How To Speak Italian (even though you’re at a party and can’t understand a word that anyone is saying)

Sometimes, speaking, hearing, living, and breathing the Italian language makes my head want to explode. The sheer process of describing my day to my roommates takes about three times as long as it should. So even though I live with Italians who don't speak a word of English, I find myself speaking a lot of English throughout the day with other American students in the program. It's hard to force myself to talk about my day in another language when it's just so much easier in English.
So when my roommate Peppe informed me that we would be having friends over for dinner Tuesday night, I was immediately grateful for the opportunity to really force myself to speak.
I came back to my apartment on Tuesday around 7:30 pm (19:30 in Italian time). I had been working on a group project with American classmates all afternoon, speaking very little Italian. I walked in to a living room in disarray. My roommates had pushed all the couches to one side of the room and brought out two more long tables, creating a dining hall in our already crowded apartment.
"Quante persone vengono stasera?" (How many people are coming tonight?)
"Seidici" (16)
My jaw dropped. Family dinners at home usually get no bigger than 8 people. I should have realized that "a dinner with friends" is really just an excuse to have a party.
Dinner in Italy doesn't ever begin until after 9:00 pm. So I made myself busy by finding and washing every drinking container in the hous.e We definitely didn't have sixteen glasses. Or sixteen chairs for that matter. No one seemed to worried about it though.
As people started arriving, I felt the shape of my first Italian dinner start to form. There was no trickling in of the guests. Every time someone new walked through the door there would be a cheer...
"Bella! Ciaociaociaociao!"
The new guest would usually raise their arms to receive a barrage of hugs and kisses. With the way people were greeting each other, you would think they hadn't seen each other in years.
Someone started a playlist. The lights dimmed and christmas lights went up to frame the window seven stories up facing the hills of Bologna. And soon after the food arrived. Pasta al forno with plenty of wine to go around. Of course by now there were way more than 16 people present and my hopes of having that pleasant conversational dinner was over.
Instead, I found myself straining over the blare of music and twenty different voices jabbering away to at simply understand the context of the conversation next to me. I have found that I can understand perfectly when someone speaks to me directly, but mix in music, background voices, and a decent amount of alcohol and all I can do is shrug my shoulders, nod and smile along with someone's rapid hand gestures.
As the night progressed, however, I forced myself to start up one-on-one conversations with some new people. I talked about Kansas and "Il Mago di Oz", I discussed the Italian public school system, my roommates mysterious Macedonian girlfriend, the couple making out in the corner of the room, "Musica Trash" (which took me forever to understand that they were pronouncing "trash" and not "tresh"), and a neighbor's scuba-diving trip in the Red Sea.
I participated in my first Italian dance party, where males and females alike jump around shamelessly to "Musica Trash," a guilty pleasure not too far off from my generations constant fascination with the Spice Girls, 'Nsync and old school Britney Spears.
 

                        For some reason, this is a huge favorite here within the Musica Trash category

Around three in the morning, I left the apartment with three new Italian friends to visit Signore Paolo, a crazy seventy-year-old Bolognese who owns a gelateria cart in the piazza down the street. At 3am the cart turns into a last minute spot to purchase alcohol. Here, you can come to buy a forty and get mildly harassed by an old man who believes girls should never have to pay for their drinks.
To top off the night, the police arrived at the door of our apartment around 4:00am because of a noise complaint. We received a fine of 400 euro, which has been pinned to a bulletin board and I have been informed is "not a big deal and I don't need to worry about it".
I ended the night more proud than ever of how far my language skills have come. If I can fudge my way through conversations in a setting like this now, I can't wait for how easy it will seem in three months. Sometimes I still feel like my head wants to explode, but at least I know it will explode with phrases in Italian!