I Just Saw a Girl Sit on Her Own Head

Surprise!

We went to see Cirque du Soleil's Allegria tonight. Wow. If you've never seen a Cirque du Soleil, I recommend you put it at the top of your to do list.

A GIRL SITS ON HER OWN HEAD! Go! This is the most worth-the-price-of-admission thing I've ever seen.

Buon Compleanno a Will!

We're going out for Will's birthday tonight... a little surprise, that's surprisingly near our house, although not close enough to walk, so I'd better get in the shower and hit the bricks!

I would post here what the surprise is, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Happy Birthday will find it before we go. So I guess it will be a surprise for everyone...

I got an email from my friend Matt in New York tonight and apparently he's going to a Slayer concert in New Jersey. That's not the surprise, but boy, wouldn't Will be shocked to get on a plane to go see heavy metal in Jersey?!

It's Liposuction for Skinny People

This is just plain crazy.

Posso Parlare Già Italiano?! (Can I Speak Italian Already?!)

Will and I are in our last few days of class and I can't quite say I'm anywhere near fluent. I think, actually, the little Italian I've learned has brought me no closer to communicating here in Rome, but it has erased any bits of Spanish that I've managed to retain lo these many years.

I know it takes time... it took me over seven years of studying Spanish in school and a little immersion in a Spanish-speaking community (restaurant work in NYC) to be able to discuss my missing luggage at a Mexican airport. I feel comfortable cutting myself a little slack for not being able to discuss politics or shoe-shopping in Italian with the same fervor I can in English.

But... we've got a little bit of a deadline on our hands now, and it's pretty much all my fault. Will's mom arrives in a few days. I asked her myself if she, a native Italian speaker, wouldn't mind speaking to Will and I only in Italian during her stay. She basically said that to speak in Italian all the time would be difficult, but that we should do it at meal times. Will and I tried that trick. We got lazy. The furthest we've extended ourselves lately is to choose the Italian menu over the English version when offered.

I reminded Will over some really great pizza tonight that I had thrown this gauntlet down and... well, it wasn't quite a full-on "silent treatment", but I was definitely given the "well, look what you've just gone and done" treatment.

I took a little solace in "what I've gotten us into" when the American couple next to us in the restaurant completely butchered any semblence of Italian when ordering their meal. And then the lady did that thing that many people do when they're trying to communicate with someone who doesn't speak their language:

Waiter: Caffe?
Lady: Uh, yes. AMERICAN COFFEE. AMERICAN. COFFEE. AMERICAN.
Husband: I'll have a cuppa cheeno.
Lady: OH, OK. A CUPPA CHEENO FOR ME TOO.

It's like people who yell at the deaf. Why?

I will speak this language if it kills me. And it just might...

Just Another Day in the Eternal City

We went to the Coliseum yesterday. It's really big and really old. Pretty impressive.



All kinds of crazy stuff was going on, too. Guys dressed up as Gladiators (except wearing Teva Sandals, which I'm willing to bet was not part of the original Gladiator uniform), busloads of tourists and some crazy photo shoots.





This was a publicity shoot for a Martial Arts School, but look closer at the couple sitting on the rock behind them.



Yep. A bride and groom, all lovey dovey! How sweet. And what a great idea, to have some pictures of the big day shot at the Coliseum!


But wait.









Not such an original idea, apparently.

They just kept rolling up!

I have no idea what these two were doing, but they seemed to be having fun.




After walking around for a bit, listening in on random tour guides and Will doing his best Julius Caesar, we decided to hit the bricks and get some gelato.


But on the way back, there was a little action:


We saw the whole thing happen, even though immediately after we couldn't decide who was at fault. The cop car was in front, but I think they kind of swerved or something, because Mr. Moto crunched into their back right door.

As Will was handing me the camera, this nice Irish fellow strolled by and said something to the effect of "I didn't see anything" while making the my-lips-are-zipped gesture. I took a picture anyway. The guy turned out to be ok, and it looked like Mr. Policeman felt bad, so all was well in the end. We (me, Will and the opinionated Irishman) all decided, though, that if it wasn't a cop that made him fall, if it were just some random dude who couldn't pick a lane, this biker dude would have gone nuts! But since it was Mr. Nice Friendly Police Man, it was all smiles and apologies.

Will and I remain happy pedestrians.

Just Can't Decide What to Wear?

Might I suggest trying your underthings as outerwear? Here on the Metro, it's never too early for evening wear!

And by evening wear, I mean something you might wear to bed. If going to bed is like, um, your job.

Brought to You by the Letter G

The girl whose name starts with a G is Giovanna. And she is 100% a low talker. Still no word on Maria, the Chinese clarinetist and pianist.

Off to class!

Food Coma

I just had the best panna cotta ever.

The little restaurant on our street, conveniently named "The Kitchen", is wonderful. The menu is simple: you get five price-fix options from which to choose. You can take a simple trip to the contorni bar (a buffet of side dishes, mostly cooked vegetables with a little rice, potato and cous cous thrown in, just in case you need a little starch to accompany your pasta) to a three-course meal, including dessert, water (they don't really do tap water here) and caffe.

