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Published: March 16th 2010
What a week! As a 61 year-old Swiss student, who’s been here over two months, said as we chatted over espressos, “It’s not like we’re twenty-somethings who can endure anything like we did then.” Amen.
All the students over around forty, complain about the cold - not just the weather, which has been mostly that and rainy, but the cold in the homes as well. Everyone is cold a good part of the day. Hardly anyone thought to bring winter-type clothing to a place so far south. Fortunately, I threw in a light knit cap and thin gloves, which helps a bit.
Aside from the cold, during the first few nights here I went through a continuous pattern of sleeping for very short periods - from a half hour to maybe an hour and a half and then waking up fully conscious with not the slightest hint of sleepiness. I would then be forced to sit up (in bed to stay warm) and read for awhile before attempting another round of sleep, which would again go for another amazingly and frustratingly short stretch. Not only was I apparently not getting needed REM sleep, but I’d have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to eek out enough sleep to go through the next day’s class periods fairly conscious. Naps in the afternoon also demanded their time, since I’d be fairly dysfunctional by around 3:00 or 4:00PM. This, then, left little time for other things during the day - a quite discouraging period, not only because of the direct challenges but also because, at the time, I had no idea how long it might continue.
After a few days of this, I eventually had sufficient presence of mind to go to a pharmacy and ask what they had to help deal with the problem - something, if I hadn’t been so desperate, I would normally be reluctant to do, since, as much as is reasonably possible, I don’t do drugs. Well, bless European culture, which tends to be so much more medically enlightened relative to pharmaceuticals than ours, the first thing the attendant said to me was, “Do you want something natural?” “Yes, oh yes”, says I, delightedly. Placebo effect or whatever, I’ve been sleeping pretty normally since.
While all that was going on, the netbook I brought to hopefully communicate home with, take care of financial matters, blog, research stuff, etc., wasn’t doing the needed wireless thing and I, in my then only partially functional state, didn’t have the brainpower to manage it’s resolution, although I used up the little mental reserves I had at the time trying. (It is operational now, as my later sleep-supported mind allowed a solution to filter through the clearing fog.)
Of course, while this was going on, it was accompanied by all the normal adjustments to suddenly being thrust into a totally new setting, in a new culture, trying to figure out how to get places, how to do laundry, make phone calls, buy some food, find places to do exercise, and do almost all of it in a language that I have only very limited practical experience with. (Did I mention that at the school they pretty much only speak to you in Italian, as do most of the students, a large part of the time, since they are from all over the world: Germany, Switzerland, Belarus, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, Wales, Canada, Poland, Holland, et al.)
If all this wasn’t enough, on the first day of classes, they gave all of us new students written and oral exams to see what level of classes to place us in. The written test was organized in a graduated fashion, progressing from the most basic to increasingly more advanced material. We were told not to try to finish it, but to just go until it was beyond us. Unfortunately, I have a smattering of academic knowledge of some of the more advanced items, like the subjunctive tense, etc. So, when it was my turn to be interviewed, the evaluator was impressed with that and that I could carry on the pretty basic conversation we had and she placed me in one of the more advanced classes.
I say, unfortunately, because the others at that level were long-term students who were used to just yakking away in Italian, some of which I couldn’t even hear, even with my new hearing aids, since the acoustics in the rooms are terrible and we often break into small groups in the small rooms to do exercises, all talking at the same time. Although I managed relatively OK, it was exhausting, especially in the otherwise depleted state I was in. After two days of that, I told them to drop me down a level.
Same thing at that level - serious, young, long-term students, gong for academic perfection and who have obviously had a fair amount of experience chatting away in the language. So, the next day, I told them one more level down, please. Anita, the class coordinator, said, “But Donny, you were doing OK, are you sure?” And I said, “Do it; drop me down again! I’m sure!”
Ah, sweet relief. I belatedly realized that I hadn’t come to Italy to get an ulcer or high blood pressure. Plus, the students at my current level are much more relaxed and we have fun - lots of laughter, pleasant conversation, and a few of us go out to meals together, go for walks and the like.
So, the “go for walks and the like” leads to a somewhat traumatic event. Judy, a student from Canada, and I did some extended exploring around one afternoon, hiking up streets into the hills above the city, coming down and going to different sites and finally into the city’s tourist information center to see what they offered. As we were leaving the courtyard of the ancient stone building housing that office, there was a stone barrier, about eight inches high, probably there to keep out the water running down the street in front, which I somehow caught my foot on. This sent me flying forward. I might have caught myself but for the fairly heavy backpack I was wearing. In the fraction of a second after my body hit, I thought that I wasn’t hurt until my forehead made follow-up contact.
Once I was helped to my feet we hurried me to a café and got some ice for the quickly developing lump arising above my right eye and then went to a pharmacy for some hydrogen peroxide and bandaging material.
Though somewhat shaken, I felt pretty ok and returned “home” and iced it some more, thinking that it would probably take a few days for the swelling to go down as I went about my normal business that evening. Shockingly, I awoke during the night realizing that I couldn’t open my right eyelid and got up to see that the soft tissue all around the socket had swelled up and was a mix of an array of many shades of purple. As one student said subsequently, “You have quite a shiner!” It looked just awful. The next morning, I covered the whole eye up with a bandage so as not to shock everyone at the school too much.
Since then, I’ve been wearing dark glasses but I still get stares when I’m walking around town, since the specs don’t hide it entirely. The swelling and discoloration seem to be moderating in some places and extending in others. It will probably be some time (a few weeks perhaps) before my face is back to normal.
(Per i miei amici di la lingua italiana, ho imparato una nouva espressione: Avere una brutta cera, come in, “Hai una brutta cera!”: “You look awful!”)
What a week!
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Kippi Waters
non-member comment
Gardening is what retired people do...
Don! You are too old for this. Get home and do something normal like poker and gardening.