A Happy Birthday and a Laundry Problem

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I have gotten way behind in writing. I am going to give a few random pieces of what has been going on here in the past few weeks… I am also going to post some pictures soon.

To begin with, here’s a random funny language blunder of the week: I woke up early and was in the kitchen having breakfast and packing my lunch for school. Typically I either bring some kind of sandwich or leftover pasta, a banana, and a little package of biscotti. So, I made a salami and mozzarella sandwich and I was looking for the plastic wrap, which wasn’t where it normally is. My roommate Letizia walked into the kitchen and I asked her where to find the plastic wrap to wrap my sandwich. But I got the word for plastic wrap, pellicola, confused with the word pelliccia, meaning fur coat or pelt. So I asked her where to find the fur coat in which I could wrap my salami sandwich. She was rather confused.

Everything has been going well at school and I’ve been busy both doing things with the students and working on various writing and translation projects for the school. I like that I get to do a number of miscellaneous things around the school because my days are always different.

I had a really wonderful birthday last Friday. I came home late Thursday night and found a big happy birthday sign on my pillow from my roommate. They had also left a gift beside my bed. When I got to school in the morning there was a card for me signed by all of the students and staff at the school. Everyone had written me sweet and funny messages. I got some cute little presents from a few people and I spent the afternoon shopping with my friend, Tate. Then I had to go baby sit in the early evening. When I rang the bell to their apartment, the two little girls whipped open the door and their eyes were sparkling and they had the hugest smiles. They started shouting ‘Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday! Come into the kitchen, come see the chocolate cake we made you!’ (they were yelling in Italian). We all sat around eating cake and drinking tea. It was one of the most adorable things I could have imagined. After babysitting, I met a few friends from school and they took me out for an amazing dinner. We had pizza and pasta and lots of wine. The students had also called and reserved a space for everyone to go to my favorite bar/hangout in Siena, called the Tea Room. It’s this very relaxing little spot with a huge grand piano and the most delicious drinks. A lot of people came and we even ran into a few professors (one of the professors bought me a rose from this guy who walks around selling them). We stayed there until pretty late, then we went to a few other bars and then went dancing. It was certainly the most alcohol I had consumed since my arrival in Italy (I mean, I couldn’t say no if people wanted to buy me a drink for my birthday), and I’ll just say that I slept until a fairly tardy hour on Saturday to recover.

Although I am very happy that I am living with Italians and I wouldn’t change it if I could, it can still be extremely trying at times. I think that I get along pretty well with the other girls, but there are just some things that drive us crazy about each other, most of which come from our different cultural upbringings. For me, there are just so many things about Italian houses and ways of life that just don’t make sense and are incredibly frustrating. I’ll give a few examples from a very wide array of experiences that color my days here. One evening a few weeks ago, I decided that I really needed to do laundry. Because there are not dryers, we hang the laundry outside on this gross pigeon-poop-covered laundry rope that stretches out the window. It feels like a movie to lean out the window hanging laundry out and watching people walk by in the street. But when I decided to do laundry, it was raining outside so I had to put the laundry inside on a drying rack. So, I washed my clothes in our tiny, antiquated machine that you have to keep going in and turning the dial because it won’t run on its own. I then took out my wet clothes and proceeded into my room to hang them on the drying rack. When I opened the door, Olinda leapt out of bed and stopped me from entering, wanting to know what I thought I was doing. I thought it was abundantly clear by looking at me, but I explained anyway that I was going to put my laundry on the rack because it was raining outside. Well, she freaked out. And made me leave the room. To her, it was unheard of to put wet laundry in a bedroom. She started raving on and on about how what with the humidity coming off of my wet clothes during the night, we would both be deadly ill by morning. I assumed she was being silly and teasing me, so I chuckled and kept along my merry way. She became increasingly agitated. I realized, to my astonishment, that she wasn’t joking. I wanted to throw my wet laundry on her and rub it all over her face and down her throat.

I got angry and told her that I went through all of college sleeping in the same room as my wet laundry and I was generally a healthy individual. She would not have it. Although I’m not proud of it, this is where things get a little ugly. See, when they use the drying rack, they always put it in this area by the kitchen table. Where they smoke. All of the time. Always. So our clean, lavender scented laundry can mix with the delightful scent of the cigarettes that they anxiously chain smoke. I refused to put it there, telling her that I think it’s disgusting. We had a large argument about where my drying rack should be placed. Finally, we agreed to put it in the hallway, which seemed alright to me. When I came home later the next day, they had moved it to the kitchen anyway and everything was a little smoky. They are always right.

Here’s the thing that made me the most annoyed about the whole thing, and about them in general. They (and many Italians in general) are so afraid of dampness and humidity. They think it will make them mortally ill and that it is just the worst thing ever. They are constantly both amazed and annoyed at how dangerous I am by exposing myself to such intense amounts of dampness, like how I wash my hair every morning or sleep with wet laundry. They think I have a very unhealthy lifestyle and are constantly surprised that I am not always sick. But, the thing is, THEY ARE CHAIN SMOKERS. They will most definitely have infinitely more health problems from their smoking habit than I will have from my carelessness with dampness. But to them, it somehow makes perfect sense to worry about having wet hair and to take all kinds of weird herbal health drops to keep them from getting sick, yet to smoke three packs a day in our kitchen. I have to breathe in their second-hand smoke, but it would be unheard of for me to afflict them with the perilous humidity from my laundry.
But I really do like them. Really.

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Comments

[Sarah]

oh, the horror
ah! I know what you mean! My host mom was crazy about that. I was completely out of clothes one day because she took a while to do my laundry (and I was NEVER allowed to touch the washing machine). So I needed pants...and they weren't completely dry at the seams, but they were wearable. It was either that or go out in my underwear. But she came over and gave me this lecture about the dangers of wearing pants that were still slightly damp around the edges. god forbid. I mean, you might die. I hope you realize that, Elizabeth. Wet=instant DEATH. now, have a cigarette.