The BF

I am in a very serious relationship. I'm not talking about my boyfriend, Kyle. Nor am I talking about my relationship with gelato (which is starting to get a little clingy). I'm in a very committed relationship with a 6-year-old Italian boy.
In case you've forgotten, Pietro and I have been moving right along with our English lessons. I still kick the soccer ball around. He still kicks it back at the mirror/picture frames/fragile centerpiece.
But I guess I didn't realize just how attached he was getting. Over Christmas break, Kyle came to eat dinner with me at the Longo's (Pietro's family). Everyone was really excited to meet him. Except for Pietro. He spent most of the night under the dinner table and ended it with a screaming tantrum that carried him into his room. Apparently, he was a little bit jealous. Their only interaction occurred during a foosball game, which I told Kyle to lose on purpose. My next lesson with Pietro, I asked him what he thought of Kyle.
"I'm way better than him at foosball. He lost 10 to 2."
Yup, he was a little jealous.

I now have this photo posted on my wall right next to the family photo from a camping trip.

This past week, I brought my friend Chloe to the lessons. Little did she know, I'd be blatantly using her for physical labor during her visit from Berlin. We spent most of the the time playing games that got pretty competitive. One such game, a favorite of ours, is meant to help practice the verb "to like". I made my own food flashcards,  all perfectly clear and realistic (Pietro said my picture of chocolate looked like poop). I then place the cards in the living and come back to sit on his bed. Then the game proceeds like so:

Pietro: D-d-d-o yoou like milk?

Me: No, I don't like milk?

Pietro: Do you like like apples?

Me: Only, one like Pietro.

Pietro: Do youuu like apples?

Me: No, I don't like apples.

Pietro: Do you like cake?

Me: Yes! I like cake!

He then races to the next room, grabs the flashcard with cake on it, races it back and watches as I happily "devour" my cake. Sometimes we switch off and he sits on the bed while I run back and forth (not my favorite).
But when it was time for Chloe and I to guess and race each other to the food images, I got a pleasant surprise. I let Chloe grab the flashcard the first time only to turn around and find Pietro standing there grinning. He grabbed the card of of Chloe's hand and shoved it into mine, racing back to his spot on the bed so I could bring him his food.
He wanted me to win.
I never thought the day would come when a kid would actually like me. Let alone that I would feel good about it. He won't be getting English anytime soon, but there are moments when we really get each other: marveling over the fact that "ph" makes the sound "f", teaching each other how to say "burp" in our respective languages, quietly coloring elephant pictures florescent pink because none of the grey markers work.
It's still hard to get myself motivated to go every week but, every time I leave now, I feel like we got something done.
And then I get this warm fuzzy feeling around my heart...
Haha gotcha! There is, at the least, a warm fuzzy picture on my wall. Who knows how much closer he can get.

Carnevale

I'll give you three guesses as to what the image above is all about.
No, it's not Halloween.
It's also not a toga party.
And no, this is not how Italians dress every day...
This is Carnevale. Or what we like to call it in the States, Mardi Gras. However, unlike in the States, Carnevale season is the entire month of February. A whole month dedicated to nonsense. Most people have probably heard of Carnevale in Venice. There are also some less touristy in other smaller cities. I chose to celebrate Carnevale in good old Bologna. Above we have all the residents and friends of Zamboni 18. As a group, we decided to dress as Roman gods and goddesses (we are in Italy after all). I'm standing third from the right with a gold helmet on. Since Americans are clearly wise and have a tendency for warfare, I went dressed as Athena.
We have almost everyone. Except for Zeus. Zamboni 18 runs more like free people's commune than a dictatorship. He didn't really seem to fit in.
We also have the pope. He's there to bring Christianity to the pagans.
Costumes and masks have a long history in Carnevale. Much longer than dressing up for Halloween. The concept of using a mask to create a equal social and economic plan, to break down class barriers and to escape reality has been discussed by poets, semioticians, and play-writers etc... And it all centers around this one holiday.
Celebrating Carnevale with other Italians was just another reminder of how open everyone here is. If you forget to "cheers" before you take a sip of your drink. You're considered strange and anti-social. Everyone dresses up. And there are no lame costumes like "nudist on strike". Last night, I talked with an aborigine, four songs, and some pasta. People get creative.
I also never tire of the "where are you from?" game. They can hear my accent but never can quite place it. I had people thinking I was from the UK, France, Canada, and South Africa. Though when I finally stated that I was from "gli Stati Uniti" everyone gets excited. With all the American students that I know are studying in this city, I am still shocked by the reaction of genuine excitement and intrigue when I say where I'm from.
Another great thing about all of this is that I understood what people were saying to me! I wrote a blog near the beginning of the year about a different party in which I really struggled with the language barrier.
Well guess what! I'm fluent! Hahahaha, no not really....
But, I am very content that I understood better when people spoke in Italian than in their broken, thickly accented English. Who wants to speak English at a party anyway. Italian is so much more lively!
I'd like to dedicate this post to my roommate Laura, whose idea it was to go as the entire company of Mount Olympus. Zamboni 18 won the costume contest thanks to this one:

Snow Days

 
It's still snowing in Bologna. This is unnatural. No one knows how to deal with it. And as a result, classes are cancelled for days in a row. I'm almost positive that I won't have school tomorrow. In which case, my last exam, the one that is the most difficult and that I've been working so hard to prepare for, will be postponed.
So what have I been doing with all this free time? The trains are cancelled. It's cold outside. And every time I leave the house it takes three times as long to walk anywhere. In order to keep this blog up to date I have to write about something. So here we have some of my recent activities.

