... because a seasonally misinformed mosquito had stung all the parts of her body peeking out from underneath the bedcovers - hand, shoulder, neck, face - causing her fingers to swell so much that she had to run cold water over them to get her rings off. At four in the morning. Unfair. Now my eyelid is twitching from fatigue.
Here's a piece of current Italian culture of which I feel an actual part: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/news/news-detailed.asp?newsid=11316 . The boys' school is going on strike, uno sciopero (shoh-pear-OH), this Thursday, so all the working parents in the neighborhood are scrambling to make plans. One of mine will go to his grandmother while the other stays at home with the housekeeper, so I'll still have my morning free. Then we'll have pizza lunch with mom, then the old babysitter will come say goodbye because she's leaving next week for Berlin (we already have plans to go visit her around Easter, hurrah!), then we commence the normal Thursday schedule of taking the bus to bring F-- to tennis, playing on the inflatable slide, coming home to an empty house to eat dinner in three while the parents tango. While we wait in the schoolyard for the kids' release I've talked with many of the mothers about this school problem, also read about it in the newspaper, heard about it on the radio and television, and it's cool to know that this little elementary school is one of the tons of schools - up to the universities, in some cities - all over Italy joining to protest the new laws.
The weather has changed. The leaves are yellow, amber, and falling, and it's begun to rain. All of my pants are too long, and I only have one sweatshirt with a hood, so Mom, I might take you up on that Amex mini-spree that I never took! It's hard for me to get up the energy to leave the house when all this gloom makes me want to read all morning - which I could very well do, if I wanted to - but I think I balance my time fairly well between puttering around the house, and getting oot and aboot. Today I spent my bonus* on a card for ten visits to P--'s gym, which I plan to use to go to ex-ballerina Giorgia's Wednesday morning tone-up class, and just last week I found a nearby cafe that will be My Place, run by two dark-haired chicks in their late twenties whose warm smiles and cheery chatter make it fun to sit against the far corner and watch the morning rush.
* A few weekends ago, the couple for whom I work took a weekend vacation to London, and left me for three days with their boys. They called in the troops - two aunts, a grandma - but nevertheless it was scary to know that I alone was in charge of two little boys for 72 whole hours! The one to feed them, clothe them, get them to Boy Scouts and to school on time, with the right equipment, etcetera, not to mention keep them quasi-entertained, and keep them from killing each other. For these three days I received a week's extra pay, which was awesome, but I also think I cut at least sixteen months off of my life.
In these days I'm feeling lethargic, like I eat too much pasta and don't walk downtown as often as I initially did. The Italian class was too easy for me, so I'm back to square one in terms of learning to speak the language: I drop in to visit P--'s mother at her home and let her make coffee for me, secretly pretending that she is my own wizened, complaining, foreign grandmother; strike up banal conversations with other cafe dwellers, about the headlines or the weather; ask strangers for the definition of an unknown word in my Italian book (currently "Il Piccolo Principe") or newspaper, and answer the questions that naturally follow, like where I'm from and what I'm doing here. It's not a classroom, but it works.
So... my employers have offered me an incentive to stay in Torino longer than my prescribed year -- my own apartment, so I don't have to live with them, and fewer hours (only after school, no work in the mornings). At times it sounds like a manageable situation, but I keep coming back to the gut feeling that the Bay Area wants me to come back, and that I want to come back to the Bay. To my family and friends, and a chance to get reacquainted with the city I basically left in 2004. This situation is cool, and I know I'll miss living here, hearing and speaking Italian, etc, but I don't think I'm ready to actually begin a life in another country, and that's exactly what I'd be doing.
28 October 2008
In Which She Awakes at Four in the Morning
... because a seasonally misinformed mosquito had stung all the parts of her body peeking out from underneath the bedcovers - hand, shoulder, neck, face - causing her fingers to swell so much that she had to run cold water over them to get her rings off. At four in the morning. Unfair. Now my eyelid is twitching from fatigue.
Here's a piece of current Italian culture of which I feel an actual part: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/news/news-detailed.asp?newsid=11316 . The boys' school is going on strike, uno sciopero (shoh-pear-OH), this Thursday, so all the working parents in the neighborhood are scrambling to make plans. One of mine will go to his grandmother while the other stays at home with the housekeeper, so I'll still have my morning free. Then we'll have pizza lunch with mom, then the old babysitter will come say goodbye because she's leaving next week for Berlin (we already have plans to go visit her around Easter, hurrah!), then we commence the normal Thursday schedule of taking the bus to bring F-- to tennis, playing on the inflatable slide, coming home to an empty house to eat dinner in three while the parents tango. While we wait in the schoolyard for the kids' release I've talked with many of the mothers about this school problem, also read about it in the newspaper, heard about it on the radio and television, and it's cool to know that this little elementary school is one of the tons of schools - up to the universities, in some cities - all over Italy joining to protest the new laws.
The weather has changed. The leaves are yellow, amber, and falling, and it's begun to rain. All of my pants are too long, and I only have one sweatshirt with a hood, so Mom, I might take you up on that Amex mini-spree that I never took! It's hard for me to get up the energy to leave the house when all this gloom makes me want to read all morning - which I could very well do, if I wanted to - but I think I balance my time fairly well between puttering around the house, and getting oot and aboot. Today I spent my bonus* on a card for ten visits to P--'s gym, which I plan to use to go to ex-ballerina Giorgia's Wednesday morning tone-up class, and just last week I found a nearby cafe that will be My Place, run by two dark-haired chicks in their late twenties whose warm smiles and cheery chatter make it fun to sit against the far corner and watch the morning rush.
* A few weekends ago, the couple for whom I work took a weekend vacation to London, and left me for three days with their boys. They called in the troops - two aunts, a grandma - but nevertheless it was scary to know that I alone was in charge of two little boys for 72 whole hours! The one to feed them, clothe them, get them to Boy Scouts and to school on time, with the right equipment, etcetera, not to mention keep them quasi-entertained, and keep them from killing each other. For these three days I received a week's extra pay, which was awesome, but I also think I cut at least sixteen months off of my life.
In these days I'm feeling lethargic, like I eat too much pasta and don't walk downtown as often as I initially did. The Italian class was too easy for me, so I'm back to square one in terms of learning to speak the language: I drop in to visit P--'s mother at her home and let her make coffee for me, secretly pretending that she is my own wizened, complaining, foreign grandmother; strike up banal conversations with other cafe dwellers, about the headlines or the weather; ask strangers for the definition of an unknown word in my Italian book (currently "Il Piccolo Principe") or newspaper, and answer the questions that naturally follow, like where I'm from and what I'm doing here. It's not a classroom, but it works.
So... my employers have offered me an incentive to stay in Torino longer than my prescribed year -- my own apartment, so I don't have to live with them, and fewer hours (only after school, no work in the mornings). At times it sounds like a manageable situation, but I keep coming back to the gut feeling that the Bay Area wants me to come back, and that I want to come back to the Bay. To my family and friends, and a chance to get reacquainted with the city I basically left in 2004. This situation is cool, and I know I'll miss living here, hearing and speaking Italian, etc, but I don't think I'm ready to actually begin a life in another country, and that's exactly what I'd be doing.
