A four-letter Italian word for goodbye...

...reminds me of talking to the cab driver on the way to the airport. I waited for him outside the Collegio until 5:15 am, after a long conversation (in Italian!) with the sleepy dispatcher. When I climbed in I realized he was playing a Spanish song. I thought, this is my last chance to speak Italian for a few months, if not years. So I launched right in.
"Puo capire lo spagnolo?" I asked. (Do you understand Spanish?) He said sort of. I started translating the Spanish song into Italian, piece by piece. "The wounds of love..." The cabbie - who must have been 80 years old - threw me a worried look.
"Wounds caused by a boy?" he asked.
"Yes, yes, of course a boy," I said, excited that he was getting into it. "You know those things between a man and a woman," I translated the next part, since I wasn't sure how to say 'relationship.'
"How old are you, 18?" he asked. I took it as a compliment, usually people think I'm younger.
"No, no, I'm 20," I told him. He swerved to avoid a cat in the road. I went on with the song. "Why has this man told me these things that are not true? All I wanted was his love." There was a long, appreciative pause when I finished my heartfelt translation. He turned his full attention to me.
"You are young, you know," he said with a sigh. "Life is full of pain, yes, but you have your entire life ahead of you for pain."
And that's when I realized that he thought I'd been talking about myself.

That was my last conversation in Italian, which means it's time to wrap this blog up.

On that memorable night in Venice (five whole weeks ago!), someone asked me how many times I'd been to Italy. I told the barful of men "E mia prima volta." They laughed and told me that "mia prima volta" means "my first time" and usually only refers to one thing. After that, "mia prima volta" became a joke in our group of friends. Every time one of us did something we'd never done before, we said "oh, prima volta." Last summer, like this summer, I made it my goal to do something every day I'd never done before. My favorite memories of Italy are almost all "prima voltas," and I realize, looking back, why this game appeals to me so much. In the United States, I live cautiously. I don't follow unfamiliar men to sleazy clubs or bathe in public fountains or hook myself to belay ropes and sail down cliffs. But I wonder, sometimes, what I'm missing. Most of the things I did in Italy (not the things I saw, the things I did) were frightening, and I'm sure things could have gone badly. But they didn't. I didn't get assaulted, diseased, or killed. Instead, I found out what I'd been missing.

A brief ode...

...in the style of Petrarch. (You knew it was coming.)

Oh America, you're full of flaws,
Strange politics, dumb drinking laws.
But when your waiters give me lip
I sigh and smirk and leave no tip.
In Italia there's no such grace,
When service people have poor taste.
The waiters argue, bitch, harass,
Change my order, drop my glass.
And I, stranded, have no choice
For if I even raise my voice
They get offended, start to pout,
Say, "Hey, we're all just hanging out!"
But when I really get the blues,
They bring me bottles of free booze.
So am I offended? Maybe not.
We'll forgive a lot for a free shot.

Okay, so maybe not in the style of Petrarch. The point is, Italians don't believe in tips, but they do believe in free drinks.

Last night, kept indoors by the heat, we broke out the pocket change and played a round of poker. It lasted for about 3 hours, but by the end I was €15 richer!

It's getting hot in here...

The killer heatwave that's covered Europe means we're feeling the lack of air conditioning even at our monastery on the hill. I've never experienced temperatures like this. At night the heat settles in my lungs and makes it impossible to sleep, during the day is leaves me nauseous and headache-y. And I'm not the only one.

Nonetheless, I've been exploring Verona, eating gelato and hiding in the shade, trying to put off thinking about this Sunday, when I will take a flight back to the United States.

All roads lead to Rome?

This weekend I did Florence and Rome, tourist style. I wandered through hazy hot streets in search of art galleries and shoe stores. I looked at Michelangelo's David, propped on a marble plinth about ten feet above my head, and I thought, A man made that?

