Filed under: Uncategorized
I have a job! I have a job! I have a job! Three weeks into being home from vacation I just finished working my first week of work. And it’s not at McDonalds or any fast food joint. I am not going to be condemned to the fast food jungle pits where survival of the fittest doesn’t exist. Actually I have been hired, (wonder of wonders) to do a rewarding job that I am excited to do. I’m now a therapist for autistic kids. So I will be spending the next several months helping autistic kids learn to cope with the world and learn basic skills. How to talk to other people and hold a conversation and all that good jazz. Which is really incredibly awesome. I guess I’ll find out in a couple months but, they say that you end up watching kids literally bloom out of hard shells. If I can survive through having my glasses wacked off and be stubborn enough to insist that they ask for their food, I think it will be really cool. Matt is officially decided to try and work as a freelance web designer and got his first small job this week. He’s excited and rather daunted but, it’s a good time to try. If you care to see his work go look at http://matt.freels.name . So we are officially on our way to being gainfully employed!
Filed under: Transitions
There are a series of events that signify your introduction as a working unit of society in most cultures (don’t quote me). In the United States there is basically one singular rite of passage. The all important Driver’s License. With the Driver’s License you go from dependent and immobile to independent and mobile all in one big defining swoop. Later you will probably move out of your parent’s house but, the defining moment is the moment you get your driver’s license and get the keys to your first car.
I’ve passed through this rite of passage before right around my sixteenth birthday like everybody else. In Italy though of course we didn’t have a car, we sold ours before leaving. And unfortunately for me in Italy my US driver’s license got stolen. So when I got back to the US I was in the pre-teen state of mobility… as in I couldn’t.
Last week I did it all again. As if it were my initiation back into American culture, my welcome back rite of passage, I got a driver’s license and a car. I was dead scared of taking the driver’s test again. Not because I thought I didn’t know how to drive but, the sheer thought of failing the driver’s test at 24 and having to retake it, the sheer contemplation of that greatest of humiliations had me diligently studying the driver’s manual and panicking in the testing line like as if it was the first time again. Waiting in the dingy 1970s wood panelling waiting room watching the paint peel off the walls. From the other room you could hear every question answered by the people who entered the office before you. The man before me went in to the office and my tension mounted then I heard “Sir, when did you first get your driver’s license?” “Well, ma’amm I rekon thet I’v hed an Alabama driverrs licisence all me lif.” “Sir, you have to have gotten your driver’s license after you turned 16, did you take the test maybe when you were 16 or 19 years old.” “Wellll, yeh I rekin that that is right, maybe when I ws 16 or 19.” “And what year would that be, Sir?” “MMMM, I dn’t know.” By this time I was almost rolling and all the tension had dispersed at least from me. In the end I didn’t have to do the test again they just looked up my valid Arkansas License and gave me an Alabama one again.
The next day we got a car. Now we are fully car-ed and stereo-ed and license-ed and I have again entered adulthood in the United States.
Filed under: Transitions
So we’re back. We got back right before Christmas and have now celebrated two holidays. First impression once off the plane: Everything is ridiculously wide! Cars, roads, stores, tables and food portions…… everything! There is a general air of expansiveness in every built object in sight. For a couple of days it was kind of disorienting but, I think it will feel normal again later even if it doesn’t become more appreciated. I think we’ve delayed reverse culture shock because of the holidays. I’m so wrapped up in doing the holiday thing that I don’t think it has really set in that we aren’t going back afterward. I’m waiting for that one to set in. I’ll write again in about two weeks and probably will be exploding with …. oh my gosh I had forgotten that it was like this! how can we live with this stuff. Right now we’re in San Diego. So far we’ve made our tour through Huntsville, AL and Atlanta, GA…..by the way I don’t think I’m ever going to move to Atlanta. Of all the cities we’ve been in again so far it seems the most likely to explode/implode once gas prices go up. We flew here to San Diego on Southwest and I think so far it has been one of the most American experiences since we’ve been back. At the beginning of the flight the stewardess’ tossed the peanuts down the aisle telling everyone to pick one up if they could as they went skittering back toward the tail. The black woman beside me was gently cursing them for unkindness as she missed peanut bag after peanut bag and the kids in the back laughed and at that moment I’m thinking … only in the USofA. It’s not bad, it’s entertaining and stunts like that explain why the US provides 3/4 of the entertainment for the rest of the world. We like to laugh at ourselves and really so do they! Later in the flight the same thing happened to all the stuff in my purse….also thouroughly entertaining. Crawling down the aisle gathering my stuff out from under peoples feet while trying my hardest to ignore the stewardess who was asking everyone to get in their seats over the intercom was definitely fodder for the travel episode of a sitcom. Ok so end of randomized thought for the moment….
