Comparison of American and Italian Life -- OR NOT

As my cousin pointed out yesterday, how can one possibly compare Italian life to that in America? She really thinks the question, itself, is invalid. They are two completely different lives, that only small pieces can be considered against that of the other culture; but in doing this, everything else is left out--which is what defines the full experience of one living in a place.

If none of that made sense, mi dispiace (I'm sorry), I'm writing this even though I should be sleeping. Today was spent with more cousins, most of whom live in a nearby town; again, I'd never met any of them prior to today. It was raining all day today so it was a particularly good day for a visit. I'll say one thing about the weather here: when the forecasters say it'll rain, it does. Makes it easier to plan around it because this rain makes riding a bike (or doing much outside) close to impossible.

Capturing the moments that made yesterday and today great will not be possible as much as I am desperately wanting to do that. It's simply not feasible, in words, to tell of the feeling of comfort, of warmth, that I instantly felt with all of my family members the moment I met them all. We may be related, but I was a stranger to them prior to this weekend. They didn't even know what I looked like. For the most part, we don't speak the same language, but I don't feel the stress of not having the right thing to say; I don't feel like I need to concern myself with how I look or dress or any of that. I can simply be part of the family and I have to be content at this moment in not understanding where this odd feeling of unexpected comfort originates.

The food, like yesterday, was prepared with a supreme level of care and it was wonderful. I think the system of serving up each course one at a time is terrific--it allows the chefs in the kitchen to enjoy the food with everyone and there is a little time in between courses for digestion.

Turns out the guys who are somewhere around my age are really into cycling. That was a pleasant surprise! I was glad I took this magazine with me along with the GPS watch and bike riding pics from the Colorado National Monument. (We watched a decent portion of the Paris Roubaix, too. I'm convinced that if everyone rode bikes, we'd have world peace. And yes, Mark-mystery-blog-reader, I highly encourage the purchase of GPS. I happen to really like Garmin, not sure how it compares to others out there. It's the best purchase, aside from airline tickets to Europe, that I've made in a very long time for multiple reasons. Can't wait to try out your suggested hack! Thanks!)

The conversation was almost all Italian today, two people have a good knowledge of English so I got some translations at times, but it really forced me to pull out the little Italian I know and piece it together. There was also a lot of communication via hand waving. The full-on Italian exposure was like a week in class...and it helped emphasize to me the importance of living with Italians. Apartment shopping for May will commence tomorrow. When I got home tonight, I spent a long time at the local bar reviewing vocabulary and realizing the hundreds of mistakes I made today.

Two common questions they all asked me are: what do I do for a living? and why do I study Italian here? This has been something I've been thinking long and hard about on bike rides. The creativity flows when there's so little stress and fresh air. I'm starting to come up with some interesting ideas, but nothing that I will do anything about until I get a bit further in school. One step at a time. If the dreams I'm having at night are any indication, I need to do do something dramatically different from the 8-5, M-F desk job.

On that note, I could write a book just on the experience of today alone, but this captures enough such that the day doesn't have a chance of slipping into oblivion.

A Day in Bevagna with "New" Cousins

Today was a very cool day of visiting cousins living in a medieval town (not very far removed on the family tree). The neat thing about this visit was that this is the first time I've ever met them. I started the day at the bike shop getting my bike fixed (this was a proactive fix to prevent a shifter cable from breaking again). I absolutely adore the bike shop. Right now, they're the only people I know in this town who don't think I'm a lunatic for riding a bike. (Note, I have at least two classmates who have never once ridden a bike.) While the mechanics were fixing the bike, I got to stroll along a nice dirt trail next to a river, just a lovely place and morning.

Tomorrow is similar, I'm meeting a whole bunch of cousins who, again, aren't far removed on the tree. Pictures and stories might be coming, this is the kind of stuff that's better not blogged and I'm simply out of time.

Have been picking up Italian fairly quickly (as compared with trying to learn it in Denver), but my big limiter right now is my lack of vocabulary. I can't try out much when I don't have words that come close to what I want to say. With that, time to go stuff some words in my brain!

Note to self: Hilltowns involve hills that add up to mountains

Today was the day I was actually going to get to a destination (instead of turning around early like I've done quite a few times lately). I'm feeling pretty comfortable on the roads now and have a good sense as to how to get where I want to go. Goal today: Gubbio. On my way out of town, I ran into a cool couple who just happened to be heading to Gubbio, too. (It's universal that couples who ride bikes together are pretty much always fun to ride with and interesting to be around.) This girl is the first female road cyclist I've seen since I've been in Italy. She and her husband were unfortunately just vacationing in the area for the weekend.

