Advertisement
Published: September 19th 2010
I'm a little confused about how I seem to have lost an entire week to the limbo of Italian lifestyle... (Inception reference, anyone?) Regardless, I'll do my best to update you on what I've been up to since the last time I wrote, ie, 12 whole days ago.
Well after my nutty weekend of missed trains and bleeding all over floors and whatnot, I spent the ensuing week in a rather emotional state of anxiety. I think my dreams were worse than ever, but the thing is, my conscious mind was so horrified of my subconscious mind that it refused to remember anything in the mornings. All I can tell you is, I have a whole bunch of vague memories of frantically turning the bedside light on, and staring in the mirror as my panic subsided and I came back to reality. Pretty much every night this would happen. I spent the week sleeping with the TV on and two night lights. I felt like a child, but at the same time, I was so freaking scared of myself that I couldn't have done otherwise. I do remember one of the dreams though. I dreamt I'd come home from Italy and gone to my dad's house, where I found Penny. And I was so happy, and I gave her a big hug, and then my dad said, "She held on until you got home, but she's going to die tomorrow." And then I cried and cried... I was still sobbing when I realized I was sitting in my bed in Siena and Penny was already dead.
See, the thing about going to a foreign country and living with strangers and making new friends with strangers and spending all of your time with other people who are strangers, is that they're strangers. What happens when you need to talk to someone about something as debilitating and irrational as emotion? You can't exactly fall into someone's 'skype-arms' and get a big 'skype-hug' and then start feeling all fine and dandy. No, instead you laugh at the jokes about T-Pain (As I walk through the shadow of the valley of T-Death. Yeah, that happened) and watch Disney movies in Italian with your 11-yr old host sister (Hercules, for example; or more accurately, Air-Coo-Leez) and close out the window when you see that your dad just posted a Facebook album dedicated to your dead dog, and lie to your friend Zac about having an eyelash stuck in your eye, and that's why it's watering. I think we take for granted always having somebody to confide in. Because let me tell you, when you really don't have that anymore, when you really are alone, God, it just blows. I shoved all of my emotions into the back of my mind and forced myself not to acknowledge them. My subconscious had no choice but to bombard me with nightmares.
In any case, I am happy to announce that I am now sleeping quite comfortably with just one nightlight, and my sleep seems to be sound again. And my mom changed my diaper an hour ago, and I just spit up on my bib.
(That last part was a joke.)
But you know, I thought after all of this nonsense, my life would go back to normal. That just doesn't seem to have happened yet. I think Someone Upstairs (Francesco probably, he lives on the 4th floor) thinks it's pretty hilarious to watch how I react to completely inconceivable (or maybe it's Vizzini) situations. (I know, I really gotta stop with these parentheses.)
For example. Friday night we're all chillin' on the Piazza again, having each bought an entire bottle of wine solely for ourselves to drink (mine was rosè wine and only cost me 3 euro, and I'm sorry, this time I'll really stop), and we started feeling nice and happy. As per usual, when people are happy, you can expect them to start feeling a strange lure toward the toilet, and Lisa-Ray began to experience this, so, as is also per usual, I accompanied her to the toilet like a good girlfriend should. One fun fact about Italy: people stare at you. There's none of that 'oh that guy's walking toward me but he's about 50 feet away now so I should start looking at my feet and then around at the scenery and make sure we don't make eye contact because that would be awkward' business. If people want to stare, then you will be stared at, period. Personally, I find this highly entertaining, because that means I get to stare right back, and no one will find it weird. It happens that on the way into the sketchy bar bathroom that my group tends to frequent on Friday nights, I have a 5-10 second staring contest with this very attractive, tall Italian guy. When we were finally within 2 feet of each other, I just looked forward and continued right on by him, and that was that. It was a fun 5-10 seconds, now it's time to guard the bathroom door for Lisa-Ray.
As we're exiting the bar, I see him standing just outside, and we have our little staring contest again, and I walk right by him again and "Ciao," he says.
"Ciao," I say back, and keep walking.
Except he reached out and took my arm and and I wasn't walking forward anymore, I was turning around. "Mumble-mumble-some-incomprehensible-Italian-mumble?" he asks.
"Ahh, mi dispiace, non parlo italiano molto bene, sono una nuova studente," I say, smiling apologetically. He smiles back.
"Va bene va bene, come ti chiami?"
"Mi chiamo Alyssa - sono Americana."
"Ah sì! Sono Adrianno. Frequenti un'università a Siena?...."
Before I knew it, this guy's friend had appeared out of nowhere to occupy Lisa-Ray with all of 20 English vocabulary words at his disposal, and I was launched into conversation with this guy. In Italian, mind you. We're talking about my school and his work, how beautiful I am, can he have my number, how I'm living with a family here in Siena, and I actually don't remember my phone number yet sorry, how my Italian is really good and I'm so beautiful, how we both hang out here on the weekends and I'm still very beautiful, how fantastic my Italian is and what I do on the weekends, well mostly I just spend time being beautiful, and how he runs every day and I will be starting my running routine next week, and how I'm so beautiful and how about I meet him in the morning to go running, and I'm going on a few trips this weekend so I can't, and we should run together in the morning because I'm so beautiful, and well I am at school while you're running but maybe my beautiful self will see him next weekend if he's here, and my beauty is so beautiful and I speak Italian beautifully and oh I have to go, well I'll see you around next weekend beautiful beauty.