Filed under: Uncategorized
2 days till we leave. 8 suitcases that weigh too much and a electric and gas contract that we can’t pay yet.
Filed under: A Luddite's Opinion
So I’m writing christmas cards again. I’ve always liked christmas cards. At our house they go up to decorate the room around christmas time. It’s one of the only times of year where your mail is more actual letters than bills and junk mail. Receiving them is fun, writing them less so worst of all though is the addresses. Writing the note isn’t so hard but, finding the address is a chore. Last year my purse was stolen with my address book in it, the address book that I had made specifically because I had had trouble with addresses the year before. So I’m doing the whole thing over again, and it makes the whole deciding who to write christmas cards to an interesting process. Because there end up being two different types of people among even your close friends and family …. the christmas card people, as in the ones you know their physical address, and the non christmas card people, the ones you have only electrical addresses. Often the groups are exclusive one from the other. The ones with the physical addresses don’t have electrical ones or vice versa at least as far as your world goes. I think I fit into the non christmas card people for mostly because so far my email address has remained more constant than my physical one. The problem for me though is that I find myself more capable of writing a letter than doing alot of other things (like calling for instance). Christmas cards are in a way ideal for me… they say hey I still care to make sure I know where you are and to let you know where in the world I am so that if it so happens that you pass by my way you’ll know you’re doing it…. but it isn’t really necessary to say much. Ideal since I am often socially constipated in any other type of communication besides physical presence. This year somehow it seems almost more important because we are leaving italy. Because I have to collect the addresses that are important to me in italy and also because writing the christmas cards I’m telling people that I’ll be back on the same continent again so it feels like the physical address is more important again.
We’ve got 3 saturdays, 3 sundays, 3 mondays, 3 tuesdays, 2 wednesdays, 2 tuesdays, 2 thursdays and 2 fridays to go until we move back to the United States of America onto the North American continent and away from Europe, Italy and Vicenza. Which after more than 2 years is a little weird. It’s like coming into the last week of college or highschool all over again.
Goodbyes are always hard. I usually deal with them by practically ignoring them. I say goodbye and I say I’ll miss you but, I’ve never been good at the teary or prolonged part and it just seems somehow less final to me to just say a simple goodbye and go. That’s me. I have trouble feeling really sorry at the goodbye because somehow to me it seems like a negation of the relationship itself. I figure that friendships are precious and no matter how short or long they last because of the circumstances of life they are still beautiful things. That in a way the time itself, the time that you had, is marred by long goodbyes that seem to show a need to say that it was sure that the relationship would stay the same forever. It is that way for most relationships and then for those that are most important you will do all you can to see them again to continue to be apart of their life so when you say goodbye it is always certain that it is just for a time. That is my rationale at least for my own behaviour although really it is probably just a way to let myself follow my own inclinations …..
I have found that my ideas of this run counter to the culture here in Italy. I do not feel just in assuming either that things or people will remain unchanged or that any particular change is final. What I have found here is that people assume constancy, believe in the possiblity of immutablity …. and tend to feel that to be transient is in a way to be a traitor. So it’s hard to make friendships because they know that as a foriegner you will probably leave someday. Even harder in a way are those who do allow you to be friends that you eventually do have to say goodbye to.
