Not Intent on Arriving

We all remember the days of elementary school lunches or for that matter cheap, gross food called “mystery meat.”  My kids had a traumatic experience during one of our evening meals in the hostel in Cortona.

First, I’d like to diverge for a second and just talk about portion sizes.  There is a huge difference between Italy and the United States regarding portion sizes.  The most notable difference lies with pasta dishes.  Italians think of pasta as one part of the meal and limit the amount of pasta they give between 80 and 100 grams.  That’s around 3 ounces for you Americans out there.  Whenever I go to Italian restauarants in the USA, I feel like I’m drowning in pasta.  Also, Italians will walk off every bit of that pasta just getting around.  Below is a rough illustration of the difference in portion size that I’m talking about.

An Italian Portion of pasta

An "American" portion

Now of course these pictures are hardly scientific.  But, I would bet that people who studied abroad with me and kids on my trip would back me up on this observation.  Anyone want to weigh in?

Back to the story in question.  That night, we had a delicious “primo piatto” or first plate of pasta with a fresh tomato sauce.  Then, came the mystery meat.  Now, to be clear, the meat did not resemble the color, texture, taste or anything of the mystery meat from elementary school days past.  But, the kids had no idea what it was.

I had spoken to Sergio beforehand, so I knew.  It was chicken that he had prepared quickly by breading it and frying it on the stove.  It was good.  The kids, however, wanted to debate and had no bloody clue.  I decided to let them sweat, and figured I would eventually tell them.  Then, the magic happened.

In walks this sweet, older lady who does some cooking and cleans the hostel daily.  She speaks no English, but is very anxious to communicate with the kids in whatever way possible.  She approaches them, notices they haven’t finished the meat and reassures them.  What she says is, “Gato. Meow!”  Gato, of course, means cat.

I wish you could have seen the color drain out of their faces.  Some of them looked as though they were going to vomit. I prepared the kids for a lot, but eating cat?  Well, what she meant was, “Don’t worry if you don’t finish because I’ll give the leftovers to the cat.”  I communicated this and they went back to eating.  Some color returned to their faces.

Perhaps some of them remember how one Italian chef got into hot water earlier in 2010 for his culinary choices.  Yum!

It’s out first night in Cortona.  Everyone’s spirits are high.  We have a nice dinner at our hostel prepared by Sergio, the crazy man who runs the joint.  Pasta with tomato sauce and some form of bird meat.  The group cannot decide what type of meat it is.  It’s good though, and that’s the most important thing.

I send the group back upstairs to get ready for our evening passeggiata.  On the agenda is finding ice cream and touring the center of the city, which none of us have ever seen before.   As we’re getting ready though, we hear incessant squawking coming from a staircase located right outside the boys’ room in the hostel.  We decide that we must investigate.

More precisely the kids decide that they want to investigate.   I only heard them say that they were going to go down into the creepy cellar place.  So they begin the walk down, slowly inching down the staircase.  One at a time.  Careful not to make too much noise.  Afraid of what they’ll find on the other side.

I come to the top of the stairs and look down at the six of my kids creeping down the stairs.  They see me.  We make eye contact.  I scream.

I wish I had taken a picture of their reactions.  Mouths were open. People lurched back away from the mysterious noise that they could not place.  I thought one person hit their head and felt bad.  The screaming continued (from the kids now) for a good 30 seconds.  I felt powerful.

Those noises?  Pigeons.  Sergio keeps a bunch of pigeons down in his basement, because that’s a normal thing to do.  I was able to confirm, mainly to appease the kids’ minds, that the meat we ate was chicken.

Later that night we made it into the park of the city.  It’s a beautiful area complete with a fountain and also a large pool. More on the pool to come.  As we find a spot to sit in the amphitheater we find our new nemesis.  Well at least for the moment nemesis.  He is about 10 years old and a native of Cortona.  As we walked in, his faced perked up and he bounded over to us.

In the most broken English possible (and I want everyone to think of really bad Mario and Luigi accents here), he goes “Hiii five.”  Actually maybe it wasn’t Mario and Luigi, but rather Borat.  It was bad but my kids returned the favor.  We sat down and began to chat, when out of nowhere he comes again and runs through our group.  “Hiiiii five” is again the battle cry from him.

