Big Red Car



FRIDAY, February 3, 1995.

It's Friday night again (happens every week, I know), and I'm exhausted - seems like last Friday night was just a few hours ago, but since then, I had the weekend with the car, my monthly exam, another trip to San Gimignano, and started my second course. As for the exam, I did pretty well; I only really messed up on one section. Who needs the past tense anyway?

We had a one day break between courses, so we (Carol, Michele, Lonni and I) took the bus (much easier than driving, but far more nauseating) back to San Gimignano because we'd only had time to spend about 30 minutes there last weekend and wanted to see more. Unfortunately, we forgot that it was Wednesday (you know, Wednesday, everything's closed on Wednesday... isn't it like that in the U.S.?), so we again missed out on the shopping scene. Too bad, because there are a lot of nice shops in town.

I have developed a terrible headache that won't go away - perhaps this is the fabled foreign-language headache. After the first day of my second course, I went to talk to the school director because the conversation portion of the class was just too difficult. I had struggled through the first month, often not understanding anything, and now felt completely lost. She offered to put me in a new conversation class full of beginners for conversation, and I gladly accepted. For grammar, I am still in the second course.

So this afternoon I had conversation class with a bunch of beginners - and I realized that I've learned a lot. I was able to follow the conversation and stay a step ahead of the class - a feeling I'm a lot more familiar with than being two steps behind. This class is truly filled with beginners - Americans, Japanese, and Koreans who aren't already fluent in 1.3 billion other languages like my other class filled with Europeans. It's great! I love it.

I feel like I learned more conversational skills today than I did all of last month. In actuality, it's a matter of positive reinforcement. This teacher is the regular "super-beginner" teacher and she understands the difficulty that I and the other students are having. The teacher I had last month had never taught the beginner section before and given that my class was filled with many people who really weren't beginners at foreign language, it was just too hard for me. I really wish that I'd had this class last month. The good news is that I think I'm really going to learn something this month. I'm starting to catch more of what Signora Provvedi says - although I'm still usually flabbergasted when she finally stops and asks me if I understand. I'm now able to express really, really simple things in Italian and feel that I have truly begun to learn. The confidence booster I got from today's class was invaluable.

Photos of San Gimignano and Siena


MONDAY, February 6, 1995.

I spent a sunny and warm weekend in Rome - which became even better when I heard that the weather in Siena was terrible. My friend Michele said she wanted to do some sightseeing, and I've been wanting to start apartment hunting and visit an old friend of mine from New Jersey now living in Rome (Jen Cooke for those of you who know her), so we decided to go together. Saturday night, we stayed at a small, inexpensive hotel near the Spanish Steps - which is a really cool place to hang out. Early Saturday evening, I sat on the steps, listened to a group of Italians sing and play guitar behind me, watched the sun set in front of me, and enjoyed the thousands of people all around me. Serious atmosphere.

I bought some Italian classified ads and after some study managed to decipher enough to make some phone calls. Three people told me quite quickly that the apartment was no longer available - I didn't believe them - I think that they don't want to rent to someone whose Italian is as bad as mine. Frankly, I don't blame them. I finally found one guy who was friendly and said I could see the apartment. The neighborhood wasn't very nice, and neither was the apartment, but the man was very amiable and I "chatted" with him for a while. It was fun. That was the only apartment I actually visited. Pathetic, but doing it all in Italian was just so overwhelming.

Saturday night, Michele and I had dinner with Jen at an amazing pizza joint absolutely packed with locals. Jen said she found her apartment using an English magazine called "Wanted in Rome." It lists lots of apartments - mostly without prices (annoying) - some of which sound great. For example, a small, furnished apartment near the Spagna sounds ideal. I'll have to return to Rome later this month and do some more serious looking. The goods news is that there seem to be apartments available.

Sunday morning, we visited the Vatican, which despite housing some of the less progressive thinkers of our day, is extremely beautiful. We climbed to the stop of St. Peter's - a dizzying experience - and were treated to an incredible view of the city. The church is extremely impressive and effortlessly captured our attention for several hours. Afterwards we crossed the river and had a relaxing lunch at a sidewalk cafe - sipping cappuccinos in out T-shirts, soaking up the February heat. If it's that hot in February, I can barely wait for the summer...

Photos of Rome

Photos of Rome and Grosetto

I've been helping Michele with her English, and she's been helping me with my Italian (she's Swiss German, but she also speaks Italian, French, and English). We got to talking about how difficult word order can be. She says she never knows what order to string English adjectives together i.e. "big red car" or "red big car" - it's hard for me to even get "red big car" to come out of my mouth. It's really strange to think about. Now I suppose if I was having a discussion about "big cars" and I wanted to talk about a particular "big car" which was "red", I might mention the "Red big car", but this is far fetched at best. It made for hysterical conversation.

We had planned to take the 6:30pm train out of Rome, which would get us (via Chiussi) to Siena at 9:15. Unfortunately, we malfunctioned and ended up on the 6:30 train to Pisa. We talked with the guys in our train compartment who had an Italian train schedule book; they concluded it was hopeless and invited us to sleep at their home in Pisa. (This happens quite frequently to Michele, although I have yet to be asked to spend the night by an Italian woman...) We declined.

Instead, we got off the train in Grosetto, hoping against hope that on Sunday night at 8:30 there would be a bus to Siena. No such luck. No bus. No train. Nothing until 5:35am. A taxi would've cost 160,000 Lire ($100), so we opted to stay in a hotel for only 80,000 and take the train in the morning. Expensive mistake. Grrr. We had fun complaining to each other about this - I taught her how to swear appropriately in English. She particularly liked the expression "give a flying fuck" - which the information guy in the Grosetto train station certainly didn't . She told me about an Italian she met at language school in Scotland who went around saying "it appens" - (Italians get confused about h's) - somehow, this was very funny at the time.

Waking up at 4:50 am wasn't funny at all. We dragged ourselves to the station and managed to get back to Siena by 7:10 - enough time to go home, freshen up, eat, and get to school by 9. What's life without a little adventure? It's the kind of thing that strengthens friendships and creates great inside jokes. This evening, I ran into Michele in the street (Siena isn't too big a place). What's the first thing I said?

"Listen you bonehead, I don't give a flying fuck about your big red car."

I guess you had to be there.



Copyright 1997 by Bradley Edelman
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