Will and I both confessed to still being a little skittish in restaurants here. We're both ok in a more traditional place where you're greeted by a host, you ask for un tavolo per due then the waiter comes and takes your order.

But The Kitchen was a little different, in that we both thought that the contorni table meant that the whole restaurant was buffet style and then weren't sure whether to just go serve ourselves from there or to wait for a waiter to greet us. Today, though, Will was one step ahead of me. The deal is that you basically choose how much you want to eat: the melange of sides, a primi piatti (usually pasta) or primi e secondo (generally fish or meat).

The options were written on a chalkboard on the first floor. Will was alert enough to give it a glance on the way downstairs to our table, while I was a little startled at having run into Claudio, the brother of the woman from whom we're subletting the apartment. I missed the choices entirely and decided that it was just easier to "have what he's having". It was also easier to just nod and say due (two) than to try to stumble through asking the waitress what today's offerings were.

Long story short, we had lunch (penne arribiata, no secondo), it was fantastic and now I'm beat. Oh, that panna cotta. Bellissima!

Before I snooze off, though, check out Will's new sunglasses*!


Here he is after our Italian test yesterday, in the lounge area at school, waiting to see if we passed.


*the glasses may look a little on the grande side, but rest assured, these are tame for his Italian brethren.

The Graduate(s)

Well, you can breathe a sigh of releif because we managed to pass the test and we are in the Level 2 class.

You know, though, it's one thing to pass a test, it's another to have an actual conversation.

In Italian.

Without an obscene amount of gesturing and sound effects. (Will told me it sounded like I was "speaking African" to our last teacher because I kept clicking to try to explain myself)

I don't blush when ordering coffee anymore, and I can even soldier through mini-conversations. This weekend, I was able to ask a man on the train if there was another stop before Florence and understand his answer. The answer was mostly just a nod, but I felt a sense of accomplishment just the same. Then we met a 12-year-old boy and his mom on the train back to Rome and were able to chat a bit with him. I heard him tell his mother that I was doing my exercise book in Italian. Apparently he's doing similar work in English. And Spanish. Did you get the part where I said he was twelve?

Anyway, class began bright and early at 9 this morning. And wow, what a group! It is reminiscent of L'Auberge Espagnole. We met a bunch of colorful new people, including:

Pietro from Poland, who is not a priest, but whose work concerns a ministry of some sort

Zen and Nerus, a brother-sister duo from Libya

Helmut from Austria who Will and I both thought was the teacher. He works in something that sounds fascinating (or boring... I couldn't quite understand every word, but I think he did say that his wife is fluent in Italian. Or is Italian. I should study)

Marian, a Canadian girl who goes to Princeton and is studying Baroque Architecture

Lisa, a very tan college student from Albany who studies Marketing and whose parents are originally from Italy. (I think there was some talk of her father being a pig farmer. Or pig hunter. Babbo is definitely interested somehow in pork)

Cam, a Canadian from Vancouver who studies Political Science

Marcello, a brother of some ilk (perhaps a monk? No, he talks... Priest? Maybe when my Italian gets better I can find out more...) from Buenos Aires

Maria*, a Chinese girl who is studying Piano and Clarinet

Toshima, aka Sister Maria, a very giggly Japanese nun

and then another girl whose name escapes me (it starts with a G), but she is 3/4 Italian and 1/4 Pakistani, lives in Glasgow and speaks English, Spanish and decent Italian. I guess I was so taken aback by her global DNA that I missed her name. Or maybe it's that she's just a little bit of a low-talker.

We had to talk about what we eat for breakfast and what our homes are like. Everyone has coffee and a little bread or pastry (except the other American girl who said she eats bacon and eggs every morning). And everyone lives in a small apartment except for me and Will (we think everyplace here is big after cramming into an apartment in NYC) and the folks doing religious work. Each of them used either the word "Villa" or "Palazzo" and mentioned either a fountain or garden. Guess that's what you get when you're in good with God.

It seems that everyone has come to Rome to study Italian with an end goal of reading some really old documents on art or religion. Then there's me and Will. The American couple. On extended vacation. When asked why I was studying Italian, all I could think to say was "um, so I can speak for the next six months."

Va bene.


*not her real name.

There Goes the Neighborhood

Every afternoon around 4pm or so, we get a very special private audio show from our living room window. I guess our neighbors are opera singers, and that's rehearsal time. I like to think of them as a husband and wife duo, sort of the Lunts of Rome...

On Tuesday, Will and I had what has become my favorite conversation ever:


me: Sounds like it's time for the opera again.

Will: Come on, you have to admit...

me: What?

Will: It's better than the crackheads that would scream in front of the apartment in New York...

me: Good point.



Now, dear friends, family and anyone else startled by the word crackhead, fret not. The crackheads didn't actually live in the neighborhood, they just walked through on their way to, well, probably buy more crack. And yes, they spoke at high volumes. But they weren't the noise problem. That came from the people screaming in Spanish on the payphone on the corner and the crazy guys in wheelchairs that played dominoes in front of the deli across the street.

I'll take the opera any day, for sure.

We're off to Florence for the weekend. There's some big holiday here tomorrow. It's probably something religious... that seems to be the way it goes here. Will's aunt is involved in a "dragon boat race" on the Arno. I'll take some pictures and get back to you on that one.