My Semester Abroad

I want to give my readers a context for this post.  The following piece is a literary narrative that I wrote.  It concerns my semester abroad a year ago.  I took the first two photos.  The third photo was taken by my roommate and friend.

Woman, Bell Tower, Church

            It is the beginning of the end.  Hans, my roommate, and I are dead tired, dirty, hungry, and excited.

            We stand outside of our college’s Italy Center in Bologna, lost.  The ferry from Greece to Ancona was long.  The train ride from Ancona to Bologna was not accommodating to prospective nappers.  We have just picked up our luggage and said farewell to Signore Todd Waller, the director of our school’s Bologna Campus.  Our next stop is Sorrento… but not really.  The train is not set to leave until two in the morning and it is only noon.  We have twelve hours to travel Bologna and it is Holy Saturday.  What are we going to do?

            Hans decides to go to a café for coffee.  I order a Coke.  I smile as I watch Hans order and then I feel a little bad.  It’s just funny to watch.

            “Un… un caffé, per favore," he says with red cheeks and a stammering voice.  His pitch is even a little higher.  It is as if he is asking a girl who is out of his league on a date.  After four months he is still not comfortable speaking Italian.  I often have to remind him of the soft and hard c-sounds still.  He needs more confidence in his knowledge of the language.  I think he is uncomfortable because he seizes every chance he gets to speak English.  I try to speak Italian even when I know a cashier speaks English.  A lot of the time they will interrupt my Italian with a “What?” to let me know that they can speak English, but sometimes they humor me.  My goal was to learn the language as best I could.

            It is not that I’m confident as a speaker of all languages, just in my skills of Italian.  I was terrified to be away from our tour guide in Greece.  The only grasp on the Greek alphabet that I possessed was from the American fraternity system and that was not enough.  The letters looked like hieroglyphs to me, and I was not going to try to learn a language in a week.  I spoke only English to the shopkeepers and waiters, and that was fine thanks to the fact that we were in all the tourist centers of the country.

This sign on a corner of Athens shows just what kind of challenge I was up against when facing the Greeks and their alphabet

            However, it is the exact opposite in Italy.  I take every chance I can get to use what I have learned in my Italian course.  My heritage is the reason for this.  My father is from a large Italian family in Cleaveland, but he moved away when he married my mother and does not stay in touch with his family.  That is why I have always felt slightly separated from my cultural background.  This trip abroad is a chance to change that.  For me, learning the language is a chance to connect with my ancestry.  I am rather proud of the progress I made.

            Hans and I leave the café, and give up trying to to occupy our time.  We settle for making our way to the train station.  It is only six o’ clock when we get there.  I try reading one of the many fantasy novels I downloaded on to my Kindle before leaving the U.S. but I can’t concentrate.  I just keep thinking of the progress I have made in Italian.  I remember the first time I was proud of myself for my development in the language.

            Our class was in a small airport, ready to take a weekend trip to Poland, another country where I had no knowledge of the language.  I decided to order a sandwich from the counter before going through the security checkpoint.

            “Vorrei un panino, per favore,” I told the woman working the counter.

            Then I heard a voice behind me.  “Voglio.”  I jumped and turned around to see that it was my other roommate, Lee Kindig.  Lee was a student from Xavier.  He was also the only one in our group to have taken a course in Italian prior to studying abroad.  It was because of this that he had a large ego and thought of himself as our class’s expert in all things related to Italian culture.  He was always looking for an excuse to “help” someone.  Hans and I could not stand him and often found excuses to leave our room and escape him.

            “I didn’t see you there,” I said.  “What was that?”

            “You’re asking for a sandwich,” he replied.  “’I want a sandwich.’  ‘Io voglio un panino.’”

            I gave a little smile.  I could tell that I was going to have fun.  I like to think of myself as a humble person, but I take pleasure in proving to someone that they are not as amazing as they think they are.  “Actually, although ‘voglio’ means ‘I want,’ it’s considered rude.  It means ‘I want it now!’”  I made a squeezing gesture with my hand.  “’Vorrei’ means ‘I would like.’”  I paused and then thought of something genius.  “Don’t worry.  There’s no reason to feel bad.  It’s a common mistake for Americans to make.”

            I turned to see that the woman at the counter had been watching this scene the whole time.  She looked at me and said, “Certo.”  Exactly, or correct.  Then she placed my sandwich on the counter.  That one word gave me all the confidence I needed.  It told me that I was making progress in the language.  Lee stormed off after the woman’s comment.

            It’s this sort of interaction that has helped me excel in Italian as much as I have.  It’s also why I think I know more than Lee does.  Lee’s prior training may have given him an expansive knowledge of conjugations and tenses, but I know details, like the intricate difference between ‘voglio’ and ‘vorrei.’  This is because I’m learning the language in the nation of that language.  When I make mistakes the people will notice and correct me.  When I speak well they encourage me.  Nothing has made me happier these past few months than when an Italian tells me that I speak well for a foreigner.  This is the environment one needs to truly learn a language.