Total distance: 106 km, 5,000 feet of climbing. For the record, riding at low altitude with rollers is FAR more taxing on the body than riding in the Rockies for the same duration.

I found my knight in shining armor! Also to be found in the store in the background were all things a medieval warrior would need on the battlefield. Not quite sure how they stay in business, is there a market for this stuff?

Looking back at Gubbio as I ride out of town.

This is what hay fever looks like. I've been eating lots of eucalyptus honey lately, am hoping that keeps allergies at bay. So far, no sign of any issues. And no, eucalyptus honey doesn't taste like eucalyptus. It is made from bees buzzing around eucalyptus & the honey is said to be good for sore throats.

Simply a beautiful landscape found as I was putting in a few extra miles (my form of procrastinating) before doing the ridiculous hill-climb to get home.

Dedicated to my Rock Band Friends & Anyone with a Sentimental Bone in their Body...

I heard this song tonight in the bar and it took me back to our Rock Band jam sessions. Upon logging into Facebook, I see the fantastic news about the newest (youngest/littlest) member of J-Force!!! Congrats, Christine & Matt!!!!!

Thinking about all of you guys!

A German, Turk, American and Two Swedes Walk into an Irish Bar.......

Sorry, not the beginning of a funny joke, but this describes the fun night I just had! How cool to get to know people from all over the world and compare our countries, the good, bad and our philosophies on why we all ended up here, in Italy. The evening lasted a little longer as a liter of (decent) red vino, coupled with a cheese and prosciutto plate cost a mere 10 euros. There were far more people on the streets just now (2 am here) than at 9 pm when we met up.

Just after class let out today, a lot of us hung out...gelato was on the menu for the group. I found the best pistachio gelato that I have had to date. If you want some, you'll have to come visit me. I'll buy you one or even two, if you give me a lick.

Mikael says this is a good combo--beer and gelato.

Just chillin' with some of my classmates. The new class of the day was a language lab. It's where we get to put on headphones and say stuff in Italian to the microphone...the teacher can listen to any student whenever he chooses to. It's a great exercise in actually speaking the language properly, but I found it stressful to figure out how to talk, out loud, over the din of the rest of the class doing the same thing. By the end of the class, I was fairly used to it. However, by the end of the day today, I was ready for a break.

There are lots of words and concepts to review this weekend, but I'll be splitting time between being studious and visiting family. Yes, family!!! Ciao!

Andare in Bicicletta

Found some cool new roads today...and I almost made it to a very cool little hilltown. Note to self: when going to a hilltown, expect to go up. 2 1/2 hrs on the bike, 3,200 feet of climbing. It was so toasty warm and the sky was blue. The time on the bike was spent talking to myself in Italiano. I'm a boring conversationalist at this point with my tiny Italian vocab. Good practice, but I notice that when I try to speak with anyone else, everything I was going to say comes out all wrong.
 

The teacher has been enjoying putting students on the hot seat in front of the class. The student answers (in Italian) any question the class poses. It was my turn today to field questions.

Question: Tu hai marito? (Do you have a husband?)
Answer: No, perche preferisco andare in bicicletta. (No, I prefer to ride a bike.)

It was the only thing I could figure out how to say in Italian that made some sort of logical sense. There were many other questions. One involved where my grandparents are from. I mentioned Bevagna and after class, one of the guys (from Germany) told me all about his visit there a few days ago. He couldn't say enough good things about it and showed me all of the pictures he took of it. I learned a lot about some new places to check out next time I'm there.

Today we learned verbs...and I have to go study now since it's a lot to know. Here are some shots from school:

Not something you'll find in many schools. With that, time to hit the books!

Head First

Immersion is the true sink-or-swim method of learning. From experience, I think it's a style I like, though it's always uncomfortable to some degree. Typically, discomfort (in the sense of you're not growing or moving in any direction in life if you're not being stretched) is a place I prefer. Same ol' same ol' isn't in my vocabulary. That is how I ended up in Italia, now this is the true test...can I do this?

Here's what I see of language immersion simply from judging by Day 1. The class is a grand total of ~23 students. No one else is from the U.S., a couple are older (34 and 40), most are much, much younger (like 20). I'm the only one with Italian blood. It pleases me greatly when teachers all know immediately how to spell and pronounce my name--and they all want to know about my family roots. Other countries represented: China, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Siberia, Australia, Holland, Uganda and a few I couldn't figure out because I couldn't understand them.

No one so far has a compelling reason to be here (I believe this is what Elizabeth Gilbert discovered as she was studying Italian in Rome, when she was writing "Eat, Pray, Love.") Reasons I've heard so far: the language is beautiful, love Italy, love wine, don't want to look stupid by only knowing a single language, fulfilling a requirement for school and it's something to do... I'm definitely not saying these aren't good reasons, it's just not the same typical reasons one would give for learning Spanish or English.
 
