffa, aren't the more eager students i expected.  the english program at the school is an internal add-on, meaning the school has to pay its own money to teach english to the kids because they simply want them to learn a bit of it.  the kids know they're not going to have english at their graduation exit exam, so the incentive to study is very low.  then again, the grades in a lot of classes are low so i try not to take it personally.  however it's extremely difficult not to take it personally when many students don't listen to you during class, you have to reprimand them for not doing homework or bringing their books, when they make disrespectful comments, and when every 10 seconds you find yourself shushing them.  there have been several occasions, both at sraffa and the artistico that i've had to go on rants rebuking them for their behavior.  that rarely works for more than the moment, so i've started a "3 strikes rule": every time i have to call you out on something bad you're doing, it's an x on the blackboard.  at the 3rd x, you get a 'nota', or a write-up in the class register...not a positive thing to get.  that actually worked fairly well yesterday in one of the classes, a younger class albeit, and i'll see if i need to apply it in other classes as well.  

the adjustment to the new job has been difficult as well because my sraffa schedule had to change to accommodate my new 10-hours a week at the artistico.  also, i entered in january, right as the last grades were being reported, the last tests given, and the meetings to decide on final semester grades were being held.  the last few weeks so far i've given and graded several tests in a few different classes, organized and figured out final grades and absences that then have to be inserted in a special computer program, and had 3, 1.5 hours meetings deciding on "behavior" grades for individual students and overall issues in classes with the other teachers of the 5 classes i teach.  there are still 2 more meetings to go tomorrow, so my days have been long and tiring.  i've also been figuring out a lot of stuff on my own in this job, seeing as they don't really have any non-italian teachers in that school, and the other teachers have been in the system since day one so they know how it goes.  overall, it's been an interesting learning-curve, and i have a new-found appreciation for hump day, fridays, and the weekend.  

in the last few months i have realized why i love being here and why i love surrounding myself with different things, ie my experience in italy, and my often-new surroundings and situations.  i have realized that stability is not necessarily something you have to sacrifice in the process of change, and change does not have to be destabilizing.  being in italy keeps my brain constantly firing, constantly moving, constantly active.  in my own culture i often get into a lull, into a complacency and boredom that i'm not at ease with.  and while i constantly slip more and more into a comfortable gait with this culture and language and, my senses are still piqued day after day, my mind constantly working to understand this place, making comparisons, writing notes, filing it all away.  right now it's all still an overwhelming mountain of mental post-its, scraps of paper, and ideas, but one of these days it's going on actual paper.  i just haven't figured out when and how yet.