Here's a piece of current Italian culture of which I feel an actual part: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/news/news-detailed.asp?newsid=11316 . The boys' school is going on strike, uno sciopero (shoh-pear-OH), this Thursday, so all the working parents in the neighborhood are scrambling to make plans. One of mine will go to his grandmother while the other stays at home with the housekeeper, so I'll still have my morning free. Then we'll have pizza lunch with mom, then the old babysitter will come say goodbye because she's leaving next week for Berlin (we already have plans to go visit her around Easter, hurrah!), then we commence the normal Thursday schedule of taking the bus to bring F-- to tennis, playing on the inflatable slide, coming home to an empty house to eat dinner in three while the parents tango. While we wait in the schoolyard for the kids' release I've talked with many of the mothers about this school problem, also read about it in the newspaper, heard about it on the radio and television, and it's cool to know that this little elementary school is one of the tons of schools - up to the universities, in some cities - all over Italy joining to protest the new laws.
The weather has changed. The leaves are yellow, amber, and falling, and it's begun to rain. All of my pants are too long, and I only have one sweatshirt with a hood, so Mom, I might take you up on that Amex mini-spree that I never took! It's hard for me to get up the energy to leave the house when all this gloom makes me want to read all morning - which I could very well do, if I wanted to - but I think I balance my time fairly well between puttering around the house, and getting oot and aboot. Today I spent my bonus* on a card for ten visits to P--'s gym, which I plan to use to go to ex-ballerina Giorgia's Wednesday morning tone-up class, and just last week I found a nearby cafe that will be My Place, run by two dark-haired chicks in their late twenties whose warm smiles and cheery chatter make it fun to sit against the far corner and watch the morning rush.
* A few weekends ago, the couple for whom I work took a weekend vacation to London, and left me for three days with their boys. They called in the troops - two aunts, a grandma - but nevertheless it was scary to know that I alone was in charge of two little boys for 72 whole hours! The one to feed them, clothe them, get them to Boy Scouts and to school on time, with the right equipment, etcetera, not to mention keep them quasi-entertained, and keep them from killing each other. For these three days I received a week's extra pay, which was awesome, but I also think I cut at least sixteen months off of my life.
In these days I'm feeling lethargic, like I eat too much pasta and don't walk downtown as often as I initially did. The Italian class was too easy for me, so I'm back to square one in terms of learning to speak the language: I drop in to visit P--'s mother at her home and let her make coffee for me, secretly pretending that she is my own wizened, complaining, foreign grandmother; strike up banal conversations with other cafe dwellers, about the headlines or the weather; ask strangers for the definition of an unknown word in my Italian book (currently "Il Piccolo Principe") or newspaper, and answer the questions that naturally follow, like where I'm from and what I'm doing here. It's not a classroom, but it works.
So... my employers have offered me an incentive to stay in Torino longer than my prescribed year -- my own apartment, so I don't have to live with them, and fewer hours (only after school, no work in the mornings). At times it sounds like a manageable situation, but I keep coming back to the gut feeling that the Bay Area wants me to come back, and that I want to come back to the Bay. To my family and friends, and a chance to get reacquainted with the city I basically left in 2004. This situation is cool, and I know I'll miss living here, hearing and speaking Italian, etc, but I don't think I'm ready to actually begin a life in another country, and that's exactly what I'd be doing.
12 October 2008
In Which An Old Friend Comes To Visit
Turin, Piedmont, Italy
Doug, one of my dearest friends from the first weeks of high school, came to stay in Turin for three days. Only a few days before his arrival, something big and terrible hit me square in the gut, rendering me lethargic and hopeless: homesickness, like I'd never seen before. This wasn't the nostalgia I felt at the end of high school, the sixes and sevens I felt when I studied abroad, nor the identity crisis I felt when I moved to Colorado for college. This was a pure, opaque longing for my home, for my own bed in a sunny room in Berkeley, California; for my mother's voice, my father's embrace, and familiar footsteps in the other room; for a panoramic view from Arlington Boulevard, and a 510 area code. It was the realisation that, for all my romantic desire to live abroad and meet the world, I actually do belong in the Bay Area among my family and friends. This realisation manifested itself into nausea, loss of appetite, and extreme fatigue. I cried in the shower, and at night. Being with the kids got increasingly difficult, and after two days with no sleep I thought it would never get better.
Then Doug showed up on a night train from Milan, my tall, solid, American friend with sturdy walking boots, deep voice, square jaw, and glimmering cache of shared memories. He expected nothing more from me than a panoramic view from one of the city's highest spots (the tippy top of the Mole Antonellia/National Cinema Museum) and as many, or few, hours I could spare from my normal work schedule. We ventured into one of Torino's "Irish Pubs" (a.k.a. brewery for English-speaking tourists) for a couple of pints of beer and lots of gossip about high school friends. We hugged a lot, walked a lot, as I showed him the city I'm trying to call my own. And in the courtyard of a palace, despite the passage of more than one elderly tour group, he shouldered the weight of my heartache just long enough for me to catch my breath and muster up the strength to go on. All I needed, it seemed, was someone who knew me well to remind me that this coming here to Torino so soon after graduation wasn't necessarily a bad decision for which I should blame myself, but a hard decision. Choosing to do something difficult doesn't mean that I made a bad choice. He reminded me of some of the other hard things I've done in my life, and asked me to tell him about why I wanted to do it in the first place. Aren't I learning a lot about myself, he asked, about the Italian culture and language? Aren't I living with a family that indeed cares about me, and using skype and email to keep in touch with the ones across the world? Yes, wiping away my tears, yes, I'm doing all of that. It just feels like forever, I said, feeling small. It's just hard sometimes. And we hugged again and again until I sent him off on a train towards Florence with a little brown paper bag lunch. The day he left, I slept all night for the first time in five days. I could breathe again. Three days later marked four months, one third of a year, since I had landed in Torino, and the remaining eight that had looked so incredibly long seemed briefer.
Doug, one of my dearest friends from the first weeks of high school, came to stay in Turin for three days. Only a few days before his arrival, something big and terrible hit me square in the gut, rendering me lethargic and hopeless: homesickness, like I'd never seen before. This wasn't the nostalgia I felt at the end of high school, the sixes and sevens I felt when I studied abroad, nor the identity crisis I felt when I moved to Colorado for college. This was a pure, opaque longing for my home, for my own bed in a sunny room in Berkeley, California; for my mother's voice, my father's embrace, and familiar footsteps in the other room; for a panoramic view from Arlington Boulevard, and a 510 area code. It was the realisation that, for all my romantic desire to live abroad and meet the world, I actually do belong in the Bay Area among my family and friends. This realisation manifested itself into nausea, loss of appetite, and extreme fatigue. I cried in the shower, and at night. Being with the kids got increasingly difficult, and after two days with no sleep I thought it would never get better.
