First Day at School...

At the end of day one my head hurt!  It has been me and Joel (the Californian who seems to have left his wife at home and spent the last month travelling in Europe with the aim of eventually coming here to learn Italian), against the world.  Or Italy.   Or Daniella, our teacher.  We sat for three hours in a small classroom, and hardly a word of English passed between us.  I am surprised at how much I managed to get away with although both Joel and I speak some Spanish and we both throw in the occasional (or not so occasional!) word.  Joel has been here a week already but I still managed to hold my own I reckon, although there was plenty I did not understand.  But whereas Joel has got a lot of the grammar basics I have not such as the masculine, feminine and plural forms of things and counting and days of the week, I am able to use more verbs and tenses. So I am able to say I ARRIVED here yesterday and I WANT TO LEARN Italian because my grandfather WAS Italian and LIVED in a village in Umbria and then MOVED to England.  And that I WILL GO to Umbria after my time at the school.  But ask me what day I will leave and 'I don't know'. Or how old I am: 'I don't know'. Or how many times I have been to Italy: 'I don't know'. Or what day of the week is it: 'I don't know'..... (Although some would say that that has always been the case....)

Here is something I learned yesterday which is of interest.  When in the class I asked Joel - in Italian because that seems to be the law in the classroom - why he wants to learn the language.   I picked up a few facts such as his grandmother was Italian and his great grandmother was polish and something about a passport and lots of paperwork and some Irish in the family too.  When we went for a coffee together during a break and we spoke a little English I managed to fill in the gaps.  It seems that under a long standing law the son of an Italian is always an Italian, wherever he was born.  So it seems that if my grandfather did not become naturalised before my father was born (and that is possible as my grandfather was interned during the war) then my father was Italian in the eyes of the law.  And if that is the case that makes me the son of an Italian in the eyes of the law and hence an Italian too!  So, like Joel I could get myself an Italian passport.  How cool would that be....?  I could hold dual nationality and not even realise it!  Certainly something worth looking into methinks! 

I am now sitting doing my homework - yes homework - before I meet up with Joel and some other students and one of the teachers for a pizza.  And I am told by Joel who went last week that we are not allowed to speak English...  I reckon that after two weeks of this I will either have a good grasp of Italian or my head will have exploded.... 

Arrival at Sicily

28/29 June

The last couple of days before I headed off for a month in Italy - two weeks of which would be at a school learning the language - were busy, although it had nothing to do with my imminent absence from the country for the next four weeks.  Hence, due to the distractions of helping a friend with DIY, rushing back to cook for another friend coming to dinner and then preparing the house for yet more friends who were staying the weekend I was leaving, my mind was not on doing any packing until the morning of the day I was due to leave.

After a nice meal in Corsham courtesy of my friends the Dabsons (it is them staying in my house tonight) and a lift to the station I caught the train to Gatwick and my plane out of the country for the next month.  It was all pretty uneventful.  I had an early morning flight and I arrived at the airport late at night so I had to waste about four hours reading and dozing before dropping my bag off; it seemed pointless to get a hotel for only three hours.

I arrived at the airport in Catania, Sicily with an hour to wait for the connecting pick up that had been arranged by the school.  As the time approached and I found the guy who was there to collect us I was not really worried that I was the only English person there, after all one of the reasons I had chosen this particular school was that there were very few English who attended; the majority by far came, according to the statistics, from Spain and Germany. What was more disconcerting however was that I was the only person who was not Italian.  As we climbed into the mini bus I was beginning to wonder whether I had somehow enrolled in an Italian school that taught English... The other alternative was that this transfer, which I had assumed was part of the school and would take me to the school for further instructions, was just some regular taxi.  When we were dropped off in the square an hour or so later and only a stone's throw from the sea it seemed clear that this was the case and given that the last information I had from the school was simply that I had been booked on the bus (nothing at all about who I was staying with or where or what to do once I arrived in the town) I began to feel a little concerned! What to do now? Where was I staying?  I have developed that part of the Italian language where you wave your arms around wildly and gesticulate so tried it out, pointing to the address of the school which was on one of the emails I had printed off.  Fortunately I was only a few hundred metres away and so I wandered down to see if it might help me decide what my next move might be.  I found it up a pleasant little side street not far from the sea.  And of course it was shut.  At this stage I was seriously thinking I might have to find myself a place for the night and was not relishing the thought of a discussion as to who should pay for it being the very first thing I did when I arrived at the school.  My last chance saloon was to find a phone box (my mobile was flat and needed a charge) and to try and ring the number for the school but I was not optimistic given that it was well and truly shut.  But my luck was in and it seems I had missed Enrico who had come to the minibus stop to collect me (or rather he had missed me) and a text sent only that morning telling me that was what to expect. Do you ever get the impression you have been forgotten about until the last minute?  But if I went back to the school I would be collected from there.  And that is what happened.  So I am now in a little bedroom on the top floor of Melissa and Enrico’s flat where if I stand up I bang my head on the sloping ceiling.  But I have my own personal - very large - patio that looks across the terracotta roofs 

under the clear blue sky to the deep blue sea and the mainland.  I can hear the sea -  only a few hundred yards away - from my bedroom.   I can see myself happily sitting out there and studying for the next two weeks.

My Italian has been good enough to explain to Enrique and Melissa, the young owners of the flat, that I can't speak Italian.  I decided that the sensible thing to do before anything else would be to check how to get to the school the following morning so I left the flat and wandered through the streets to check the route. It was absolutely dead, hardly a soul around as I wandered down the road, but by the time I was at the waterside there were lots of old people sitting in the chairs on the promenade and looking out across the water.  I decided to buy myself an ice cream from a nearby store and joined the ageing of Melazzo who were chatting and waving hands and eating ice cream themselves.   I sat there for a while, enjoyed the sun and read my phrase book.

Although I am staying with Enrico and Melissa I am looking after my own feeding arrangements so, given that it was Sunday and I had not had the chance to buy any food up to that point, I took advantage of an open pizza restaurant that I passed on the way back and practised my Italian.  By the time I got back to the flat it was dead and I quietly snuck in and went to bed in readiness for tomorrow; school starts at 9am!