Realtà

 It was a completely normal day, on the surface. I woke up, I drove to work, I worked, I drove home, I spent time with my boyfriend and I went to bed. But nothing about it felt “normal” in the traditional sense… in fact, everything about it felt fresh, new and extraordinary. Being in Italy continues to hold me in awe.

To begin, I woke up at the luxurious hour of 9:00am. This was improved by the fact that when I woke up, Gio was there, because his school schedule has him out of bed at 6:30 most mornings. After an appropriate amount of coccole, e poi latte e biscotti, Gio had to get studying and I eased my way into the day with some yoga. I headed off to work at the reasonable hour of noon, which is where the snuggles and biscuits end and reality sets in. Most immediately, the reality of driving.

Driving in Italy is an adventure… especially driving almost 60km along a highway around Naples, one of the most notoriously chaotic cities for driving in Europe. People here definitely follow a different set of road-rules than we do in Canada. For such relaxed people at all other times of the day, everyone seems to be a damn hurry whilst driving. Perhaps this is to balance out their otherwise laissez-faire attitude.

Being a timid driver simply does not work in Italy. When merging, changing lanes or going onto a highway, what I would consider an unsafe distance to try to get in front of a car is oftentimes the only distance you have to work with… so you GO GO GO and assume that whoever is racing up behind you sees you and will slow down (just enough) or jerk into the next lane to not lose speed (a far more likely scenario). I am still timid by Italian standards, which is usually okay because people have no problem passing me. Whether it’s in a left turn bay or lined-up in a big row of traffic, certain drivers will simply dip around me (and the entire line of traffic, perché no?), into the oncoming traffic lane, to get ahead. This is a daily, if not quarter-hourly, occurrence.

Another thing that I noticed while driving and being a passenger is that another Italian stereotype holds true even while driving – Italians do talk with their hands, at all times. Even while driving a manual shift and talking on their cell phone. To me it looks like multitasking to the extreme but to an Italian it’s just second nature. While driving with my boss last week, he was telling a wild story and had equally wild hand gestures to match the story and therefore, he was lightly swerving all over the road. Anyone in Canada would have thought he was drunk. This happened to me again while driving myself to Pozzuoli. A car in front of me was swerving all over two lanes of the highway and I thought to myself “it’s 12pm and he’s drunk already!?” But no, upon further inspection, I saw a lively conversation taking place between the passenger and the driver, complete with the necessary hand gestures.

In my two solo drives to Pozzuoli and back, I’ve gained confidence – and a new-found love in my good friend, Signor TomTom, who tells me where to go so I don’t have to drive and figure out the directions at the same time. I also picked up Giovanni from his University earlier this week, which is conveniently on the way from Pozzuoli back to Caserta, and only requires three terrifying minutes of Naples city driving, which I could manage. Being able to “swing by” Federico II University to pick up Gio is a thrilling concept to me!

The second reality that faced me that day was the reality of my new job – teaching English. I had been given: five low-level students for five consecutive hours for four classes in the span of two weeks. I have some experience teaching English, but very casual conversation-based and summer camp experience. I have no certification. However, by this day, it was my second class with the students and having survived the first, I felt more at ease, just like I did with driving. I was given no direction about the class at all (except that they are supposed to “speak”) and the woman in charge didn’t even show up that day, so I had to wander around the school finding a kind Italian teacher to help me make some photocopies. The lesson wasn’t perfect and the students were a bit difficult and tired at times, but all in all, it was a success. We had fun and I had them speaking in English as much as I could. Five hours of speaking for a low-level language student is a feat in and of itself.

The third reality that faced me at the end of the day was coming home. After the drive back, Gio was waiting for me at home, having just finished his own productive day of exam studying. Both exhausted, we decided to go for a passeggiata around Caserta and talk about our days. We stopped at a café and enjoyed prosecco and antipasti. This moment was the culmination of a successful and very real day. We weren’t on vacation, we weren’t on exchange in Belgium, we weren’t visiting one another in our respective cities… we both had a full, busy, and rewarding day that started wonderfully and finished in the best way possible –  together, drinking aperitivi and eating antipasti.

Vancouver is lovely, but there is no way to duplicate the feeling of that day in my own city. I was being challenged by doing “normal things” but with the added elements of being in a different country, speaking a different language and having to decode different ways of driving and working. The fact that this was indeed a normal day made the day extraordinary. 

Comments or questions welcome! I'd love to hear from you, too!

Adjustments

August 11 2006: I think I have fallen in love with Roma... when we got off the train bright and early, I couldn't even believe the sights I was seeing. I was awe-struck. Here we were at 6:30am... driving from the station... with some of the world's oldest and most monumental sights just passing us by... (Written in my travel journal on my first day, ever, in Italy.)