Then Doug showed up on a night train from Milan, my tall, solid, American friend with sturdy walking boots, deep voice, square jaw, and glimmering cache of shared memories. He expected nothing more from me than a panoramic view from one of the city's highest spots (the tippy top of the Mole Antonellia/National Cinema Museum) and as many, or few, hours I could spare from my normal work schedule. We ventured into one of Torino's "Irish Pubs" (a.k.a. brewery for English-speaking tourists) for a couple of pints of beer and lots of gossip about high school friends. We hugged a lot, walked a lot, as I showed him the city I'm trying to call my own. And in the courtyard of a palace, despite the passage of more than one elderly tour group, he shouldered the weight of my heartache just long enough for me to catch my breath and muster up the strength to go on. All I needed, it seemed, was someone who knew me well to remind me that this coming here to Torino so soon after graduation wasn't necessarily a bad decision for which I should blame myself, but a hard decision. Choosing to do something difficult doesn't mean that I made a bad choice. He reminded me of some of the other hard things I've done in my life, and asked me to tell him about why I wanted to do it in the first place. Aren't I learning a lot about myself, he asked, about the Italian culture and language? Aren't I living with a family that indeed cares about me, and using skype and email to keep in touch with the ones across the world? Yes, wiping away my tears, yes, I'm doing all of that. It just feels like forever, I said, feeling small. It's just hard sometimes. And we hugged again and again until I sent him off on a train towards Florence with a little brown paper bag lunch. The day he left, I slept all night for the first time in five days. I could breathe again. Three days later marked four months, one third of a year, since I had landed in Torino, and the remaining eight that had looked so incredibly long seemed briefer.
17 September 2008
In Which She Feels Very American
Milan, Lombardy, Italy
A couple of weeks ago I took the advice of a fellow expat and registered online as a member of "Democrats Abroad," a pretty self-explanatory sort of organisation. A few days later I received an email invitation to a dinner and conference call with U.S. House Representative Nancy Pelosi at the home of a Democrat living in Milan, and I thought that's be a sweet event to attend so I got the day off from au pairing, found a host for Friday night (coincidentally another graduate of Colorado College, 1978 - thirty years before me), and took the 90 minute train from Turin to Milan.
The dinner party was held in one of the nicest houses in the entire city, a 500-square-meter flat with high ceilings, marble floors, and four Filipino maids in grey and white uniforms. Yikes. I arrived an hour and a half too early, in boots and jeans, and was mildly alarmed to find two thin, tan, stressed PTA-mom types setting up the wine glasses... but then everyone else started arriving, namely a dashing theatre actor who reminded me of the bad hot guy from "The Devil Wears Prada" and kept replacing my glass of wine, and I felt more comfortable. The 50ish of us crowded around the laptop to listen in on Nancy Pelosi's international phone call - broadcast also to American Democrats in Bologna, Florence, Naples, and Rome - during which she urged us to continue supporting Obama and Biden, encourage other Americans to vote for members of the SENATE (or Congress? Oh, dear...) so the Democratic candidate wins by a landslide rather than a margin, and thanked us for our involvement from overseas. We do indeed have a unique perspective on this election, and as there are not just hundreds but thousands of us in Italy alone, we do have an impact on the final result. After the phone call, we mixed, mingled and milled about two long banquet tables laden with a variety of gourmet catered lasagnas, fresh bread, an exquisite salad, and who knows how many bottles of alcohol. Someone commented to me over a cigarette on the balcony that it was ironic that our Democratic meeting should take place in the home that looked most like it was owned by a Republican.
It was interesting to rub shoulders with other expatriates and to swap explanations as to why and for how long we are (or have been) in Italy. Made me think a lot about what it would be like to live here instead of the United States... no definitive answers yet.
Another event that revealed some of the finer cultural differences between Americans and Italians took place in our living room, the assembly of twin IKEA dressers for my bedroom. We'd had the parts lying about boxes for two days, awaiting an evening when A--- was available to help me put it together. Or so I thought. Wednesday night, he's home, I'm home, and I mentioned the dressers. I told them I've had much experience assembling IKEA furniture by myself, and will probably just need him to help me move it once it's done. He, however, has already called his 19-year-old nephew to come over and help us. But why do we need him?, I asked. I know how to do it. No, he shakes his head, last time it took us three hours to put a piece of furniture together. We need him.
Three turned out to be a crowd, of course, and I ended up being the one to turn this piece over in the right direction, to exchange this screw for that peg, because they seemed to have no idea what they were doing. I was surprised to find that A--'s metal toolbox contained only the barest essentials: three small screwdrivers, one somewhat odd wrench, a hammer that was more like a mallet. I thought about my dad's toolbox at home, the one I began to sift through with curious interest as early as 3 or 4 years old, exuding the smell of metal and oil, stuffed to capacity with wrenches of all sizes, drill bits, big hammers and little hammers, several pairs of pliers, wirecutters, and sprinkled with countless, mismatched pieces of hardware. This toolbox, however sounds hollow upon closure, its contents rolling around the empty space when carried. I don't think the boys know the difference between a socket wrench and an open-ended wrench like I do. I also know (from an art class, actually, go figure) that it's faster and more effective to hold a hammer low down on the handle, letting the weight of the head drive the nail, rather than holding it close to the head and keeping all the tension in your wrist; but no one else - not even the adult men - seemed familiar with that rule.
Construction experience aside, however, I found that my attempts to help were gently refused. I was allowed to hammer some tiny nails into the backboard, and press pegs into pre-drilled holes. Screwing and lifting were out of the question. At one point I stood up and put my hands on my hips, knowing for sure hat I could do this work much more quickly if I were working alone. P-- mistook my sigh of exasperation for something else, and said with great sympathy, "Good thing he's here to help [the nephew]. Mens' muscles are just stronger than ours!" I suppressed a humorless laugh. Conclusion: A girl who knows her way around a toolbox = very, very American.
Lastly, I received my absentee ballot in the mail, to my great delight! They were fascinated by the little check-boxes and bold, official headings, "President of the United States Of America" having not only two but six candidates. Who are these other people?, they wondered, and so did I... no one really cares about them, I replied, the tiniest bit ashamed that I hadn't heard of most of them. I need to read up on some of my local issues so I can make decisions about Berkeley and Alameda. For the first time in my life I'm beginning to actually feel my own nationality, and, to my great surprise, I like it.
Post Script: some excerpts from an email to a friend (because I'm pressed for time and find cutting and pasting easier than rephrasing the same ol' thangs):
"Kids: They started the academic year on Monday, so now we have a schedule. Yahoo! The littlest one has just begun school, so this week he got out at 12,30 each day, while his brother is in school until 4,30-- long days! Next week they'll both get out at 1 on Mondays and Fridays, then at 4.30 each other day. They'll also begin tennis (Fil), maybe judo (Ruggi), and maybe soccer (Ruggi), and I'll be in charge of trucking them around via bus/walking to their various activities. What a glamorous life I lead, with juice boxes and boogery tissues floating around the bottom of my purse. They've begun to settle down energywise, thank the gods above, and I think it's going to be an awesome time from here on out.
