Where do I begin? Since Thursday, so many wonderful things have happened! (By the way, we only get internet access Monday through Thursday at the university from 11am here to 7 pm, so if you’re wondering why communication has been scant this weekend that is why.) Thursday night we went over to Deb’s for a lovely meal. It ended up being Deb, the four of us roommates, the two boys from the program: Tyler and Kevin, and one other girl, Carly, which, yes, is quite confusing, and my guitar. We had pasta, of course, and many many bottles of wine. We also had lots of tasty antipasti (which, for those of you who don’t know, is like small snack-y appetizers) of olives, tapenade, crackers, cheese, tomatoes and bread. It was delicious. (What a generic thing to say about food.) It’s just that all the food is unbearably and indescribably fantastic here and though it’s tedious and redundant for me to say it about every meal I have, it happens to be the truth. Tyler, who plays guitar, and I replaced my high “e” string in a muddled lack of skill and then he, me, Jenny, and Deb played a little “private concert” for the others. It was one of those moments where everything except the music is still and quiet and poignant and the world sort of slows down on its axis for a minute, so you can just take in everything better. We played songs everyone could know and sing, and some that we had written ourselves. When it got too late, we left and went back to our apartment to keep the “party” going. It was mellow and friendly and felt entirely, completely and rarely real.
On Friday we took a trip to the local mall without much of interest happening. A mall is a mall in any culture, except that this one pops up unexpectedly in a big flat nothing-area. I’m not really a mall-person anyway, and we all spent most of the trip hungry and tired and wanting to go home. Which we did, on the first bus. Vanessa made eggplant parmiegana (YAY!) and the girls and I had a laid-back evening with pajamas and an early bedtime.
In the morning we took a train to the local town of Civitanova. Civitanova is a lovely sea-side city with a huge street market and we all immediately fell in love with it. Right in the heart of the city there is a fountain carved with the images of many angels, and it took us by surprise as we caught glimpses of the water cascading down through shoes, billowing vender’s tents, and large leafy banana trees. Breath-taking. After a quick tour of the general town’s layout from our program director we grabbed pizza and headed straight for the beach. There are two beaches in Civitanova, one with rocks and one with sand. We ended up at the rocky beach, which I expected to be able to liken to Oregon and Washington’s beaches and taste a little of home. This was not that type of beach. The rocks higher up on the shore were smooth, perfectly flat and round all in varying shades of pastel colours. As you get down to where the waves have landed, the rocks pop out of the ground in the ground in surprising pinks, peaches, blues and greens. And you look out at the water and it’s not like the Puget Sound at all. It’s this tumultuous torrent of foam and pale teal water continually folding into itself in an simultaneously rhythmic and spontaneous song. And the warm waves are teasing the rocks, kissing them and running away. I threw myself into its throws first letting it lap my legs, then, as I knew would happen from the second I smelled salt in the air, I give myself to it. I was lifted and tossed around like a small child in drunken arms; sometimes safe and coddled and sometimes losing balance, going under. Though it was scary, it was beautiful and I felt so alive and present. When I was scraped and soaked, and my sinuses and been thoroughly and roughly cleansed I retreated to the beach chairs to bask in the Italian sun. Later we were told that the sea was far too dangerous for swimming, but I’m glad I did. Sometimes in life, you just have to swim. We went back to Macerata, completely wiped out. We had to go grocery shopping because we were having dinner guests that night. In the meantime, I dyed my hair. It is now a sassy burgundy-brown, which Brooke says would be me if I were a colour. Brooke made her special pasta, and Vanessa made the eggplant again. Our guests, Ginnie, Cassi and Carly brought wine and it was lovely. After a late dinner (well, pretty typically timed for Italians, around 9 pm) we were settling down for a relaxing night when we got a call from the boys. They had found new Italian friends during the week and wanted us to come and meet them at an art festival in Piazza Mencinni, which is pretty centrally located. Jenny, Brooke and I (and for a little while Ginnie too) had a remarkable, scary time trying to talk with all these kids our age, with a huge language barrier. A few of them spoke English, and Tyler speaks pretty decent Italian, so we were able to eke out conversations. I spent half an hour discussing music with one guy (he has a girlfriend, don’t get too excited readers) in the simplest form. One of us would name a band and the other would say “Si!” if we liked them or “no…” if we didn’t. Eventually we all went to the park and sat playing guitar and singing songs we all knew until almost three in the morning. In one shining triumphant moment, Brooke and I proudly sang ALL THE WORDS to the verses of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” which was immediately followed by increasingly raucous rounds of “Hello, hello, hello, how low?” and culminating in accented, joyous cries of “Here we are now, entertain us!” They seem to find us as funny and entertaining as we find them, which is really refreshing.
