Ilaria and Valentina moved in on Sunday and neither of them smoke!!! What a rarity that is here! For the past couple of days it has been a bit awkward as we pass each other with a polite, "Scusa" or "Ciao" since we don't speak each other's language. Yesterday the awkwardness was finally broken when Valentina started to quietly hum Ci Vuole un Fiore, a famous Italian children's song. She was surprised when Maleesa and I got so excited but understood when we whipped out the lyrics to the song and explained in extremely broken Italian that we learned it in class the day before!
After this we began to communicate more with the help of Ilaria's generous knowledge of English. We added each other on Facebook and showed each other pictures of our family. One of the funniest moments of the night was when Maleesa showed Ilaria and Valentina a picture of her "ragazzo" (boyfriend) and Valentina excitedly said without hesitation of a language barrier, "Ah! He is a nerd!"
After Becca, Maleesa and I studied for our test (or at least tried), Valentina and Ilaria invited us to go get gelato with them. They took us to their favorite gelateria and we walked around exchanging language..."Como sei dice"..."How do you say"...
Oh Caroline I absolutely LOVE reading your blog! I have always been fascinated by Italy & Jeff wants to take me there next year, so I 've been studying maps & reading travel mags about it. I love reading how you are breaking the language barrier - I'm learning too! I'm glad you found roomates that don't smoke too....how dreadful that would be to put up with, not to mention a haZard.
ReplyDeleteKeep posting - we're reading!
Ciao xo