The David was the first classical sculpture I ever saw. I was on the Internet, doing research for my art journal. The picture inspired me. I trucked in with my clipping the next day. "This is the kind of stuff I want to create!" I told Ms. Fishman, who had been pestering me (without success) to find my artistic voice. She frowned. "Well you have about ten years," she said. "Why?" "The marble dust will clog up your lungs and kill you." So I gave it up. But standing in front of the David, I realized two important things: 1) I was finally seeing one of the reasons I came to Italy and 2) It was as good as I thought it would be.

That proved the theme of my weekend. I wandered through the fragmented temples and fallen columns in the Roman Forum, I craned my neck to figure out the ceiling of St. Peter's Basilica, I tossed a few € into the Trevi fountain. The thing is, people have been looking at these same sites for hundreds of years. And I realized why. It is absolutely worth seeing every single one of them.

I skipped class and stayed in Rome an extra day to see the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. I'm glad I did, partly because I wanted to see them, and partly because I wanted to finish seeing Rome. Carolyn and I emerged from the Vatican with two hours before our train left, and realized that we had nothing else we wanted to do. We saw every single thing we wanted to see, and I won't forget any of it, and right now I don't think I'll ever come back to Rome.

Internet again!

Last Saturday I went to Milan and, among other things, found a copy of Italian GQ. It would have qualified as soft core pornography in the States. I had to put it down, I was embarrassed enough that I didn't want the guy at the counter to see me reading it.

Right now I'm staying in an agriturismo, a tiny self-sufficient farm surrounded by vineyards, gravel roads and fields of blooming sunflowers. It really is as close to paradise as it sounds. By day I lounge at the pool and go for long nature walks. At night I'm in bed by midnight. The food (wine, honey, meat) is all locally grown, and delicious.

Big plans...

The plans for tonight include an opera and some fun times. Last time we went to the opera we brought along some red wine and prosecco (a sweet Italian white wine). We perched on the edges of the Arena seats (the Arena is an enormous open-air stadium, built by the Romans centuries ago and still intact). We skinned our knees walking up the slippery stone stairs and hurt our behinds sitting on the stone risers, but we got a world-renowned production of Aida. This week it's going to be Cavalieri Rusticana. I'm looking forward to it, if only because it's rumored to be a lot more interesting than Aida.

Tomorrow I'm going to be shopping and seeing cathedrals in Milan, fashion capital of the world (or so they claim). From there it's on to Tuscany, Florence, and finally Rome. I'm looking forward to it. Growing up I thought I was a city girl. In college, I began to think maybe I would like a small town, somewhere intimate and safe. But now, having seen several small towns in Italy, I realize I'm hankering after some time in the city. I want someplace international, where the streets are full of foreign languages and ethnic cuisine, and the public transport runs all night. Maybe I wouldn't be satisfied in a small town after all. All I know is I crave diversity. If I can't find it where I live, I want to go somewhere else. So it's not Verona's size that bothers me, it's the homogeneity. There's no Chinatown, Greektown, Little India. The boutiques sell similar clothes for roughly similar prices. I'm sure there's a thriving nightlife somewhere around here, and fascinating authentic shops, but having wandered around and talked with locals and spent time with them, I think Verona really is the small town it appears to be. And while I love the tranquility of it, the fact that after a few weeks I know the place so well I won't get lost, I'm still excited for the upcoming cities.

If I can find an Internet cafe while I'm gone I will write, but if not I'll be putting up plenty of photos and updates when I get back.

Public buses...

Don't always run where they say they will. Yesterday we took a bus to the train station (we wanted to avoid the half hour trek up the hill to the monastery) and ended up spending two hours wandering through various dark streets\alleys before we got home. Nonetheless, the odyssey was worth it: I saw yet more of Verona. That afternoon we wandered through the less-traveled streets, finding all kinds of cute jewelry shops and clothing boutiques. I returned home weighted down with jewelry and dusty from the road, which I guess isn't a bad way to return.