I've been here about a week and I'm trying to get settled in to a routine. I'm still jet lagged, which surprises me because I used to work night shift and figured I would be able to switch over easily after years of practice. No such luck. Some mornings I'm still up around 6, so I go for my run early. I usually run through some neighborhoods to get about a mile or two down the coast and then back up along the water to watch the sunrise. The air is cool and the usual slow walkers aren't out yet. I usually end up at the stone pier and watch the fishermen coming back from their early morning trips. There is something very tranquil about the cool morning air...which I guess isn't different from anywhere else in the world. Of course I'm exhausted by the time I get home after being up all night, but it's always a nice way to "start" my day.
One morning, I decided to find a coffee shop overlooking the harbor after my run and try my hand at ordering breakfast. I found a shop that had pictures of the food on the walls and remembered that cafe meant coffee so I figured I could order with minimal difficulty. Wrong. Let me start with this...my spoken Italian is terrible. I'm not even being modest...it's downright awful. I hear the native speakers say the words and then I will try to repeat them, but the sounds coming out of my mouth don't match theirs. You know it's bad when you don't even speak the language but you can hear your own accent. It's a shame because it's such a beautiful language with rolling r sounds and inflections on different syllables that make it flowy and enchanting to listen to, but my version does it no justice. Let's be real though...I have an accent even speaking English so that doesn't help anything. Plus, I hear that the dialect/accent found in Bari is about the equivalent of a Boston accent...sorry Boston, I don't mean that as a positive thing. So basically I'm a native English speaker who even speaks English with as accent learning Italian from people who speak Italian with an accent...I'm just setting myself up for failure. No one is going to understand a word that I'm saying so my plan is just to get good at charades. This might actually work though because everyone seems to speak with such passion and use their whole bodies with their words...sometime I think someone is angry because of how they are talking but then they start laughing. I love hearing it, I love seeing it and I love how everyone says Ciao Bella! My family has a housekeeper that doesn't speak a word of English and is aware that I don't speak Italian, so we have mostly just smiled to acknowledge each other with no attempt from either of us to communicate otherwise. One morning I tried to greet her with buongiorno (Italian for 'good morning'), and she went and got someone to translate what I was saying to her. My accent is so harsh that she didn't even realize I was speaking Italian to her, she thought I had said something in English. I can understand a pretty decent amount if someone speaks slowly to me and I can pick out key words to at least follow along conversation topics when someone is speaking quickly, but to say the least...I definitely need practice speaking.
Anyways, I waited in line at this coffee shop and ordered cafe e crepe con fragola. Coffee and a crepe with strawberry. I ordered a crepe with strawberry because the blackboard behind the bar was advertising crepes and pancakes so I figured this would be easy. She thought I was ordering strawberry ice cream and gave me a weird look for ordering strawberry ice cream at 8 am. I have no idea how that translation got mixed up but I didn't know how to fix it so i just waved my hands to say nevermind and asked for cafe instead. That was the important part anyways. I drank my cafe, which didn't take long since it was a shot of espresso. I haven't had a full cup of coffee since I've been here. They have coffee bars here where the people line up (like at a bar...and interestingly enough, there is alcohol at these bars too), order shots of espresso and are on their way within a few minutes. Honestly, it's much more efficient to just have shots of coffee like this if you're in a hurry but I do miss my full cup of coffee on slow mornings like this. My coffee time at home is my prayer time, my reflection time, my social time, my calm-before-the-storm time. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to order a full cup. Or maybe I'll eventually come home with an espresso addiction to go with my newfound love of sparkling water.
So it didn't take me long after I got my coffee to realize that I still wanted my crepe con fragola, and I saw a picture of a crepe with a strawberry on the wall. In my defense, I don't know why this woman couldn't figure out what I was asking for...even if I said it funny, I know I said the right words and there is a picture of it on the wall. So the next time she came around the bar, I pointed at the picture and asked again for a crepe con fragola. This time she understood, she repeated my words with the correct inflection on the syllables and began to make it. And then when she asked if I wanted nutella as the filling (because they're all obsessed with nutella here), I was able to ask for crema instead. And then I paid. My first conversation in Italian!!! It wasn't pretty, it didn't go smoothly but I did get exactly what I tried to ask for!