            I think about all this and then decide to practices some more.  I look around and spot a banner honoring the 150^th anniversary of Italy’s unification.  I focus on it for a few minutes and comprehend the sign completely minus a word here and there that I never got the chance to learn in Professoressa Romano’s class.

I will always remember staring at this banner whenever I was in the train station and thinking how lucky I was to be in Italy for such a momentous anniversary

            After what seems like days of staring off into space, reading, and thinking, it is time to board the train.  Hans and I stand, shivering, in this spring early morning, waiting for the train to arrive.  When it does, we rush aboard, hoping for warmth.  We are quickly disappointed and keep on our peacoats.  Another man, an Italian, enters our compartment and gives us an awkward nod.  You can tell he knows we are not Bolognese.  We nod back.  I take out my iPod and listen to music as I force myself to get to sleep.  It’s a moment I’ve been waiting for all day.  I was too afraid to sleep before now because I had been worried someone would steal my luggage.

            I fall asleep for a few minutes and then wake up after I feel a kick to my leg.  Hans is sleeping across from me and I notice it was his foot that kicked me.  He is still asleep and I decide not to wake him.  I notice that another Italian is in our compartment.  I guess he boarded at one of the stops.  We are not even halfway through our ride so I try to go back to sleep.

            There’s only one problem.

            It seems that the two Italians sharing the compartment with us have become instant friends and are lost in conversation.  I try to drown them out with music but it is not working.  Then I decide to see if I can decipher their conversation.  It would be the perfect test of my skills in the language.

            The one who was originally with us says, “Aalksjdf la, donna, alksjdfl, cupola, alksjdf, chiara.”  The other just nods his head and gives a string of “Si, si, si.”  Woman?  Bell tower?  Church?  Who is this woman?  Is she a bella donna?  Is the bell tower attached to the church?  Why can I only pick up three words out of their whole conversation.  I am frustrated and annoyed that I can’t understand anymore than that.  I am also annoyed that the two men will not shut up.  I just want to sleep.  I spent the night before on the ferry and our tickets did not include rooms so we slept in the lobby, which was attached to a dance club.  Long story short, I did not sleep well that night.  I had hoped to change that on this train ride.  These two men were preventing that.  I want to shout, “Basta, basta!  Per favore!”  Stop, please!  However, I have no right to do that.  I’m a forreigner.  So I don’t.  I fall asleep soon and wake up again.  I sleep on and off thanks to Hans’ legs and the two Italians.

            The sun finally rises and sleep is out of the question.  The car is no longer freezing but very warm.  I take off my peacoat and look around me.  Hans is still asleep.  The Italian who boarded after I fell asleep is no longer here.  The original passenger gives me an awkward smile.  I nod back.  I’m still a little upset.  Not because he talked the whole night, but because I couldn’t understand a word he said.  It proved I had a lot more to learn and I only have a week left abroad.  Where am I going to continue studying Italian in the U.S.?

            The train stops and I notice the blue sign with the white letters: NAPOLI.  It’s our stop.  Hans and I will take the metro from here to Sorrento.  I tap the foot Hans has been kicking me with all night and whisper that it’s our stop.  We then get up and start grabbing our stuff.

            “Basta,” the Italian man says with a look of fear on his face.  “Napoli.”  Stop, Naples.

            “Si, Napoli,” I respond.  We continue to grab our things.

            I turn back to him and see his face.  It is one of sympathy.  I can tell he wants to say more but he is unsure of how much Italian Hans and I actually know.  “Guarda…  Napoli multo pericoloso.”  Careful…  Naples is very dangerous.  The man is warning us.  I am proud that I understand this much at least.  I did not understand all the talk of women and chapels, but at least I can boost my ego with this.

            “Gratzie, ciao,” I thank him.  He waves to us and watches us leave.  We are just another pair of Americani waiting to be scammed.

            Hans and I decide to take the man’s advice.  We do not sightsee any of Naples and go straight to the metro, making our way for the more tourist-friendly Sorrento.  It will be a week from now that I have twenty Euros weaseled from me by a woman in front of the Eiffel Tower. She will claim to be collecting signatures for a petition concerning the rights of the deaf and dumb.  The only issue will be that every signature must be accompanied by Euros and I will not notice this until after signing it.  I will have to make a choice between losing money or making a scene.  Timid me will choose the former.  This issue will only arise because I will not have language on my side then.  I do not know French or sign language.  I will be angrier watching her sign thank you with a big smile on her face as she takes twenty Euros from me and leaves than at the Italians and their late night train conversation.

I would've never thought that such a famous travel destination would be the location of my embarrassment

            However, that is all later.  Right now, it is the first step we take off the train on Easter Sunday and we are excited, but a little worried because of the Italian man’s warning (Napoli multo pericoloso).  It is the beginning of the end.