Italian men. I don't even need a background in Latin to figure out where the word 'persistent' originates.
I passed a pretty reasonable Saturday at San Gimignano with Fabs and the gang, eating literally the best ice cream in the world (they won best chocolate gelato in the world, I'm not joking) and hanging out in the garden, listening to some brilliant loon recite Dante from memory with a voice that sounded like a 14th century preacher's. Sunday was 100x better; I returned to Follonica, this time with round trip bus tickets, and got super tan and sat out on the rocks with Sarah as the wind whipped our hair around. I also started The Princess Bride that day, and spent the whole bus ride home luxuriating in the genius that is William S. Morgenstern Goldman.
The Princess Bride book, unlike the movie, is not exactly a romance. Goldman prefers to stress the unfairness of life in general, and how cruel it is that we teach our children that life can be fair and it will all turn out with a happy ending when the truth is, "Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all." We watched two similarly-themed Italian movies in culture class this week, the first called "Manuale d'Amore," which reminded me of another Italian movie called "L'Ultimo Bacio". Both are kind of like Italian spin-offs of a "Love Actually" plot structure. In "Manuale d'Amore", the story follows four different couples' relationships that represented different stages of the cycle of love: L'Innamoramento, I Crisi, Il Tradimento, e L'Abbandono. I was feeling pessimistic, so I didn't enjoy them very much. It suggested that the actual 'love' part of the love cycle was only 1 part of 4, and the rest of your life you spent crying, drowning in problems, cheating, being cheated on, being alone, being ignored, and being desperate. Even the Princess Bride brought this full circle, concluding with "yeah, they were finally together, but they bickered for the rest of their lives and Buttercup lost her beauty eventually and so their love was never the same". Call me pessimistic again, but this seems to be the way the world views reality these days - once you marry, it's all downhill, and the wife will be ugly and nagging and the husband will be cheating and lying and true love is never really possible after all, because the only thing life is fairer than is death.
I guess that's why we fall in love with fairy tales, and why writers create such beautiful ideal worlds in their stories. And why parents create jolly old saints and magical egg hunts and pretend miracles for their children, who haven't yet felt heartbreak. Maybe it's even why we pray to proof-evading, infinitely perfect Gods and dedicate entire lives to discovering new scientific theories of our creation. These are the only places where we can believe.
Coming back down to Earth from the Abstraction Belt...
I took my Italian exam on Friday, so I'll receive my grade sometime next week... It wasn't too bad. I was home for lunch and skyping with Angela for the first time since I arrived 24 days ago, which was WAY overdue. At 5pm I left to join the gang for a tour of the aquaduct system in Siena, which is freaking nuts, to say the least. I felt like I had discovered the entrance to the chamber of secrets - winding, medieval passageways barely tall enough for the average human, with dripping calcified water over my head and 14th century crosses carved all over the sand-packed walls, meant to protect the workers from sudden tunnel collapse. Needless to say, SO COOL.
After that, Sarah begged me to go on a double date with her and these two waiters from the Fonte Giusta restaurant we'd cooked at before, and I decided what the hell, might as well have another interesting story to tell. Of course, we get to the restaurant at 11 and Andrea (yes, that's one of the guy's names) asks us to come back in 1/2 hour because they're still closing up.
Sarah and I take a stroll over to the Irish Pub in Piazza Gramschi, thinking we'll have a beer while we're waiting. As I walk in, I suddenly feel a guy's hand grab my arm and try to swing me around. I just pulled my arm away and didn't look back. We bought 2 giant heinekens and walked back out to sit at a small table in the corner of the patio. Not 2 seconds after we sit down, these two guys come over and, while already pulling up chairs and making themselves comfortable, ask if they can sit with us. There was no avoiding it. Valerio looks like a 30 year old version of Joseph Gorden-Levitt, but unfortunately, he somehow managed to beunattractive despite the resemblance. Also, let me repeat: 30 years old. Long story short, he told me he would come to America with me when I go home, asked me to go out with him after I finished my beer, tried to plan a day that the 4 of us could go to Rome for a weekend, and gave me his phone number, making me call it so that he had mine. I wasn't too thrilled about the number exchange, but I just figured I could ignore his phone calls and everything would be fine. It's not like he could even pronounce my name, anyways.
Sarah and I finally escaped and went to another bar called the Lochness Pub, where the waiters bought us each another beer. These are probably some of the most awkward guys I've ever met. Their favorite phrase is "Shit Happens", although with their accents it sounds more like "Sheet Ah-Penz", and they manage to throw it into every conversation at least once, sometimes 10 times. They're also smirking when they say it, so it doesn't even usually make sense or apply in the situation at all, which makes it really impossible to respond to. Aside from that though, it was amusing; I enjoyed attempting to speak in Italian and discovering the secret dining room at the pub - I'll definitely be going back. Just probably not with them.. haha.