Anyways, I waited in line at this coffee shop and ordered cafe e crepe con fragola. Coffee and a crepe with strawberry. I ordered a crepe with strawberry because the blackboard behind the bar was advertising crepes and pancakes so I figured this would be easy. She thought I was ordering strawberry ice cream and gave me a weird look for ordering strawberry ice cream at 8 am. I have no idea how that translation got mixed up but I didn't know how to fix it so i just waved my hands to say nevermind and asked for cafe instead. That was the important part anyways. I drank my cafe, which didn't take long since it was a shot of espresso. I haven't had a full cup of coffee since I've been here. They have coffee bars here where the people line up (like at a bar...and interestingly enough, there is alcohol at these bars too), order shots of espresso and are on their way within a few minutes. Honestly, it's much more efficient to just have shots of coffee like this if you're in a hurry but I do miss my full cup of coffee on slow mornings like this. My coffee time at home is my prayer time, my reflection time, my social time, my calm-before-the-storm time. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to order a full cup. Or maybe I'll eventually come home with an espresso addiction to go with my newfound love of sparkling water.
So it didn't take me long after I got my coffee to realize that I still wanted my crepe con fragola, and I saw a picture of a crepe with a strawberry on the wall. In my defense, I don't know why this woman couldn't figure out what I was asking for...even if I said it funny, I know I said the right words and there is a picture of it on the wall. So the next time she came around the bar, I pointed at the picture and asked again for a crepe con fragola. This time she understood, she repeated my words with the correct inflection on the syllables and began to make it. And then when she asked if I wanted nutella as the filling (because they're all obsessed with nutella here), I was able to ask for crema instead. And then I paid. My first conversation in Italian!!! It wasn't pretty, it didn't go smoothly but I did get exactly what I tried to ask for!
I haven't had anything here to eat that I don't like. Everything is fresh and amazing...I'm truly impressed that Italians are not all morbidly obese from having such incredible pasta and cheese with every meal and eating gelato multiples times per day. My crepe con fragola was very good but that was the first time that I ate something that was not up to my own standards from home. My Grandma Jackson has Czech roots and she has the most amazing palacinky (crepe) recipe that she makes...and hers are much better than this one that I ate. I'll pick olive oil from Italy every time...but I prefer my Grandma's crepes any day of the week.
Another day after my run, I went past the cutest little hole-in-the-wall shop that had all kinds of bottles and barrels of wine in the front room. Naturally, I went in. This time, I used Google Translate (as I have been a lot lately) to ask for good wine from my region. The man and woman working in the store (because it took the team of them to figure out what I was asking) asked if I wanted red or white and then pointed to a barrel on one wall. I figured they were about to pour me a glass since it was basically wine from a keg, so even though I was originally looking for a bottle I said okay...because why the hell not! Then they asked if I wanted glass or plastic. Glass or plastic? What? So they made the decision for me...plastic. They then proceeded to fill a LITER plastic bottle full of this wine directly from a box with the same label and hand it to me. My liter of regional wine cost 3 euros. About the same as a SmartWater bottle in the U.S. This was my second independent conversation in Italian...definitely a success. I didn't get what I had originally thought I was asking for, but I got a much better option! Wine the same price as water...Why has it taken me this long to come here??
Another day after my run, I went past the cutest little hole-in-the-wall shop that had all kinds of bottles and barrels of wine in the front room. Naturally, I went in. This time, I used Google Translate (as I have been a lot lately) to ask for good wine from my region. The man and woman working in the store (because it took the team of them to figure out what I was asking) asked if I wanted red or white and then pointed to a barrel on one wall. I figured they were about to pour me a glass since it was basically wine from a keg, so even though I was originally looking for a bottle I said okay...because why the hell not! Then they asked if I wanted glass or plastic. Glass or plastic? What? So they made the decision for me...plastic. They then proceeded to fill a LITER plastic bottle full of this wine directly from a box with the same label and hand it to me. My liter of regional wine cost 3 euros. About the same as a SmartWater bottle in the U.S. This was my second independent conversation in Italian...definitely a success. I didn't get what I had originally thought I was asking for, but I got a much better option! Wine the same price as water...Why has it taken me this long to come here??