-Throwing snowballs at people on the street from my window: I have not yet succeeded in hitting someone directly on the head. I'm trying to perfect my angling.

-Drinking hot chocolate: In Europe, hot chocolate isn't anything like that warm brown water from the States. Here they drink actual melted chocolate in a cup. Last week, one of my roommates braved the blizzard to buy Ciobar, the fabulous mix that when heated with milk in the microwave produces a cup full of heaven. That was a really nice night.

-Playing Settlers of Catan: I have finally taught my Italian roommates this game and they're now addicted. In the game, you have to collect different resources and the first night we played I was in desperate need of sheep, "pecora" in Italian. I used the word "pecorina" throughout the game, thinking I was asking for a cute, little sheep. "-Ina" usually when placed on the end of the word adds that connotation. They only told me I was wrong the next day when we were looking through my Dirty Italian Dictionary. Moral of the story is, definitely don't go around saying that you want "pecorina".

-Learning to talk with my hands: In Italian, gesturing is probably just as important as the tone of your voice. There actually are gestures that can completely take the place of words or phrases. My roommate Cristina gave me a lesson the other day on how Italians use their hands. I can know say, "Let's go, I'm hungry. He's crazy and stole all the food. There's no more." all without using words. It's quite the art.


-Studying: I put this one on here just to make my parents feel better.


-Ordering pizza: Bologna, as a city filled with college students, has a wonderful Web site called Pizzabo.it where you can go to order a pizza online and have it delivered. Since my hibernation began about a week ago, I've run out of groceries. Instead, I can get an onion pizza for only 4 euro brought right to my door! I always feel a little bad for the delivery guy...You don't have to tip here.

-Watching movies: Dubbing is much more popular in Italy that using subtitles. So when I watched The Matrix with my roommates, I was a little upset. In the Italian version, Neo is "l'eletto" or the Elect, not "the one". That totally messes with the connection between his name and his destiny! Also all Disney films are dubbed over in Italian. Even the songs. In the Italian version of "Aristocats" the song "Everybody wants to be a cat" is changed to "Everybody wants to sing jazz". That's just wrong.

 Hopefully, the snow will stop soon and I can leave my house again. In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to get back to "studying."

R.I.P.

It wasn't there. I stared at the spot where I had locked up my bike, trying to find the outlines of white against the the dark pavement. Did I have too much to drink? Maybe I put it somewhere else? I wandered among the other bikes locked against the fence nearby. Nope, it had definitely been there. Chained to a pole that I thought could handle the job.
Apparently, bike thieves in Bologna are known to remove the signs from poles so they can lift the chained up bike up over the top. I learned this after my thirty minute trudge home in the cold.
Bike theft in Bologna is about as common as that annoying itch to use the bathroom when you know that there isn't one nearby. It's a nuisance. Rather unpleasant. But we can't stop it from happening.
Almost everyone in Bologna buys a stolen bike. They know it, in turn, will eventually get stolen. Then they'll buy a new stolen one. It's almost like you're paying a fee to rent it for a while.
I thought I would start off with clean karma and pay for a used bike. 50 Euro. It lasted me a full semester and I really thought for a while there I could make it through the year. But apparently leaving it outside a two room bar/casual dance party under a bridge in the north of the city doesn't factor in to karma. So here's to my hideous bike that creaks and has faulty breaks! I hope your next owner falls off your wobbly seat!
On the other hand, having something stolen from you once puts you on alert for the next attempt. And it wasn't that far behind.
In case you haven't seen the snow in Bologna, I'll post the picture from my Facebook below:

Bologna is ill-equipped for such weather (as seen by the fact that my classes have been cancelled for four days). When I decided to venture out to buy much-needed groceries, I was concentrating hard on not slipping on the completely iced-over stonework of the cities streets.
I was almost to my front door about to drop the five groceries bags filled with nutella, milk and other unnecessarily heavy items when a woman approached me in the middle of the sidewalk asking me for money. I swerved to walk around here since the bags we getting unbearably heavy, but I took the side heading toward the building. She mirrored my action, ending up cornering me against the wall still asking for coins. As I swung my arms to move around her yet again, I saw her shift the blanket she had in her arm. I checked my purse, which had been hanging on my front right hip.
My wallet was gone.
I briefly panicked about leaving it at the grocery store. I didn't want to believe that, in broad daylight  this 30-something woman had reached into my purse, successfully found my wallet and was about to walk away with it.
But as she shifted to move around me in the opposite direction, I abruptly turned to face her.
"Dammi il mio portfoglio!" (Give me my wallet)
In a moment of adrenaline mixed with fear and anger, only English swear words came to mind.
She continued to bow her head down asking for money while backing away. I took another step forward. Afraid of losing her or ending in some kind of all-out chase. She looked straight at me then and I grabbed at the blanket in her arms, out from which fell my precious wallet (home to credit cards, various documentation, as well as a hundred euro).
This is not a very scary story. No one was almost killed or mugged or even really threatened. I've just never had it happen to me before. I keep running it over in my head. What if she hadn't given me my wallet back? What if she tried to run away? What if I went upstairs, only to realize a minute later she had taken it? Would I unleash my male roommates on her?
It's better that it happened to me this way. I still have my wallet, but I also have a much more heightened sense of my surroundings. I think, however, I should definitely throw away my purse.