Before I left Canada, while procrastinating for exams, I took the time to go through my travel journal that I wrote in religiously during my first journey through Europe, straight after high school. I had some pretty strong impressions of Italy from the moment we first arrived. A dear friend and I had spent the night making friends with a fellow traveller on a night train from Nice to Rome and arrived in Rome groggy and exhilarated. We made a lot of oblivious-tourist mistakes during that first trip of ours to Italy. I feel incredible that five years after I wrote those words I would be making a trip to Rome for work.

I arrived in Rome the other day about 4 hours early for my workshop to become an examiner for English language exams because I wanted to retrace the tourist steps I had taken in 2006 and then again in 2008. I wanted to do this for nostalgia, to see if I could remember the way and because, when in Rome… it’s hard to resist being a wide-eyed tourist!

It’s always different to be in a country to live versus being a tourist. I think Italy has one of the biggest dichotomies between “tourism Italy” and “la vita quotidiana.” Or maybe I am feeling this way because when I was in Belgium I was living in the student-bubble and when I was in France I was living with expats. Whatever the reason, the experience that I have just begun feels the most authentic… and the most challenging.

Let me preface the proceeding anecdotes with this assurance: every challenge that I am facing in Italy, I am beyond happy to face. Granted, in the heat of some of the more trying moments, I want to pull my hair out, but in the end, living in Caserta is exactly where I want to be right now. Gio and I are still in the “I can’t believe you are in front of me” phase. I have traded spending time alone in my room in Vancouver talking to someone across the world for constant and intense Italian interactions, not just with Gio but with his entire family who all lives under one roof. I am still getting used to the idea that Gio and I won’t be ripped apart again by thousands of kilometers.

I feel extremely lucky to land in a foreign country with a whole support network who is not only here for me, but who has already sorted out the vast majority some of life’s most difficult issues, such as a job and a way to get to said job (Senore fiat cinquecento!) Knowing people here allows me to do things like bypass a room full of mostly North Africans trying to sort out their citizenship and go straight into the office of a friend of a friend who tells me exactly what to do in less than 10 minutes and to come back if I need more help.  Italy is a country which revolves around nepotism and social obligations, therefore having connections here is vital. I’m in a privileged position.

That being said, the social obligation dance here in Italy is going to take some practice. There are so many steps to learn and at the moment I’m feeling at a loss in certain situations. In many occasions my lack of fluent Italian is a hindrance but in other occasions it blatantly displays my naïveté to the social norms and therefore (I hope) some of my behaviours are more easily excused.  A good example of this happened in Rome, when my workshop ran (of course) overtime. My boss came to meet me in Rome (for reasons still unknown to me, but I am assuming it had something to do with this social dance that I’m still figuring out) and while I was rushing out of the meeting he was standing there talking on the phone. I told his friend (still not sure who she was, either!) that we really needed to go catch our train and we were feeling really anxious. There was no clear response to my clearly distressed (panicked) face and gesticulations, so my colleague and I just ran off and took a taxi to the Termini station. When my boss casually showed up at Termini about fifteen minutes after us, he seemed annoyed and told me that he made the trek to Rome for me. The start of our train ride was extremely awkward. I felt really bad about running off but really annoyed and confused because I didn’t know what the protocol was, and I wasn’t about to miss my train to find out. I talked to my colleague about it, who’s from England and has been living in Italy for almost seven years, and she still wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was either. She was pretty sure that what we did was rude, though. In the end, because of my rudimentary Italian, I simply apologized for “being too nervous in Rome” which was about all I knew how to explain. He seemed content with this. I think I’m in the clear because he bought me a pineapple juice afterwards.

The contrary of that situation, where my simple Italian seems to be sufficient (for the moment), is the on-going linguistic and cultural battle with Gio’s nonna. She’s an incredibly sweet lady but I am finding it very hard to communicate with her for multiple reasons. First of all, she doesn’t hear well. Second of all, she seems to be unable to understand 95% of what I say (even when I know I am saying it correctly!). Third of all, she doesn’t leave the house hardly at all, so she is very curious about what is going on inside the house. It’s hard to satisfy the curiosity of someone who can’t hear or understand you. As I was running around in the morning to leave for an 8-hour journey to Cervia to invigilate an English competition for schoolchildren, the nonna was talking at me and clearly distressed about where I was going and when I would be back. I tried to tell her “Vado a lavoro. Lavoro a Cervia per tre giorni. Devo mangiare e poi devo andare!” but she wasn’t having any of it. I basically had to leave the house while she was yelling after me. I had to phone Gio to tell him to phone her and tell her what was going on. Communication problems tend to intensify when in a hurry…

The adjustments to life here in Italy have only just begun. I haven’t even gotten into the adjustments required for working in Italy but that will have to wait until next time!


On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage. (Gide)

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