Life: Generally good. Today I had a quick walk around the city center with a 24-yr-old guy named Patrick who just moved here from Sweden and hopes to work in a ski lodge this winter. Good luck, dude. And I met two other American au pairs today, one from Colorado (!) and another from... one of the states we often forget about completely... Indiana, maybe? They're really sweet, and we're all venturing out tomorrow morning to a free Italian lesson through the visa office. If it's good, I might go to that a couple times a week. I'm also on the hunt for a dance class, but not much is offered in the mornings (my only free time). I managed to locate a salsa class that starts in October... but salsa doesn't strike me as a morning kind of dance, at least not in the same way as modern or, say, yoga... whatever. Beggars can't be choosers, right? Anywho, things are going well. I need to make more time to write for this blog site, so I can make more MOOOONNNEEEYYYYYY.
Crazy adventures: Lately, none, just playing. I was "in prison" today for close to two hours, under the care of Sheriff R---, for the alleged offense of "stealing eleven cows." It was pretty rough. I got snacks, though (crackers), as well as some sunglasses (for when the sun came out in the prison), a snowglobe (for winter) (????), a cell phone (walkie talkie without batteries) "to call my mother," a mirror and a brush "to fix my hair," a pen and paper for drawing, some Scotch tape "to put my drawings up on the walls," and a blanket. Apparently prison is not unlike a two-star hotel, or elementary school."
* post-script
Speaking of American, a Smithsonian writer says of Frank Lloyd Wright, "In his unshakable optimism, messianic zeal and pragmatic resilience, Wright was quintessentially American. A central theme that pervades his architecture is a recurrent question in American culture: How do you balance the need for individual privacy with the attraction of community activity? Everyone craves periods of solitude, but in Wright's view, a human being develops fully only as a social creature."
A couple of weeks ago I took the advice of a fellow expat and registered online as a member of "Democrats Abroad," a pretty self-explanatory sort of organisation. A few days later I received an email invitation to a dinner and conference call with U.S. House Representative Nancy Pelosi at the home of a Democrat living in Milan, and I thought that's be a sweet event to attend so I got the day off from au pairing, found a host for Friday night (coincidentally another graduate of Colorado College, 1978 - thirty years before me), and took the 90 minute train from Turin to Milan.
The dinner party was held in one of the nicest houses in the entire city, a 500-square-meter flat with high ceilings, marble floors, and four Filipino maids in grey and white uniforms. Yikes. I arrived an hour and a half too early, in boots and jeans, and was mildly alarmed to find two thin, tan, stressed PTA-mom types setting up the wine glasses... but then everyone else started arriving, namely a dashing theatre actor who reminded me of the bad hot guy from "The Devil Wears Prada" and kept replacing my glass of wine, and I felt more comfortable. The 50ish of us crowded around the laptop to listen in on Nancy Pelosi's international phone call - broadcast also to American Democrats in Bologna, Florence, Naples, and Rome - during which she urged us to continue supporting Obama and Biden, encourage other Americans to vote for members of the SENATE (or Congress? Oh, dear...) so the Democratic candidate wins by a landslide rather than a margin, and thanked us for our involvement from overseas. We do indeed have a unique perspective on this election, and as there are not just hundreds but thousands of us in Italy alone, we do have an impact on the final result. After the phone call, we mixed, mingled and milled about two long banquet tables laden with a variety of gourmet catered lasagnas, fresh bread, an exquisite salad, and who knows how many bottles of alcohol. Someone commented to me over a cigarette on the balcony that it was ironic that our Democratic meeting should take place in the home that looked most like it was owned by a Republican.
It was interesting to rub shoulders with other expatriates and to swap explanations as to why and for how long we are (or have been) in Italy. Made me think a lot about what it would be like to live here instead of the United States... no definitive answers yet.
Another event that revealed some of the finer cultural differences between Americans and Italians took place in our living room, the assembly of twin IKEA dressers for my bedroom. We'd had the parts lying about boxes for two days, awaiting an evening when A--- was available to help me put it together. Or so I thought. Wednesday night, he's home, I'm home, and I mentioned the dressers. I told them I've had much experience assembling IKEA furniture by myself, and will probably just need him to help me move it once it's done. He, however, has already called his 19-year-old nephew to come over and help us. But why do we need him?, I asked. I know how to do it. No, he shakes his head, last time it took us three hours to put a piece of furniture together. We need him.
Three turned out to be a crowd, of course, and I ended up being the one to turn this piece over in the right direction, to exchange this screw for that peg, because they seemed to have no idea what they were doing. I was surprised to find that A--'s metal toolbox contained only the barest essentials: three small screwdrivers, one somewhat odd wrench, a hammer that was more like a mallet. I thought about my dad's toolbox at home, the one I began to sift through with curious interest as early as 3 or 4 years old, exuding the smell of metal and oil, stuffed to capacity with wrenches of all sizes, drill bits, big hammers and little hammers, several pairs of pliers, wirecutters, and sprinkled with countless, mismatched pieces of hardware. This toolbox, however sounds hollow upon closure, its contents rolling around the empty space when carried. I don't think the boys know the difference between a socket wrench and an open-ended wrench like I do. I also know (from an art class, actually, go figure) that it's faster and more effective to hold a hammer low down on the handle, letting the weight of the head drive the nail, rather than holding it close to the head and keeping all the tension in your wrist; but no one else - not even the adult men - seemed familiar with that rule.
Construction experience aside, however, I found that my attempts to help were gently refused. I was allowed to hammer some tiny nails into the backboard, and press pegs into pre-drilled holes. Screwing and lifting were out of the question. At one point I stood up and put my hands on my hips, knowing for sure hat I could do this work much more quickly if I were working alone. P-- mistook my sigh of exasperation for something else, and said with great sympathy, "Good thing he's here to help [the nephew]. Mens' muscles are just stronger than ours!" I suppressed a humorless laugh. Conclusion: A girl who knows her way around a toolbox = very, very American.
Lastly, I received my absentee ballot in the mail, to my great delight! They were fascinated by the little check-boxes and bold, official headings, "President of the United States Of America" having not only two but six candidates. Who are these other people?, they wondered, and so did I... no one really cares about them, I replied, the tiniest bit ashamed that I hadn't heard of most of them. I need to read up on some of my local issues so I can make decisions about Berkeley and Alameda. For the first time in my life I'm beginning to actually feel my own nationality, and, to my great surprise, I like it.