When I was looking for the classroom, I met some Swedish classmates so I ended up sitting with them. They all speak excellent English (they're raised with the language there) and are very friendly.

The day began with our warm and friendly instructor speaking all Italian (as is to be expected). The most important skill I can see that one needs to handle this kind of instruction is being able to see the patterns and how things fit in the puzzle. The teacher says (all in Italian, of course): My name is Maria. Then she asks a student what his name is. He knows to respond similarly. She starts counting, she wants us to count to 80 as we go around the room. She asks each of us our names, how to spell them and where we're from, thus we learn the alphabet. She plays a tape of native speakers telling where they're from, how old they are, that sort of thing. They speak fast, she plays the tape a couple of times. We write answers to verbal questions. We're expected to know it now. Moving along to the next thing: masculine and feminine and how to make words plural. She doesn't need to use any language but Italian and handouts with examples (a few pictures) to get the point across. Session 1 is two hours long with a break. Lunchtime is spent running around town taking care of business.

I'm very glad I've spent some time here already, I am catching a lot more of the words when people speak than I used to. Since Italian words are so easy to spell, I know when I'm hearing words I don't know--I write them down and look them up later. Easy. I feel quite sorry for people trying to learn English since there's no way this is possible. 

Session 2 is a male instructor--he comes across immediately as a tough teacher. Gulp, big difference from this morning. Wrong-o! He's got a great sense of humor and is very personable. He starts off, however, much, much faster than the morning session--he expects that for us to be in this class, we know quite a bit of the Italian basics, including how to conjugate basic verbs (grazie to my Italian friends, your lessons really came in handy!) At first I was having trouble understanding him, but by the end of class (3 hours later), I was feeling much more comfortable (he hadn't slowed down). The other students felt similarly. Coming here without knowing any of the language would have been scary. 

The school is exquisitely beautiful (especially compared with the Engineering Center at CU). The weather today was blue sky and bike-ride perfect (which I did as soon as class let out). I took some pics of school, will post them when there's time. Social stuff is starting up soon--would have gone out tonight if there hadn't been a Facebook snafu. I'll try to put up short updates (maybe not even sentences during the week) and have a bit more on weekends. Arrividerci!

Art - Inside and Out!

Turns out not everything was closed today...so I ended up spending the late afternoon at an incredible art museum in town (and it's nearly free after the student discount).

The rain finally let up and the sun poured down making for a picture-perfect sunset!

It's back to school time and I'm sooo excited to be a student again. Amazingly enough, I was able to buy a pair of shoes that are fashionable enough for my new clothes (I was sure they were, again, going to not have my size and I refuse to go too small in shoes...the first store didn't have a single pair of shoes big enough, I got lucky at the second one).

On that note, time to switch into school mode!

What to do on rainy day: Techie Challenge

Not that I exactly know what the rest of the day entails, but I do have a very nice poncho and will be going out after posting this. Please, if any geeks are reading this and have ideas, I need to hear them!

Here's the challenge: I can see from Google maps what roads I want to take to go places, but to be able to follow the directions and have a pleasant bike ride, it involves needing to turn the directions/map created by Google Maps into a course route that can be uploaded into my Garmin GPS. (As I've said before, street names are worthless along with Google route directions.)

From what I've found in researching today: Garmin's courses are XML and so long as you have latitude and longitude points, it's not difficult to simply create one's own XML course file.

The problem boils down to this, then: I want a listing of all of the necessary latitude/longitude points to create a reasonable course to follow. With these data points, all is well. In Google maps, one can right-click on a point and the lat/long coordinates are shown to the user. At this point, I just copy/paste into Excel & have formulas there take care of creating the XML file. Great--but I don't love the time that has to be spent clicking on the map and pulling off the lat/long data.

If any of you have ideas as to anything out there to solve this problem, I'll give you a virtual pat on the back. From my Google searches, I'm surprised to not find much of anything available.

I'm pleased, however, to report that this is (though time-consuming) entirely possible as I now have a course uploaded on GPS waiting for me to get to a very cool town! I'll post the ride after I successfully do it on the bike. 

Raining Gatti e Cani (Cats and Dogs) per Pasqua!

Yesterday was an absolutely lovely day, fairly opposite from the constant rain falling today. This is the first significant (like activity-stopping) weather since I've been in Italy. My plan was to go to church and then pedal to Bevagna and spend the afternoon there. Instead, I've stayed in since church and have watched Italian tv--cartoons, westerns (dubbed, it's strange in Italian) and now world news. Back to yesterday & I apologize, this isn't posted in chronological order:

Finally, here's Assisi as seen from the road yesterday:













 (Click on the picture to see it bigger.)

