Il Ritorno in Italia

Well I've now waved goodbye to France for the last time on my year abroad and am finishing off the year in style, with a one month stay in San Severino Marche, a piccola città in central Italy. While obviously my aim this whole year has been to learn French and Italian, I've had other jobs to do as well, and language learning is something that has happened as a result of being immersed, rather than me actively studying. All that has changed now though with this latest trip, and it feels more than a little strange to be the student again, and to not be teaching English. I think I mentioned in my last post that I was looking forward to sitting in the place of a pupil rather than a teacher in the classroom, and although I appreciate the change of perspective, I kind of miss being the one in charge and being the one who supposedly has all the knowledge! I'm also finding it harder to sit still and listen for a couple of hours, and I've been getting fidgety as a result of being used to walking around the classroom. This worries me slightly as I've still got another year of listening to lectures at university to go, but I've got some time to get used to the idea.

When I arrived here I was surprised to see that I was the youngest person by quite a few years, and everyone else seemed fluent. I have now managed to find a few other people around the same age as me, although I'm the only one who's come alone. And as for everyone being fluent, I am one of the only students here who's native language is not Spanish or Portuguese, so even when the others speak broken Italian with words from their own language filling the gaps, it sounds impressively flowy (is that a word?). I think there's a trend among us that those who have a romance language as their native tongue, speak with mistakes, but they do it fluently. Whereas me (and I think a lot of other British language learners), won't speak unless we're sure what we're saying is correct. So although we (possibly) make fewer mistakes, we don't sound half as fluent, and the South Americans sound impressively capable in comparison.

It's for that reason that I was more than a little worried when I found out I'd been placed in the most advanced group, along with people who actually teach Italian in their own countries. The grammar is no harder than what we covered last year at university, so I've been able to keep up with that pretty well, but where I'm struggling is vocabulary. I know how to form a sentence with the correct tenses and prepositions etc, to say what I want to say, but I don't know the words to fill that structure and express it. Ironically it's the exact opposite of my problems with French. In French I know a whole bunch of weird and wonderful words, most of which I rarely use, but when it comes to French grammar, I don't have a clue. I know what sounds right, but I couldn't tell you why it's right.

Everyone here is really really lovely though. Italians and South Americans bring me out of my shell because they're so chatty, which is great for me and means I'm speaking nothing but Italian all day long! Although, I have the same issues with the pronunciation of my name as I did last year, and have heard some interesting new versions of it. In the first week, I've been called Alichay, Alexia, Alessia, Alix, Aleesh, and who knows how many other variations, but I can't use the solution I found last year and call myself by my middle name, because there are at least 3 other Marias in our group of about 40. So I'm just learning to listen carefully for any name that might be 'mine'. I told my teacher he could call me Alichay, because that's how the Italians pronounce Alice, but I regret it now because I end up ignoring his questions and looking round the class when he asks 'Alichay' to answer a question, before remembering that's me...

Yesterday I had a weird moment when this woman came up to me after class, and practically pulled her trousers down right in front of me. She started pointing at her underwear and speaking Spanish or Portuguese or something I didn't understand, so I just gave her a funny look until she started making hand gestures and I worked out that she was trying to tell me that someone in my apartment had dropped their knickers over the edge of the railing when they were drying on the terrace. We're on the top floor so this woman had just seen these knickers falling out of the sky and held onto them for 2 days until she found out who lived on the top floor, and I was able to tell her one of my housemates was missing a pair of pants. Then everyone wanted to know what the word for knickers was in English. Oh the joys of language barriers...

Another weird thing is that apparently everyone in my language class thinks I look like Renée Zellweger, and have started calling me Bridget Jones. I don't see the ressemblance, but they're all convinced and several said they noticed it when they first met me, so I've decided to take it as a compliment!

We have a lovely view from our appartment!

Not sure how safe that roof is though! The castle you can see in the photo was where we went to for our first escursione and then yesterday we went to a nearby castle called Calderola and a little town called Tolentino which has an important basilica. Also, every castle and basilica here seems to have the body of some saint or another on display. I think it's morbid and impressive in equal measure that the body just lies there, and that there are so many of these important Catholics to go round that seemingly everywhere has one! 

I'll leave it there for now, as after a week of ridiculously early mornings, I am molto stanca and need to get up at some horrible hour of the morning tomorrow as well. But we're going to Florence, which makes me enormously happy :)

A presto!

Alice :)