Post Script: some excerpts from an email to a friend (because I'm pressed for time and find cutting and pasting easier than rephrasing the same ol' thangs):
"Kids: They started the academic year on Monday, so now we have a schedule. Yahoo! The littlest one has just begun school, so this week he got out at 12,30 each day, while his brother is in school until 4,30-- long days! Next week they'll both get out at 1 on Mondays and Fridays, then at 4.30 each other day. They'll also begin tennis (Fil), maybe judo (Ruggi), and maybe soccer (Ruggi), and I'll be in charge of trucking them around via bus/walking to their various activities. What a glamorous life I lead, with juice boxes and boogery tissues floating around the bottom of my purse. They've begun to settle down energywise, thank the gods above, and I think it's going to be an awesome time from here on out.
Life: Generally good. Today I had a quick walk around the city center with a 24-yr-old guy named Patrick who just moved here from Sweden and hopes to work in a ski lodge this winter. Good luck, dude. And I met two other American au pairs today, one from Colorado (!) and another from... one of the states we often forget about completely... Indiana, maybe? They're really sweet, and we're all venturing out tomorrow morning to a free Italian lesson through the visa office. If it's good, I might go to that a couple times a week. I'm also on the hunt for a dance class, but not much is offered in the mornings (my only free time). I managed to locate a salsa class that starts in October... but salsa doesn't strike me as a morning kind of dance, at least not in the same way as modern or, say, yoga... whatever. Beggars can't be choosers, right? Anywho, things are going well. I need to make more time to write for this blog site, so I can make more MOOOONNNEEEYYYYYY.
Crazy adventures: Lately, none, just playing. I was "in prison" today for close to two hours, under the care of Sheriff R---, for the alleged offense of "stealing eleven cows." It was pretty rough. I got snacks, though (crackers), as well as some sunglasses (for when the sun came out in the prison), a snowglobe (for winter) (????), a cell phone (walkie talkie without batteries) "to call my mother," a mirror and a brush "to fix my hair," a pen and paper for drawing, some Scotch tape "to put my drawings up on the walls," and a blanket. Apparently prison is not unlike a two-star hotel, or elementary school."
* post-script
Speaking of American, a Smithsonian writer says of Frank Lloyd Wright, "In his unshakable optimism, messianic zeal and pragmatic resilience, Wright was quintessentially American. A central theme that pervades his architecture is a recurrent question in American culture: How do you balance the need for individual privacy with the attraction of community activity? Everyone craves periods of solitude, but in Wright's view, a human being develops fully only as a social creature."
06 September 2008
Bought My First Pack of Cigarettes
Mom and Dad heard this one already, but it's worth sharing at the very least for its humor. My first and somewhat anticlimatic attempt at world-weariness. Accept my apologies for the melodrama.
Important to know that only a couple of hours before my frustrating phone call to vayama.com, I had closed Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with the lasting impression that fear and sadness can be easily avoided with a martini buzz, the right accessories, and a rather loose (albeit vague) attitude towards men. Aubrey Hepburn's Holly, at the time, was my heroine.
Picture me nearing end of my last day of freedom before the C-- family returns from their week of vacation in Normandy, during which I stayed alone in Torino. It's early evening and the fading afternoon sunlight filters across the hardwood floors to me, barefoot at the marble-topped dining table upon which I've opened my laptop to read the email containing my international flight itinerary. I have the black cordless phone up to my ear, fingers beginning to cramp from their clutched position, and I'm thanking Jamie at Vayama for all of his help, accepting with strained civilty his scripted apologies about my situation. Long story short, I've just discovered that I paid close to 1800.00USD for what turned out to be not a round-trip but a one-way flight from SFO to Turin, Italy, and although that's considerably less than most international one-way flights nowadays it's enough money lost to make me hiss, "Shit. Shit. Shit," into the empty house. I sit for a bit like that, one foot up on the chair, the other on the floor, muttering aloud to myself, eyes going in and out of focus, until I get up and go into the kitchen to hang up the phone and realise that I need to get out of this house NOW. My frustration about losing the battle with the airline companies and third party, my impatience with telephone transactions, my anger with myself for not buying a one-way ticket at the start, underlined by an immense fear accompanying my spanking new lack of a conrete return date: all of these combined, if left to fester within me in this small space would soon leave me in no condition to receive the family back into their (my) home. Still had on the running shorts, wild hair and grubby t-shirt I had this morning. I paced the kitchen like a tense, caged animal. I had to get out.
Recalling the unshakeable composure of Capote's Holly Golightly, I thought what better way to take a furious walk than in style? It might lift my spirits to gussy up for all the strangers out there, all those unsuspecting people past whom I will boldly stride in my brisk walk down to the River Po to burn off some of these brittle, bright red feelings I have bundled up like so much tinder. I donned the black mid-thigh jersey dress from Old Navy that Mom sent me a few weeks back; slipped on my new black flats with sturdy, audible heels; cinched a little red belt around my waist, applied a generous amount of eyeliner and my new rose lipstick from Paris; angrily stuffed into a shoulder bag my wallet, mobile, an apple, journal; and then, with my chin up and unnecessarily huge sunglasses on, strode out of the apartment building onto the warm sidewalks of a European city transitioning from late afternoon to early evening. Ha-rumph! I hate you, vayama.com! Stupid United Airlines! Stupid three-month limit on my round trip ticket! Stupid lady who gave me the wrong info the first time I called!
Destination: The River Po. (When I came to this part of my story, Dad said, "No! Don't jump!") More or less fifteen minutes away from the house on foot, I figured I could steam along the oft busy Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II until the park near the River, then sit for awhile and vent into my diary like the predolescent schoolgirl I sometimes am before going home again. I walked two blocks in a blink, anxious anger settling into more of a vague mauve depression, when some mangy young "tamarro" (Italian word for the guy who drives by in a tricked out outdated sedan that once belonged to his uncle, wearing reflective aviators and blasting techno) approached me on the right, muttered something rude-sounding into my ear, grabbed a huge handful of my ass and squeezed it, HARD, before jogging away. I had just enough time to widen my eyes in serious, serious disbelief, and gasp aloud-- but, because of my dark Olsen-twin glasses, I think he registered only the lipsticked gasp, and I can hardly bear to think of the satisfaction he probably gathered from that. Ugh. What a PERV! My fury flared up anew, though this time shaded with indignation and disgust, and having no one to turn to I said to myself, You know what? That does it. I'm fed up with
being lonely,
with
sucking up my frustration!
and
impatience!
and
sadness,
with
not having any G.D. friends in Turin,
with
THIS
and
THAT, and
that other thing...
and worked myself into such a huff that I may have alarmed the poor guy who sold me my first packet of cigarettes in a convenient shop near the train station, Porta Nuova. I don't even know what kind they are, or what led me to choose the box I chose. Whatever I saw behind the counter that wasn't Marlboros (because that makes me think of the anti-smoking cowboy ads of my youth, the tan denim men toasting frothy beer mugs with body bags (Remember those?), and then I feel REALLY bad). While I've smoked a cigarette or two in my life, I've never before actually bought my own pack: a streak I was, afterward, somewhat remiss to break. The remaining seventeen now cower pathetically in the bottom corner of my handbag, ashamed of themselves for sharing my purse with the kids' juice boxes and afternoon snacks.
