Coke vs. Pepsi

So I had my first teaching sesson two days ago. I think it went well. We discussed Coke and Pepsi in class and my student, although not a soda drinker had a lot to say about the businesses. At the end, we had a role-play where I was Pepsi and he was Coke and the senior teacher was a representative of Mercedes Benz needing a sponsor for their new car campaign. She was quite concerned about the status of Coke because of the child labor that they have used. My student said, "Well, dont worry, we fired all the children." As we all started laughing, he then said, "And we hired all their parents!"

Next week I teach twice, once for 90 minutes myself and once for 45 with a partner. I actually really enjoy teaching, even though Im quite nervous beforehand. In other news...I tried gelato and it is fabulous, however Im trying hard not to eat it everyday. It rains here a lot right now and the cold weather helps me still the craving. Although the pastry sweets here are probably just as enticing.

In our apartment, we have a bathroom that has a shower hose where the water comes out. However, there is no place to hook the shower hose so it can be used as a shower. Yesterday while I had the afternoon off, I was determined to become an engineer and figure out to find a solution to the problem. Shower-baths were taking too long and I was ready to stand up for a shower. Karen was as well. I tried to get the picture on here, but unfortunately I cannot. However, I used the top of my clinique soap box to create an angle for the shower head to rest upon so that we can take a shower. With a whole lot of eletrical tape, my contraption worked. (Pops are you proud?) I imagine this talent comes from my father, while my teaching capability and the natural way I talk with my hands comes from my mother.

With this course, we dont have much time to do anything else during the weekdays, due to the long commute and the afternoon work. Yet last night, I wrote a poem...I'm sure I'm the next Shakespeare:
The day is done
My feet are dirty
Tomorrow I hope to see the sun
And get out of school early.

Non Parlo Italiano

So far, so good, I guess. I continue to remain frustrated at my lack of the Italian language. But life here is certainly interesting. Lesson number one in Italian is that you say thankyou as graztie. However to pronounce that correctly...it is grat - ZE(like saying the letters) - AY (as in the ay in day). The interesting thing is that when you often hear this in the U.S. its normally grat-Z without the A at the end. So there, now the next time you come to Rome, you'll be one step ahead of the stupid american standing next to you. School was rather overwhelming yesterday with all that we are going to do, but I guess most first days of school are like that. Unfortunately for me and the other folks I live with, we are an hour commute away. School is split up into two sections with a big part of the afternoon empty. This means lots of wandering around Rome or doing schoolwork, only dreaming about finding a bed to lay our heads down in. By the end of the day, we get home, grab some dinner and then take a bath and go to sleep. Fortunately for me, I live with two great Brits, Duncan and Sarah, who are quite lovely and have influenced me into using adjectives like lovely, as well as saying half four, which means 430. I also live with Karen, a girl from Long Island, who amazingly enough doesnt have an accent. She studied linguistics in college and hates the sound of her hometown accents. So we all go through the same hour commute everyday...a 10 min walk to the train station, a 40 min train ride, a 5 min metro ride and then another 7 or 8 min walk. Lucky for us, some of the train ride can be used for getting homework done, the day of, if necessary. Im sorry if this post is full of horribly placed commas and missing punctuation, I havent quite figured out the Italian keyboard yet. Tomorrow I actually teach my first class, and last night I had my first pizza in Italy. This afternoon will be a first for the icecream, which I have a feeling will be the start of a very bad habit. More to come soon...

tanti aguri

I woke up this morning with my mind trying to translate random words from english to italian, with my spanish getting in the way. All I recalled about the upcoming day was that I was heading to the Vatican Museum with Zia Maria Rosada and her 3rd grade class. As I walked out of the bedroom, Maria greeted me with Tanti Aguri. I stopped a moment, tried to figure out which language she was speaking and then realized she said Happy Birthday. I said gratzie automatically and then it clicked that it was my birthday. She made me this wonderful cake which I would have eaten more than one slice if I hadn't eaten so much for lunch. I need to just plan on gaining weight while I'm here!
After day 2 of being in Italy, my italian hasn't improved much and my english has gotten worse. I was typing an email to a friend in Nicaragua and I didn't know how to spell disappointed in English on freetranslation.com so I could get it translated to Spanish. It's all the more obvious here that I'm losing my mind. I walk around with a small notebook and ask anyone around me how to say this or that.
Franco, my mom's cousin that I never met before, picked me up from the airport and he and his family have been so ridiculously nice to me. It's as if I'm the president of the United States and their long lost daughter all in one. Franco has the look that I typically associate with Italians. Dark hair, a little silver going through it, a gold link bracelet on his right hand, a checkered button-down shirt that is covered by a sea-foam green sweater accompanied by black pants and shiny black shoes. Thank goodness for his two beautiful daughters, Arianna 28 and Elisa 24 who both speak English. They also have a 20 year old living with them while she goes to school, her name is Serena and she is from Futani, where my grandparents are from. Last night I felt like a school girl again as all four of us were in one room, watching Mona Lisa Smile (i understood none of it, but I've seen it before) and exchanging Italian and English words. The girls got a kick out of blueberries and blackberries. They thought when I said Raspberries, I said redberries. They kept going with all the colors...greenberries, yellowberries and orangeberries. Too bad its not that easy.
Monday I start school, and its possible I'll see the Coleseo before that. If only the frustrations of the language barrier would go away...I feel like I'm back in 7th grade just learning Spanish and living in a place like Nicaragua. It's true that b-c I know Spanish I'm a step ahead in learning Italian, however the two languages are just different enough that words I think would be the same aren't and frustration forces me to write down the correct translation in my little notebook, just to forget it two seconds later. Regardless, I have a solid feeling I'm really going to like this place. More to come soon.