I am trying to FaceTime friends and family every day. I am able to make phone calls from my European number, but I prefer to see people when I talk to them so I usually use FaceTime. I even got to talk to my favorite little strawberry blonde the other day. The biggest issue with communication is the time difference since I am seven hours ahead of Texas time. Convenient times for me are usually when other people are sleeping, so it's basically like being on night shift again. Anyone reading this though...feel free to text me at any time. I might not answer right away but I think I'm better about responding to people now than I was when I was working nights.
I have made friends with another au pair in the area who is originally from Michigan. Her name is Melissa and she is fixin to start her senior year of college this fall. She has been studying abroad in France this past spring and decided to stay in Italy for the summer. We're very different but we have the same appreciation of "that's what she said" jokes and wine so she's easy for me to get along with. It's nice to have someone to compare frustrations and experiences (in English) with...we also have plans to do some traveling in the coming weeks.
The first time Melissa and I hung out, we decided to try to get manicures in Torre a Mare. She speaks a little more Italian than I do and I understand a little more than she does, so we were confident that we could figure it out. We walked around for about an hour looking for somewhere that accepted walk-ins (apparently they usually make appointments about a week in advance), and we finally found a "salon." It was the cutest little building with rounded ceilings and stone walls, but it was very different than the nail salons in the U.S. A girl with tattoos and a nose piercing led us up a set of stairs that was so steep it was almost a ladder to a loft above the lower hair salon. The small loft was open to below but had a massage/waxing table and one nail station. I can't even imagine trying to relax while getting waxed or massaged with the blowdryers and chatter going on downstairs. Melissa and I took turns getting semipermanente polish (like the gel). The tattooed nail tech picked out a red color for me that I usually only wear in the fall and there was no manicure, no lotion, no cuticle treatment....just paint. The whole process took less than 30 minutes for both of us and cost us each 20 euros...again, this way is much more efficient if you're in a hurry than the pampering treatment you get in the U.S. I can see the beauty in both ways.
The first time Melissa and I hung out, we decided to try to get manicures in Torre a Mare. She speaks a little more Italian than I do and I understand a little more than she does, so we were confident that we could figure it out. We walked around for about an hour looking for somewhere that accepted walk-ins (apparently they usually make appointments about a week in advance), and we finally found a "salon." It was the cutest little building with rounded ceilings and stone walls, but it was very different than the nail salons in the U.S. A girl with tattoos and a nose piercing led us up a set of stairs that was so steep it was almost a ladder to a loft above the lower hair salon. The small loft was open to below but had a massage/waxing table and one nail station. I can't even imagine trying to relax while getting waxed or massaged with the blowdryers and chatter going on downstairs. Melissa and I took turns getting semipermanente polish (like the gel). The tattooed nail tech picked out a red color for me that I usually only wear in the fall and there was no manicure, no lotion, no cuticle treatment....just paint. The whole process took less than 30 minutes for both of us and cost us each 20 euros...again, this way is much more efficient if you're in a hurry than the pampering treatment you get in the U.S. I can see the beauty in both ways.
Life has definitely changed, but it's still the same in many ways too. Oh, and I gave my number to an Italian guy who doesn't speak English very well. I was told to download Tinder to meet people in the area but I just can't bring myself to do it. Instead, we met while I was enjoying (more) gelato and wine with Melissa. That's a much better story, right? I'm more looking for friends than someone to date anyways, so hopefully I can communicate that. This might be the true test of my spoken Italian...so it likely won't go well. Updates pending. Ciao bella!