We’ve been saying goodbye for the last three weeks to different sets of people and really it’s hard …. mostly for me it is hard to watch their faces get a little harder, like their eyes are saying “You see! You are leaving. I shouldn’t have trusted you because now I have to say goodbye, better not to have been friends and not have to say goodbye in this way.” Then their lips say: “Allora Arrivederci! perchè voi partite, vero? Tornate agli Stati Uniti per sempre.” (So Till we see eachother again! Because you guys are leaving, right? Your going back to the United States forever.) At that point watching their eyes and listening to their words I feel truly sad. Not because I’m convinced that we will never come back to Italy. In fact I am rather more convinced that anything is possible. But to watch them feel hurt because I couldn’t stay for a life time hurts. At the same time it makes me want to protest….
Filed under: Church
I survived the youth retreat.I don’t think I really thought I would say it that way… I mean I really liked youth retreats when I was a teenager. But for this one survival is the most appropriate word. Because this time I was one of the ones in charge. Which is an entirely different story. Playing the part of the one who keeps 5 teenage girls in their rooms instead of traipsing off in the middle of the night is a much different role than being one of the ones hanging out who just so happens to go to bed when asked. And my observation for the day about this whole thing is that for some reason teenagers assume that adults (meaning anyone more than 4 years older than they are) are fundamentally stupid. For some reason they seem to be under the assumption that within 4 years they will have had every brain cell sucked out of them. I spent a weekend thinking … Did you really think I was going to buy that line that you just fed me? And then in the same breath thinking….did I try this too when I was at the youth retreats I remember loving?I have to say though that I really like these guys…the whole lot of them even the talkative girls….they are amazing to watch grow and have loads of potential and are enormously hilarious. I love them and will miss them when we leave Vicenza. So the real aftermath of the youth retreat was that I’ll miss them …. and I got sick. I’ve definetly decided that having a fever while at a retreat with 20 teenagers is a bad plan and I don’t recomend it.
I’ve now completed my research into popular music in Italy and have found a couple that I like (after the inauspicious start it turned out ok after all). First thing I found is that artists seem to have more longevity here so the same artists are popular for decades in a row.
The ones I found that I now want to buy their music:
Tiziano Ferro, good music in the ballad type genre. One of his songs has been on the radio constantly for a year because it was in a really popular movie but, he’s also got some really fun quirky stuff as well like “Raffella è mia” which is about a guy who wins a date from a Italian Vana White in a TV contest.
Ligabue, for all I can tell has been popular since 1985 or so but, he really is good with words. Again ballad type.
Neffa, the only italian rap star that I really like! Had a cool video last year with a girl walking around with a mirror around her neck.
Negramaro, Matt says that they are far to Emo for his taste but, I get a kick out of them. Very angry music. You have to have music for every mood though, right
In the next week we are doing three different and rather (us) labor intensive things with the church here in Vicenza. It’s kind of like our last BIG hurrah before we go home (there will be lots of little hurrahs afterward I’m sure). There is a women’s day, a conference and last but not least a youth retreat.
What’s occupying my attention at the moment is the youth retreat. My job is come up with the games and intro icebreakers. The theme is love so we (matt and I) kind of decided coporately that the icebreaker was going to be literary analysis of pop songs that talk about the subject so as to discuss healthy and godly approaches to love vs. unhealthy and ungodly ones….. though I am not for the life of me going to come near saying the words literary or analysis at the retreat, that would be swift and unmerciful suicide. Without those two words added in though I’m kind of hoping it will go over alright. In order to do it though I am having to do research into the current popular songs in Italy.
AGGGGGG!
Ok so to do my research I figured the best way would be to watch All Music, the Italian Mtv alternative.
This morning…..found lots of infomercials …… and they were all the same infomercial! I don’t know if they have them in the US right now but apparently the only infomercial on Italian television right now is the wiggly butt infomercial. Seriously the whole time the infomercial is going the screen is full of butts, old people butts, female model butts, male model butts, the salesmens butt and they are all wiggling, constantly! The machine is supposed to be a exercise thingy I think but, what it seems to do most effectively is make one do a very exagerated maybe fastforwarded version of the twist or something that makes every fat molecule that you have jiggle kind of softly but, rapidly.