And that was it for the night.  I guess he had to go to bed.  However, my kids would get the last laugh.  They were in Cortona to take language classes after all.  In a couple of days they would encounter this kid again, and this time, would have the perfect phrase of their own.

After a hectic, but enjoyable, orientation the group headed off to our new home in the hills of Tuscany.  Cortona is a beautiful little city where the author of “Sotte Il Sole Tuscano” or “Under the Tuscan Sun” still lives.  It’s a tiny little place with an official population of 23,000 people, but an unofficial total closer to 8,000.  During the summer, thousands of tourists from across the world (we saw Japanese, Chinese, French, German, Mexican, Spanish, American, and other tourists) flock to this tiny little town for a taste of Tuscany.

The view from Cortona

From the main piazza one can look out and see two dormant volcanoes and the famous Lake Trasimeno.  The area is beautiful and allows easy access to famous cities like Florence (1 hour away) and Siena (1.5 hours away).  The main piazza hosts dozens of weddings a year (sometimes it seems like dozens a day) complete with the traditional red rice.

Tourists head into the main piazza of Cortona

The group would stay in a truly unique hostel for our time in Cortona.  The kids would ultimately call it the “brothel,” though I have no idea why they decided to call it that.  All of the boys shared a single room, as did the girls.  I had my own space, but it was a smaller room inside a larger room.  As a reult, I sometimes would have to pass by other guests in order to arrive at my space.

So that’s a brief outline of where we would spent 1.5 weeks learning the langauge.  More on the specifics of our visit shortly. Also, the title of the post refers to a really popular song in Italy that I heard for the first time in Cortona.  I find it really annoying, but the Italians all loved it.

You can find the link to the song here.  Ciao!

One of the more startling things to happen to us in Rome occurred on our last evening.  I’d been searching for a good (great) pizzeria for a while, but hadn’t been able to find one yet.  I also had to balance the needs to the group (you can read: they were whining about having to walk so much).  At last, success. I found it.

In a tiny little side street of the Trastevere neighborhood lies Dar Poeta, an institution legendary for its pizzas.  The kids were really excited.  They liked the neighborhood and they had begun to embrace the beauty of the Italian pizza.

I’m not a heartless person.  The kids had been walking for the entire day in the 40 degree heat (that’s in Celsius and translates to 104 degrees Fahrenheit) and were beat.  We opted to take a bus.  Once I climbed abroad, I had more proof that the world is a small place.  We ran into this mother and daughter pair from NYC.  They were also going to Dar Poeta and my kids talked with them about the trip.  Maybe the lady’s daughter will do the Experiment the following year!

We followed them because they had eaten at Dar Poeta two nights before.  Of course, we got lost.  In spite of the delay, it was a beautiful evening and I enjoyed walking around the neighborhood (which I think is the prettiest in Rome).  My kids did not appreciate it though.

Finally, we arrived.  The kids were ready to mutiny at this point. After bidding goodbye to our American friends, we waited outside while a couple of waiters got the restaurant ready. They took us down to this little prison— err… room.  See below.

This is the entire size of the room.  You can see both sides of the room easily in the picture.  The length was probably 20 feet, if I’m feeling really generous today.  Nevertheless, the 13 of us headed down there happily, ready to enjoy a delicious pizza.

Soon after that, a family of 7 Italian people came down.  There were two kids that are about 7 years old, two teenagers, two men that are about 50 and one woman who appears to be the matriarch of this group.  She noticed us right away and began to give us dirty looks.

I’d like to clarify something.  If you put 20 people in a tiny, tiny room it is impossible that it will not sound a bit noisy.  We were not speaking loudly.  This family looked very unhappy and almost appeared not to be speaking amongst themselves. I’m not sure what was up with them, but the mother continued to get increasingly angry.

I could see her glares getting more and more cold.  I asked the kids to keep it down (they were speaking with normal tones of voice).  Nevertheless, we quieted down to about a whisper.  Again, she gave us the looks of death.  As a good faith gesture, I asked the kids to simmer down a bit.  She said, “thh-aaaa-nk eww” in her extremely broken English (the family must not have spoken any).