They then had to drive Sarah home, so they told me that if I just walk straight ahead, I'll hit Piazza Gramschi. That was just a blatant lie. I was lost outside the walls of Siena for a good 45 min, and my phone was dead. As I'm walking toward this sketchy abandoned road that looked familiar, I can hear the sound of a stumbling drunk 30-40 feet behind me. I walked faster, but he was gaining on me. I just tried to ignore it, but I could hear him like 5 feet behind me now. I was definitely freaked. Of course, that emotion skyrocketed when he grabbed my ass. Heart beating a million miles an hour, I tried to act calm and distant, because I didn't want to make him angry. He was following me now, and I talked to him briefly and said 'goodbye', trying to both calm my own nerves with conversation and usher him the hell away from me. Instead, he veered sideways toward me with drunken imbalance and kissed me on the cheek. Now I'm really panicking. I turned abruptly around and saw a group of people 100 feet in the distance, walking down the sidewalk. I half walked, half ran to them, the guy following me the whole time. When I finally reached them, the guy kept walking a little ways ahead, and I stopped one couple and asked them how to get to the Piazza. "Straight down that road, about 5 minutes," they said in Italian, pointing to the same sketchy abandoned road I'd just run away from. I stalled, scared that guy would just follow me again. I pretended not to understand and asked them about 4 more times, so that they wouldn't leave me. When I finally had no choice, I spun around and walked as fast as I could toward the street, not looking back, but with my ears trained for even the smallest sound of stumbling feet. I walked like that, in a state of bordering panic, for what seemed like an hour, until finally, to my inexplicable relief, I found the Piazza. Now that I was inside the main city again, I was safe.
Never, ever again.
Thankfully, the pure bliss that was yesterday cancelled out the life-threatening horror of Friday night. Me, Katy, Zach, and Lisa-Ray, along with 3 of the staff, David, Miriam, and Lisa, took an incredible trek through the Chianti region, leaving at 7:30am (yeah, so effing early, I was dying) and not returning until 5:30pm. I'll have to let my pictures explain the hike, because their are no words. Around 11am we stopped in a little town centre where there was a huge market, with vendors of all kinds - bakers with fresh bread and pastries, butchers, wine and cheese merchants, every wonderful thing you can imagine. Of course, it just so happened that the most beautiful man ever to have existed was standing at the meat counter, selling fresh prosciutto. I am not exaggerating for the sake of a story; this was the most perfect specimen of man I have ever seen in my life.
Here's the part where the story turns fictitious. I walked right up to the counter and bought some prosciutto for my picnic sandwich, and to my delight, he spoke English, and we were instantly launched into a 10 minute conversation, about what we're both doing in Italy, how long we'd be there, how he came to Siena all the time and what a surprise, that's where I am studying, and when I was turning to leave, we both smiled and said maybe we'd see each other around sometime.
Except, THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Bobby is from Arizona, but he's in Italy for a 2-month internship working on a local farm with a few other American guys. When they get a chance they go into Siena on the weekends to hang out in the Piazza. We said goodbye, and maybe we'll see each other later, and I left the market with the rest of my group.
THIS is the part where the story turns ficticious. Just as I get out of the square, I realize that this is too incredible an opportunity to miss. I turn right around, march up to the counter again, and ask him for his number. We exchange information, and he tells me he's get in touch with me so we can make plans sometime. And I walk away in bliss.
Except, THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED TOO. I think I must have still had some alcohol coursing through my veins from the night before, because I don't know what came over me. I have never asked for a guy's number in my entire life. But I did it, I did exactly that. Unfortunately, though I kind of expected it, he didn't have a phone, because two-month farm internships don't exactly require these things. But instead he searched for about 3 solid minutes for a pen, found a giant sharpie marker, and asked me to write down my email on a paper bag (intended for meat wrapping) for him. He told me he'd shoot me an email when he next gets Wi-Fi access.
That man doesn't have to ever contact me ever again, I won't even care. I spent an entire Saturday on Cloud Nine, and that was more than enough for me. In fact, I'm still on Cloud Nine, maybe even Cloud Ninety-Nine (shout out to my homies at the Ninety-Nine Restaurant, whoooo!) .....
Well, in conclusion, my life is certainly "Va Bene"-ing at the moment. Today I intend to spend a lazy day doing absolutely nothing for the first time this semester, and tomorrow, I begin my real classes.
Maybe life isn't fair, but it sure is a sick party.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.055s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0331s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Scott Danelius
non-member comment
Mama Mia Italy Italy!
I absolutely love reading your blog, Alyssa. It has seriously become like an anticipated event, such as a sitcom... only it's real, I know you, and I absolutely adore you! It seems such a strange balance of frustration and adventure for you. I'm glad that you are going out and doing things, no matter the outcome, you definitely will always have a story to tell. It's wonderful to live vicariously through this blog, and see you growing as an even more magnificent person than you already are! Can't wait to see what's next! Love your best friend, Scotty =]