More or Less another Week Off/ The Week Out

*As I didn't manage to take an pictures this week, the photo's for this entry are brought to you from the rest of the company. Mostly Vic and Jack. So enjoy the montage of Lingue moments, even if they don't match the text.

So we had an extra day this weekend as Monday is an Italian holiday. So on the day of the Madonna I did very litter during the day. Went for a jogged, did laundry, bough groceries. Went on a date in the evening with a guy I had met the weekend before. It went well/fine/not amazing/but good. I would like to see him again. I’ll leave it at that. The language barrier is both a blessing and a curse. It’s odiously difficult because it’s hard to express yourself I worry that I’m not understanding what I’m being told. However, a conversation that could take ten minutes can fill almost an hour with proper allowances for how do you say? How do you say? And often the little language lessons that go along with the new vocabulary you have just learn/taught. Even from the beginning you are actively doing something together, ie teaching one another. The Italians, especially the men are often VERY complementary of a young womens Italian, even if they (as I) can hardly carry on a simple transaction at the bar let alone hold a conversation. But on bilingual dates one rarely ever runs the risk of running out of conversation material. We also had the benefit of his friends being at the bar he took me to so we had a whole team working though the conversation. It is exhausting, and yes I had to bust out the dictionary a couple of times. Al Lora (“and so” in Italian). And yes Laura was back with Chris and I as team awesome. So finally, on Tuseday, we were back to work (until Wednesday evening) but back in back and my work…..well we do have a little too much fun just to call it work, but for me it is work. This is actually, something of an issue for me. The shows we do are quite improvisational, they have to be due to all the interaction we do with the audience, and yes we did have an INCREADIBLALLY rushed rehearsal process, and yes it’s impossible to do this job and not feel completely humiliated if you take yourself too seriously, but I’m growing more frustrated with the people in the company who just can’t seem to be bothered to really learn the shows. It’s one thing to ball park a monologue or to adlib to fit a childs answer, but to not que the other actors properly is something I’m finding harder and harder to tolerate. I don’t mind helping out someone if they get stuck, and I understand that learning six shows and memorizing everything is difficult. But now I feel like some people are just willing to sit back and let other do the work of taking the show from beginning to end. One person with a few shows in particular is quite a problem. I’m feeling stuck because I feel that I have every right NOT to say their lines or prompt them along show after show, but then I think it’s completely unfair to every child and teacher sitting in the audience who paid to see the show. It’s disrespectful to me as a colleague and to the audience. I’m not sure what to do about it. It makes me angry, makes the shows harder work, but it’s also making me more aware of my constant need to help other and fix others problems. Probably if I wasn’t so quick to jump to another actors rescue they would learn the lines or have a second to recall them, but I am so worried about the show dragging or having pregnant pauses that I often find myself impulsively covering for others. So Tuseday, weather was terrible. It took us several hours to reach a school that with moving traffic would have taken forty minuets to reach by car. The teacher was very understanding about the weather and traffic. One of the kids parents, who own a pizzeria, sent some pies over for us for lunch as we had to stay after lunch to get all our work done. The kids were good. We had a fun, goof off, dance party to Christmas music in the gym between shows. The thing I enjoy about team awesome, is even though we may get mad at one another. I’m late getting ready in the mornings, someone forget lines, someone else was cranky in the car, we can sweep it aside and have a dance party in the gym, with full lipsinking and acrobatics. That evening we decided we didn’t want to mope around in the house in the cold so we went to the movies. All movies, television etc. in Italy are dubbed over into Italian. One of the reason so much of the world understands and speaks English is due to, mostly America/English speaking in general, the profundity of English language entertainment. Music at disco tecs, television programs, films etc. are often shown/played in the original language, and in the case of film and TV are subtitled. But in Italy TV and Cinema are dubbed, the Italians take great pride in the numerous awards they win as some of the worlds best dubbers. Actoully many Italian actors make a great deal of their living doing voice over work and dubbing. Each actor has an Italian voice, so the actor who is the voice of Anthony Hopkins, is the same in EVERY movie Anthony Hopkins appears in. So we went to the Italian cinema and saw “SAW V”, we figured the fifth installment of a gore movie wouldn’t have a deeply language based plot and we were in fact correct. Understood just about everything that was going on. It was fun to all go out together. The next morning, more bad traffic, more snow, still no sun, but when we finished in the early afternoon we were done with work for the whole week. Team Brilliant came back that evening. Went out for a drink at a bar in town but nothing particularly exciting happened. Thursday, the girls were invited by one of the servers/bartenders, Alesandro, at the Irish Pub to Indy Rock night at a club/bar in central Milan. Of course, we said yes, and I am so glad we did. We met Alesandro and his friend Celina at the Irish Bar and then followed them in the car to the bar/club in Milan. I have three words: “Italian, Hipster, and Mecca.” In true Italian fashion the show which was suppose to start at 10:30pm/22:30 started around midnight. First was a band from Como and after was an English band called the Screaming Ballerinas. The English band was SO much fun, and were really friendly with us because they were so pleased to hear an accent from home. (They didn’t seem to mind that mine was a little off…) We spent the rest of the night dancing on the stage. Friday, we only meant to go out for a quiet drink at Bar Centrale (the local bar). Ran into some of the Italian boys who first invited us to a protest but then took us to a really cool underground bar in Milan called Saloon Bar and then to a huge warehouse party/club called Rehab. Another AMAZING night dancing. I will spare you all the details but I think we made it home around six in the morning. Even the boys had a good night. They went out with some friends Chris had made at the local boxing gym to the Italian boxing championship. Got to meet some important boxing people and had a really good time. Haven’t seen so many smiles in the apartment for a while. Saturday, the girls and I went to meet Katie and her friend Emily who was visiting for the weekend. Didn’t do much during the day. In the evening, we met up at at Brara Bar in the Brara (a neighborhood in Milan). We meant to gou dancing at a club called Alcatraz, but in our rush to meet Katie we forgot the directions/address at the flat. So we decided to go another night. Had aparatif at the bar and then this hugely flamboyant foppish Italian guy, who some of them had met the weekend I was away in Padova saw us and sat himself and all his friends down with us. Several spoke very very good English and we all sang X-Mas songs and drank lots of wine which the fop kept buying. Unfortunately, if you live in Palatzolo and you want to go out in Milan, but not sleep there you have to catch the last bus home at 12:45am/00:45am. We said good bye to Katie and Emily and ran back to the station. We JUST made the train, which takes us to the bus, and some travelers shared their Champaign with us. We sang the entire bus ride home, which probably wasn’t appreciated so much by the other Italian passengers, but no one asked us to shut it. We finished up the night at the Irish Bar. Said good bye to the staff and told them we would be back in middle of January. Super cults (that would be me) spilled red wine on Laura’s shirt but the white wine on red wine with warm water trick actually works and it all came out, gratsie dio. On Sunday went for a jog. Team Awesome left in the early evening. I went out and met the guy from Monday’s date. Drove to the next town over and was invited out dancing with all his friends. He didn’t want to go, but I didn’t feel like going home, so we (except the guy I went out to see) went dancing at a club at a University in Milan, not sure which one. Had a fun time and got back home at a descent enough hour for work on Monday. Lots of dancing this week. It was good. I think we/I needed it. Only one more week and then a much needed change.

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