We continued this way for the entire meal.  It was a showdown.  I got a bit angry at the kids once because I thought they’d been mocking the woman.  They weren’t, but were bopping their heads and it looked bad.  I felt like we were going to trade blows before the tables, but eventually things ended.

As we walked out, I said to the woman “Lei è così maleducata” (you are extremely rude).  She glared at me probably realizing for the first time that I could understand all she said, and we marched off.  I felt like I got the last word in.

Then, two of my kids forgot a water bottle and had to return.  It was an uncomfortable experience for them, but everyone ultimately survived.  It provided the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that crazy and rude people exist in every culture.  We had a nice discussion about tolerance and cultural differences on a side street in Trastevere.  Not a bad place to have that discussion.

What’s the best way to introduce a bunch of high schoolers to a culture they know nothing about in a language they don’t speak?  Make them do a scavenger hunt all over the city in small groups without me!  Right, that is what you were all thinking I’m sure.

Our first full day in Rome got off to a quick start.  The morning saw us doing a bunch of awesome tourist sites like the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II and the Colosseum.  The tour was fun and I took my kids to lunch up the hill from the Colosseum in a local University eatery.  We got a good deal and the kids got to try Italian pizza for the first time.  The first group picture (seen below) was also captured in the shadow of one of the wonders of the world.

First group picture— Outside of the Colosseum

After lunch I made the kids write the group constitution, which outlined all of the rules we would follow over the course of our five weeks together.  I assumed I would have to prod the kids to include everything, but they blew me away and wrote an amazing document.  Certain obvious rules were included (no hooking up with host siblings, no tattoos and no alcohol except for cultural events), but included others that I didn’t expect they would (no destruction of private property, ensure your behavior creates a positive impression of Americans).  It was pretty awesome.  Also included were some group rules like “a different flavor of gelato must be eaten every night” and “there must be one poker night each week” and “tag must be played on all suitable nights.”  I also stoked some fires and proposed “California Gurls” as the theme song.  Some people had never heard it!  That was remedied right away.

I divided my large group of kids into small groups, gave them a map of the city and gave them a meeting spot (in the beautiful Trastevere neighborhood).  They had a list of 10 tasks to complete within four hours.  The most successful group got to select the restaurant for the evening.  Some of the tasks were basic and boring (but necessary).  These included buying a postcard to send home (with stamps) and purchasing a phone card.  Then, there were more interesting ones.  I had the kids try expresso (a failed experiment for some of them), interview a storekeeper in Piazza della Republicca and, most hilariously, get their picture taken with nuns.  They would kill me if they knew how quickly and randomly these lists were put together.  We had gone over basic vocabulary in the Paris airport, but on the whole they knew very little vocabulary. What an adventure.  I gave the kids the meeting point (see below) and set off by myself.

Part of this is making the kids realize that they can survive even when they don’t speak the language.  They realized then that struggling is part of the experience and, in reality, part of the fun.  The groups came back with some hilarious stories. We learned of Travis’ hilarious first reaction to expresso (“why would anyone drink that stuff man?”), heard about the kids who summoned the courage to interview a couple walking through Piazza della Republicca only to find that they were Australians.  Most hilarious, however, was the story of Kelly’s group.  They struggled to find nuns with whom they could take pictures.

As they were about to give up, they spotted a group of three nuns from across the park.  They ran across the ground, and sprung out of the bushes almost on top of the nuns.  The sisters, though startled, could say nothing as the group pulled out the camera, flashed a quick shot and dashed away laughing.

As we waited, I sent some of the groups to find stamps for the postcards they bought.  They went in and asked the shopkeeper if he had stamps for the USA and he replied “no.”  When I went in and asked, however, he said he did.  When I returned with the same kids, he said that he had stamps, but that they weren’t for the USA.  Some quick dancing from one lying shopkeeper.  Typical Italian reaction.

In short, this first day stripped the kids of their comfort zones right away and gave us some pretty hilarious stories to include the first ever group journal entry!  So to paraphrase liberally from the B-52’s song the kids had to Rome…whether or not they wanted to.   I think they passed their first test with flying colors though.