On Sunday, though Vanessa and I had planned to go to mass, we slept instead. It rained in the morning. Rain here is funny. It comes in little angry, loud, bursts of huge drops, then the sky breaks and it’s sunny and warm again. Only on this day, the grey sky hovered around, ominous and unwanted, and its mood was contagious. Avoiding the flea market, Vanessa and I elect cappuccino and caffeine over second-hand stuff and sip it, talking gloomily in the style set for us by the day. After two cappuccinos we figured we better head out, so I grudgingly walked over to the Bancomat to get money out of the ATM, which is a depressing thing to do at any rate, after entering my “secret code” (the mention of which always makes me feel like a spy,) with my hand outstretched looking for the word for “enter” in Italian, my card still sticking out of the slot, I felt something hard land on my shoulder. It was like someone through something from a great height or socked me hard. Only it splattered. Vanessa, in her infinite wisdom and poetic genius said of this incident plainly, approximately a foot from me, “Damn girl, you just got shat upon.” In all seriousness. A bird pooped on me. As Vanessa tried to scrape the remnants off me using her café receipt to little avail, I almost threw up or cried. It was horrible. I got washed up at Deb’s, who lives just around the corner, which was good, but really? Brooke and Jenny said that supposedly this little gift is good luck. It had better be.
Since it was Sunday, literally nothing here was open and we went off in search of a restaurant for eating at, as we didn’t have enough supplies for dinner. We ran into the boys from our group and 4 or 5 of our Italian friends sitting outside a pizzeria. Apparently the owner was a friend of theirs. I bought zucchini pizza and red wine and we sat hanging out with them for a while. The owner, an eccentric, flamboyant, crazy, older Italian man, who spent a very long time learning our names because each new person was met with a loud exclamation of “WHO IS THIS????” after which he would try very hard to pronounce our names, then tell us the Italian version. After a huge struggle with my name (which has been difficult for ever Italian I have met, probably because they have neither the letter K, nor the letter Y in their alfabeto) he dubbed me Carlotta, which I have been called by the Italians ever since. It makes me feel special, like a prima donna (see Phantom of the Opera.) Eventually they closed up shop and invited us in for glass of wine after glass of wine, free pizza from the day topped with tapenade and an hours-long dance party in this tiny little Pizzaria. It was spontaneous, glorious, and so much fun! When it got to be late (for a school night, 930 ish) they told us this did not happen every day, but was special for us and that we should stay, “Fuck Classe!” sleep in tomorrow (when told we had 830 Italian class,) and they would be our teachers from now on. We politely declined and told them “Ciao, Ciao!” We exchanged numbers with some of them, one of whom had written funny little sayings on our arms. Like “Go Vanessa!” with music notes or “Carlotta si!” and “W Hip-Hop Music!” Tonight, two of the boys, Ricardo who works at the pizzeria and has nine dreadlocks (he had me count them) and Claudio are coming over to make us dinner which should be utterly delightful. As a side note, Italian men cooking seems like it will be very sexy.
Ciao, Ciao!
Carlotta e Kaylie