I digress. Basically, I was tired of being so danged healthy about my feelings and my body and everything, for taking care of myself for such a long time, being a good girl who generally does the right thing, and decided that I had experienced in this day two moments of such profound disappointment - in the travel companies that should have secured for me my passage home from this crazy job I've undertaken, and in Men (Yes. ALL of you.) for grabbing girls' butts. It's just. not. nice. So I bought some cigarettes halfway between my house and the River, eventually sat down on the lawn in Parco Valentino to write in my journal and proceeded to smoke three in a row. Also burned a couple of holes in the page, just for kicks. After ten or fifteen minutes of chain-smoking I stood up, brushed all the dead grass off my butt, noted the nasty blisters forming on my heels on account of the new shoes and not-so-leisurely stroll, and headed home. At a pedestrian stoplight I reached into my purse to light up one more, clinging stubbornly to my waning rage like the kid whose tantrum was interrupted by someone saying, "Don't smile! Don't smile!," keeps whimpering after the tears have stopped, when my hand instead brushed the apple... and Good, Rational Lauren shook an admonishing finger at wannabe Hepburn's movie character Lauren, brought the apple to her lips instead of the cigarette. When I got home I showered, hung my dress outside to dispel any odor of nicotine, and tidied up the house. Later that evening after a raucous reunion with the C-- family, I sat in the living room with the parents and told them about my cancelled plane ticket. P-- was mildly surprised at my frustration. Spreading her hands wide and lifting her eyebrows, she said, "Oh, but, Lauren. It's only MONEY." And very secretly in my head (next to the cowardly box of cigarettes nestled deep in my shoulder bag) I screamed at the top of my slightly-blackened lungs a series of ugly words in two different languages.
Important to know that only a couple of hours before my frustrating phone call to vayama.com, I had closed Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with the lasting impression that fear and sadness can be easily avoided with a martini buzz, the right accessories, and a rather loose (albeit vague) attitude towards men. Aubrey Hepburn's Holly, at the time, was my heroine.
Picture me nearing end of my last day of freedom before the C-- family returns from their week of vacation in Normandy, during which I stayed alone in Torino. It's early evening and the fading afternoon sunlight filters across the hardwood floors to me, barefoot at the marble-topped dining table upon which I've opened my laptop to read the email containing my international flight itinerary. I have the black cordless phone up to my ear, fingers beginning to cramp from their clutched position, and I'm thanking Jamie at Vayama for all of his help, accepting with strained civilty his scripted apologies about my situation. Long story short, I've just discovered that I paid close to 1800.00USD for what turned out to be not a round-trip but a one-way flight from SFO to Turin, Italy, and although that's considerably less than most international one-way flights nowadays it's enough money lost to make me hiss, "Shit. Shit. Shit," into the empty house. I sit for a bit like that, one foot up on the chair, the other on the floor, muttering aloud to myself, eyes going in and out of focus, until I get up and go into the kitchen to hang up the phone and realise that I need to get out of this house NOW. My frustration about losing the battle with the airline companies and third party, my impatience with telephone transactions, my anger with myself for not buying a one-way ticket at the start, underlined by an immense fear accompanying my spanking new lack of a conrete return date: all of these combined, if left to fester within me in this small space would soon leave me in no condition to receive the family back into their (my) home. Still had on the running shorts, wild hair and grubby t-shirt I had this morning. I paced the kitchen like a tense, caged animal. I had to get out.
Recalling the unshakeable composure of Capote's Holly Golightly, I thought what better way to take a furious walk than in style? It might lift my spirits to gussy up for all the strangers out there, all those unsuspecting people past whom I will boldly stride in my brisk walk down to the River Po to burn off some of these brittle, bright red feelings I have bundled up like so much tinder. I donned the black mid-thigh jersey dress from Old Navy that Mom sent me a few weeks back; slipped on my new black flats with sturdy, audible heels; cinched a little red belt around my waist, applied a generous amount of eyeliner and my new rose lipstick from Paris; angrily stuffed into a shoulder bag my wallet, mobile, an apple, journal; and then, with my chin up and unnecessarily huge sunglasses on, strode out of the apartment building onto the warm sidewalks of a European city transitioning from late afternoon to early evening. Ha-rumph! I hate you, vayama.com! Stupid United Airlines! Stupid three-month limit on my round trip ticket! Stupid lady who gave me the wrong info the first time I called!
Destination: The River Po. (When I came to this part of my story, Dad said, "No! Don't jump!") More or less fifteen minutes away from the house on foot, I figured I could steam along the oft busy Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II until the park near the River, then sit for awhile and vent into my diary like the predolescent schoolgirl I sometimes am before going home again. I walked two blocks in a blink, anxious anger settling into more of a vague mauve depression, when some mangy young "tamarro" (Italian word for the guy who drives by in a tricked out outdated sedan that once belonged to his uncle, wearing reflective aviators and blasting techno) approached me on the right, muttered something rude-sounding into my ear, grabbed a huge handful of my ass and squeezed it, HARD, before jogging away. I had just enough time to widen my eyes in serious, serious disbelief, and gasp aloud-- but, because of my dark Olsen-twin glasses, I think he registered only the lipsticked gasp, and I can hardly bear to think of the satisfaction he probably gathered from that. Ugh. What a PERV! My fury flared up anew, though this time shaded with indignation and disgust, and having no one to turn to I said to myself, You know what? That does it. I'm fed up with
being lonely,
with
sucking up my frustration!
and
impatience!
and
sadness,
with
not having any G.D. friends in Turin,
with
THIS
and
THAT, and
that other thing...
and worked myself into such a huff that I may have alarmed the poor guy who sold me my first packet of cigarettes in a convenient shop near the train station, Porta Nuova. I don't even know what kind they are, or what led me to choose the box I chose. Whatever I saw behind the counter that wasn't Marlboros (because that makes me think of the anti-smoking cowboy ads of my youth, the tan denim men toasting frothy beer mugs with body bags (Remember those?), and then I feel REALLY bad). While I've smoked a cigarette or two in my life, I've never before actually bought my own pack: a streak I was, afterward, somewhat remiss to break. The remaining seventeen now cower pathetically in the bottom corner of my handbag, ashamed of themselves for sharing my purse with the kids' juice boxes and afternoon snacks.