Also seen on the road:

I have figured it out that reading maps & trying to figure out directions (including using Google map directions) is absolutely pointless. It's just important to know which towns are close to which other towns, what's north, south, east & west, follow town signs and do whatever intuition says is most right.

When I was walking around town yesterday morning (before it was warm enough to ride), it was so much fun to walk down new roads and see where they lead. Here's a nice vista.

That's how I ended up finding the shops where I picked up some cute, inexpensive clothes. At one store, I was talked into pants that are two sizes smaller than I typically wear--but, as the guy said, it's how the Italian girls wear clothes--small. They're black pants with gold stitching and gold zippers all over. I like them a lot (no, they aren't comfortable). Let me tell you, these pants are as effective as going on a diet. Clearly, I have no intention of starving myself in the happy land of amazing food.

I've found that I really enjoy conversing with shop owners and listening to others as they shop. The proprietors want to talk to me because I have money to spend in their stores (or they're just nice people), I don't care their intention. I try to buy one small thing everywhere I go (of course, it has to be something I need), and that buys me a full experience and social opportunity.

When I was at the market yesterday buying a couple of things, the line was pretty long. I find it interesting that even when someone is buying very few things (and everyone only pays in cash), each transaction seems to take a long time. I'm not sure why this is yet. There isn't an express lane. By the time I left, the line stretched to the back of the store. Definitely Easter shoppers, but lines tend to be long and slow from what I've found so far.

Same situation at the Post Office. I needed to send in some paperwork. Take a number. Read my Italian-English dictionary. Wait. Finally they take me and I find out that the special stamp I need can only be bought at certain other post offices. Hopefully they're open tomorrow. It surprised me that every business seemed to have normal hours Friday and Saturday before Easter.

Here are pictures taken from the street fair/market, whatever it's called:

Awesome, huge olives.

Sun-dried tomatoes.

Sweets.

Cannoli--I did the taste test & the one I'd had before (that I discussed on the blog) was the best, but I'm not complaining about these. The fair runs through tomorrow. One more cannolo only if the weather holds and I have 3+ hours to burn it off!

I liked this guy--he was very friendly and generous with samples. I bought some really tasty, soft cheese from him, I wish I knew what kind it is. Something that impressed me with the people selling their wares is that after weighing the food, they would round down as to how much I owed them and I always got proper change back (sometimes more than I expected). Considering they all know I'm American (maybe Italians don't wear pony tails?), I got a very good impression of their business ethic.

At the beginning of the Easter Vigil mass, everyone gathered in the courtyard (this is standard Catholic, if you're not familiar). There was a huge fire going in a big metal container. 

Then with candles lit, everyone proceeded into the church. Not sure the significance of all of the people in the white robes (men and women).

Contrary to the way this picture looks, town was packed and loud at 1:20 am (when the Vigil mass was over). In fact, people were walking around all over with cups of beer, all ages were out. For that matter, all ages were in church, too.

Easter Sunday

This is the scene as taken from the steps of the cathedral.

Some quick observations about Sunday mass and Easter in general: I didn't see a lot of the Easter bunny in shops here, but there is some Easter bunny (particularly in chocolate form) and what's particularly popular here are these really large, hollow chocolate eggs (large like ~1 foot tall). I'd like to see what's in other towns. Here, the Perugina chocolate factory is extremely popular/famous around Italy and they produce these eggs. I'm looking forward to the free tour.

Easter colors as Easter merchandise in stores have been sterotypical pastel. However, in church, I saw almost all dark colors (blacks and browns, furs, boots). People are all very fashionable, but hair standards appear lower than clothing standards (possibly because this is a humid climate and Italian hair doesn't like humidity--I can tell you that from experience!)

The mass was beautiful, but no different in form/function from American Catholic Easter day mass. The choir was remarkably beautiful. The last song they sang was "Alleluia." Lots of people stuck around to hear the whole thing. Oh yeah, and when people wish each other Peace be with You, they often kiss on both cheeks and say "Pace." So this is very similar to the way it happens in the States except for the cheek kissing (this is commonly seen on the streets when friends greet each other, as well). The street fair is still going on today, don't know if there's anything out of the ordinary going on, I'd guess not as lots of food has been bought in the past few days, I'm sure huge feasts are being eaten!

And here's my mini-feast:

I even used the oven. I suppose the food here inspires me (ah, and I have time!) This is egg, pasta noodles, sun-dried tomatoes, bok choy, leftover rosemarino pizza with mozzarella bufala melted over it. You'll have to trust me that it was good.

Now to figure out what to do tomorrow if it continues to rain. Nice to have a day at home today! Hope you all had a very enjoyable Easter Sunday!!!