After getting far to ingrossed in butt jiggling I finally managed to resist my morbid fascination and change the channel…ok so now I have All Music I think… but wait …. is this really a music video? A four minute music video completely made up of bad camcorder footage of a guys studio focusing most frequently on the number of nobs are on his sound boards! Next video…now I’m watching guy that dances like my husband when he’s making fun of people who can’t dance and this guy is doing it in all seriousness and he can’t even seem to clap to the beat of his own song!
So about this point I give up on the television at least for the morning and go to computer to look up the top ten list in Italy to see if there are any Italian language songs or even English songs of the simple kind that do not have metaphor or double entendre I would have to explain for the kids to know what it means… (for that reason I’m sorry but, I can’t use “Shut up and Drive”? … just learned of the songs existence today by the way… because who really wants to explain the metaphor of a car for a women’s body to a bunch of teenagers …. don’t want to go there. As an aside: this is a major problem. The other day we went to one of the 8 year old girls from the churches ballet recital, she and her class of all 7 and 8 year old girls pranced around to the tune of “I’m a Barbie Girl in a Barbie World”. I’m sorry but there is just a multitude of wrongness there. Who really wants to explain to their parents what it really means.)
Ok so I got back to the search to discover…… Number One on the charts…… Eros Ramozzotti “Non Siamo Soli” or We’re Not Alone and guess who got onto the video? None other than Ricky Martin! He somehow managed to come back from pop star death to feature prominently in a top charting Italian song. By this time I’m really doubting my capacity to continue the search. But I will trudge forward through the multitude of 80s bands (including the Pooh, which I swear were all wearing tupeés at there concert though I guess the video could have been playing with the light) to find the perfect songs.
My family came to visit us about a week ago! It was fantastic, though now our 2 person apartment seem quite a bit quieter after being inundated with 4 more people for a week and a half. It was very fun though because we had saved up all these things to do with them. You know when you don’t go do the things that there are to do in the town you live in until people come to visit. Well that is what we did and it turned out great. First there was a flurry of food….there are so many good cheeses and wines and salami objects that are to expensive and heavy for everyday that are perfect to eat when there is company and no one is thinking about dieting or staying in shape.
Good food you need to try if you come to the Veneto:
Sopresa di Schio with or without garlic
Asiago cheese…all types very old to very young
Seafood if you are by the sea
and white sparkling wines!
The biggest food hit though was chocolates from our local chocolate store where they make them in the back and sell them with coffee out front….passion fruit chocolate is the best ever! (it melts in your mouth like who knows what softly caressing your taste buds into submission until you are so satisfied you cannot even contemplate eating another piece because the satisfaction would morph into painful ectasy! and yes they really are that good)
Besides the food we went to see a lot of the things we’d saved up, wanting to go see them but, putting it off based on we live here laziness. It was good to see the places, it was good to be a tourist for a week but, in some ways it drove home the fact that we are only in Italy for two more months.
While seeing Soave castle with it’s perfectly kept ramparts that give you a sweeping view of the valley, (a castle we pass every time we get on the highway and that I’ve been wanting to go see since April) was amazing it also meant that that untied up end wasn’t loose any more it was done. In some ways it felt like the store of undone things was part of our reassurance that we actually lived here and as people that live here we can always go look at it later. Soave and the museums in Vicenza itself were more like that for me. Riva del Garda and Sirmione and Aquileia were less so because they are further away I think.
So now we’ve showed off our church and our life to someone else outside of ourselves that will be apart of our life after we leave Vicenza. That part of it was really satisfying because without it when you get back you have this uncanny feeling that in everyone elses eyes you were just missing for 2 years not actually living a real life while you were gone, just gone, dormant somehow. Now that my family has seen my life I feel less like leaving is an approaching doom for my memories of being here though I do feel like it is more certain that we are leaving now.