I digress. Basically, I was tired of being so danged healthy about my feelings and my body and everything, for taking care of myself for such a long time, being a good girl who generally does the right thing, and decided that I had experienced in this day two moments of such profound disappointment - in the travel companies that should have secured for me my passage home from this crazy job I've undertaken, and in Men (Yes. ALL of you.) for grabbing girls' butts. It's just. not. nice. So I bought some cigarettes halfway between my house and the River, eventually sat down on the lawn in Parco Valentino to write in my journal and proceeded to smoke three in a row. Also burned a couple of holes in the page, just for kicks. After ten or fifteen minutes of chain-smoking I stood up, brushed all the dead grass off my butt, noted the nasty blisters forming on my heels on account of the new shoes and not-so-leisurely stroll, and headed home. At a pedestrian stoplight I reached into my purse to light up one more, clinging stubbornly to my waning rage like the kid whose tantrum was interrupted by someone saying, "Don't smile! Don't smile!," keeps whimpering after the tears have stopped, when my hand instead brushed the apple... and Good, Rational Lauren shook an admonishing finger at wannabe Hepburn's movie character Lauren, brought the apple to her lips instead of the cigarette. When I got home I showered, hung my dress outside to dispel any odor of nicotine, and tidied up the house. Later that evening after a raucous reunion with the C-- family, I sat in the living room with the parents and told them about my cancelled plane ticket. P-- was mildly surprised at my frustration. Spreading her hands wide and lifting her eyebrows, she said, "Oh, but, Lauren. It's only MONEY." And very secretly in my head (next to the cowardly box of cigarettes nestled deep in my shoulder bag) I screamed at the top of my slightly-blackened lungs a series of ugly words in two different languages.
05 August 2008
German Italy
Campo Tures, Italy
As we flew toward Torino over the paid tollways in our compact station wagon, I reflected again on my luck in the family/au pair matching process: not only do they love to travel and have the means to take me along, but they're slow food fanatics (an organic/hippie version of going kosher, related to how food is raised, chosen, prepared and served) so we often sit down to dinner or lunch in fabulous restaurants all over the region; their non-stop tendencies spilled over even into their vacation, with "leisure" coming to mean river rafting, riding rental bikes all over the mountainside, trekking and picnicking in the forest, sightseeing like mad; and all while treating me more like a daughter than a maid or a guest. I am fortunate to be in this situation.
We stayed ten days in a two-bedroom cabin suite in Caminata, a tiny four-block "town" near Campo Tures in the Valle d'Agosto, Dolomiti (The Dolomites, I think, in English), Italy, so close to Austria that all the signs are in German and Italian, and everyone speaks Italian with a German accent. One day we took cushy rental bikes to the nearby town of Brunico to eat polenta and drink red wine, and walk off these heavy meals along the slender central boulevard. On another, hotter day, P-- and I took the boys to a "biological pool," whose chlorine-producing algae gave the large pond a green tinge and its suspicious name, to spend the day swimming, reading, running around the lawns, and tanning on long sunchairs against a backdrop of endless forested mountains and blue sky. We also went river rafting (a thrilling, boisterous activity that made my heart ache for Colorado College), endured many a thunderstorm (during which the chapel bells tolled in order to break up the clouds), trekked and picnicked and fed handfuls of grass to housecat-sized baby goats.
I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics from an Olympic training center deep in the mountains, weeping into my lemon tea from sheer overwhelm at the sight of hundreds of first-world athletes dwarf the meager handfuls of third-world athletes in a parade around the stadium whose erection displaced so many Chinese. Upon my return from the bathroom where I fled to compose myself, I learned that Italian lacks a word that translates into "overwhelmed."
I spent my day off from 'working' riding my bike across sunny cornfields, writing in my journal, and reading two poorly written historical novels, one about a leper colony in Greece and the other about Leonardo da Vinci and the sisters d'Este who ruled Milan during the Renaissance.
One night after a particularly delicious open-air dinner, I ventured into the restaurant to escape the cold mountain evening to find myself at the mercy of a tableful of hearty blonde locals who spoke less Italian than they did English. They treated me to a shot of "grappa" (sweet hard liquor), a mug of scalding berry tea, and an unbroken series of long and awkward stares. I fingered the tab of my teabag nervously, smiling and glancing at the doorway for one of my boys to fetch me, and finally one of them - the shyest, I think - attempted trilingual conversation. We all laughed a lot, they took more shots, and I discovered that, although 90% couldn't say one complete sentence in English, they all knew and frequently interjected the phrases "I'm lovely" (possibly "I love you?") and "sex on the beach." Where do they learn--??
As we flew toward Torino over the paid tollways in our compact station wagon, I reflected again on my luck in the family/au pair matching process: not only do they love to travel and have the means to take me along, but they're slow food fanatics (an organic/hippie version of going kosher, related to how food is raised, chosen, prepared and served) so we often sit down to dinner or lunch in fabulous restaurants all over the region; their non-stop tendencies spilled over even into their vacation, with "leisure" coming to mean river rafting, riding rental bikes all over the mountainside, trekking and picnicking in the forest, sightseeing like mad; and all while treating me more like a daughter than a maid or a guest. I am fortunate to be in this situation.
We stayed ten days in a two-bedroom cabin suite in Caminata, a tiny four-block "town" near Campo Tures in the Valle d'Agosto, Dolomiti (The Dolomites, I think, in English), Italy, so close to Austria that all the signs are in German and Italian, and everyone speaks Italian with a German accent. One day we took cushy rental bikes to the nearby town of Brunico to eat polenta and drink red wine, and walk off these heavy meals along the slender central boulevard. On another, hotter day, P-- and I took the boys to a "biological pool," whose chlorine-producing algae gave the large pond a green tinge and its suspicious name, to spend the day swimming, reading, running around the lawns, and tanning on long sunchairs against a backdrop of endless forested mountains and blue sky. We also went river rafting (a thrilling, boisterous activity that made my heart ache for Colorado College), endured many a thunderstorm (during which the chapel bells tolled in order to break up the clouds), trekked and picnicked and fed handfuls of grass to housecat-sized baby goats.
I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics from an Olympic training center deep in the mountains, weeping into my lemon tea from sheer overwhelm at the sight of hundreds of first-world athletes dwarf the meager handfuls of third-world athletes in a parade around the stadium whose erection displaced so many Chinese. Upon my return from the bathroom where I fled to compose myself, I learned that Italian lacks a word that translates into "overwhelmed."
I spent my day off from 'working' riding my bike across sunny cornfields, writing in my journal, and reading two poorly written historical novels, one about a leper colony in Greece and the other about Leonardo da Vinci and the sisters d'Este who ruled Milan during the Renaissance.
One night after a particularly delicious open-air dinner, I ventured into the restaurant to escape the cold mountain evening to find myself at the mercy of a tableful of hearty blonde locals who spoke less Italian than they did English. They treated me to a shot of "grappa" (sweet hard liquor), a mug of scalding berry tea, and an unbroken series of long and awkward stares. I fingered the tab of my teabag nervously, smiling and glancing at the doorway for one of my boys to fetch me, and finally one of them - the shyest, I think - attempted trilingual conversation. We all laughed a lot, they took more shots, and I discovered that, although 90% couldn't say one complete sentence in English, they all knew and frequently interjected the phrases "I'm lovely" (possibly "I love you?") and "sex on the beach." Where do they learn--??
25 July 2008
In Which She Milks a Goat and Goes on a Date
1 August 2008
Bruni, Piedmonte, Italy
Not in the same day, however. That would have been overwhelming. Chronologically the goat came first, but as there's not much to say about the date I can start there. I just wanted to make a few brief comments about Italian men: one, that their accents make them sound a little bit like movie villains when they speak English, adding a curl to our language that recalls mustache twirling and clever hijinks; two, that riding on the back of a Vespa actually is just as fun (and not as scary) as I thought it would be, but not quite as romantic since it's hard to avoid clunking helmets together every couple of blocks; and three, that I continue to laugh at myself for being a 22-year-old American girl. I never considered what it would be like to fit so snugly into that specific category, but I really do feel like a 22-year-old American girl most of the time and especially when sipping pinot grigio across the table from an intelligent European bachelor who was already deep into the depths of adolescence when I was swimming in the womb. (36. Mamma mia.) Christa, if you're reading this... not quite Motorcycle Guy, but... email me! Or skype?
So last weekend the family went to the mountains, and rather than loiter on vacant Turinese streetcorners I packed an overnight bag and took a train to Bruni (or rather, to Bra, where I was continued the journey by car) to see a friend from Colorado College who recently joined this international network called WOOF. Working On Organic Farms, I think? You basically purchase a membership, receive a contact list, and can go from farm to farm in whichever region you choose - she picked Italy - to work in exchange for room and board. Very cool. The nearby town, Murazzano, has a population of about 600 people, and the surrounding hills are breathtaking: rolling foothills of green, green, green split into stripes (vineyard), squares (veggie crops), and orchards, receding into a misty background of more hills, more hills, and then, sky. We drove up a gently winding road, past lines of tall, slender poplars, and a set of 19th century Catholic stations of the cross (frescoed statues placed along the roadside), past an abandoned church and still other trees, and a big tree that had only a week ago housed a huge beehive that Mario had harvested for the farm, and past a mangy-looking yellow lab who barked at us like strangers. I stayed for about 28 hours, from Saturday afternoon when I dropped my backpack in the upstairs hayloft-turned-bedroom to take the animals to pasture, to Sunday evening when I finished my bowl of gelato, shouted a goodbye to the deaf Signora who was also staying at the farm (long story there: overnight I made friends with a 93-year-old Genovan who walks with a cane, reads without glasses, and lived some years in Africa), and took off again for the train station. It had been only a day, but it felt like forever. I think I tapped into my ancestors or something, my universal unconsciousness or whatever that's called, because I left the countryside feeling profoundly moved. Or just profound, in general.
The details of this weekend are innumerable, and make great little stories to tell after dinner or over a leisurely tea. You have details, too, that will never make it to a letter or an email or even a phone call. We will tell these stories, don't worry.
What else? I cut my hair! Not true: a magician named Fabio with a goatee and a hair salon called "Pepe" cut my hair, and Ruggero told me that I looked like a buffalo. Wait, I think I already told you about that in my last entry. Umm... I... met two American au pairs in the park across the street, one of whom will come out with me sometime tomorrow to get a coffee in town and exchange stories. She's from Long Beach, wears a headscarf that made me think of Utah, and lived one year in Florence (!) while she was in college. I have been playing a ton of soccer with Ruggero, and one time a couple of days ago I kicked it with surprising force and hit him square on the forehead, sent him flying into the air! Miraculously he was fine, thank God, with only a scratch on his elbow, and it's only because he wasn't hurt that I now laugh every time I think about it. I'm not supposed to play soccer! Non sono sportiva!
Have to go now, to brave the summer warmth and buy some fish and fruit from the market before it gets too hot. Love, love.
Bruni, Piedmonte, Italy
Not in the same day, however. That would have been overwhelming. Chronologically the goat came first, but as there's not much to say about the date I can start there. I just wanted to make a few brief comments about Italian men: one, that their accents make them sound a little bit like movie villains when they speak English, adding a curl to our language that recalls mustache twirling and clever hijinks; two, that riding on the back of a Vespa actually is just as fun (and not as scary) as I thought it would be, but not quite as romantic since it's hard to avoid clunking helmets together every couple of blocks; and three, that I continue to laugh at myself for being a 22-year-old American girl. I never considered what it would be like to fit so snugly into that specific category, but I really do feel like a 22-year-old American girl most of the time and especially when sipping pinot grigio across the table from an intelligent European bachelor who was already deep into the depths of adolescence when I was swimming in the womb. (36. Mamma mia.) Christa, if you're reading this... not quite Motorcycle Guy, but... email me! Or skype?
So last weekend the family went to the mountains, and rather than loiter on vacant Turinese streetcorners I packed an overnight bag and took a train to Bruni (or rather, to Bra, where I was continued the journey by car) to see a friend from Colorado College who recently joined this international network called WOOF. Working On Organic Farms, I think? You basically purchase a membership, receive a contact list, and can go from farm to farm in whichever region you choose - she picked Italy - to work in exchange for room and board. Very cool. The nearby town, Murazzano, has a population of about 600 people, and the surrounding hills are breathtaking: rolling foothills of green, green, green split into stripes (vineyard), squares (veggie crops), and orchards, receding into a misty background of more hills, more hills, and then, sky. We drove up a gently winding road, past lines of tall, slender poplars, and a set of 19th century Catholic stations of the cross (frescoed statues placed along the roadside), past an abandoned church and still other trees, and a big tree that had only a week ago housed a huge beehive that Mario had harvested for the farm, and past a mangy-looking yellow lab who barked at us like strangers. I stayed for about 28 hours, from Saturday afternoon when I dropped my backpack in the upstairs hayloft-turned-bedroom to take the animals to pasture, to Sunday evening when I finished my bowl of gelato, shouted a goodbye to the deaf Signora who was also staying at the farm (long story there: overnight I made friends with a 93-year-old Genovan who walks with a cane, reads without glasses, and lived some years in Africa), and took off again for the train station. It had been only a day, but it felt like forever. I think I tapped into my ancestors or something, my universal unconsciousness or whatever that's called, because I left the countryside feeling profoundly moved. Or just profound, in general.
The details of this weekend are innumerable, and make great little stories to tell after dinner or over a leisurely tea. You have details, too, that will never make it to a letter or an email or even a phone call. We will tell these stories, don't worry.
What else? I cut my hair! Not true: a magician named Fabio with a goatee and a hair salon called "Pepe" cut my hair, and Ruggero told me that I looked like a buffalo. Wait, I think I already told you about that in my last entry. Umm... I... met two American au pairs in the park across the street, one of whom will come out with me sometime tomorrow to get a coffee in town and exchange stories. She's from Long Beach, wears a headscarf that made me think of Utah, and lived one year in Florence (!) while she was in college. I have been playing a ton of soccer with Ruggero, and one time a couple of days ago I kicked it with surprising force and hit him square on the forehead, sent him flying into the air! Miraculously he was fine, thank God, with only a scratch on his elbow, and it's only because he wasn't hurt that I now laugh every time I think about it. I'm not supposed to play soccer! Non sono sportiva!
Have to go now, to brave the summer warmth and buy some fish and fruit from the market before it gets too hot. Love, love.
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