Pieve di Cento

So much to say... where to begin?!

Last week, I lived in a modern downtown apartment flat in the middle of B0logna's centre with a very new-age, urban family. This week, I live in a farm house in the middle of nowhere, between corn fields and pear orchards, with a Jehovah's Witness family. I'm very pleased that I am getting the chance to experience the wide range of lifestyles that Italy has to offer. Although I miss being in a bustling city, the countryside is so beautiful here, and I have an entire guesthouse to myself. I'm able to watch television for the first time, but I don't have the internet there. (Watching the Michael Jackson Memorial was very irritating because I couldn't here the English over the Italian translator!)

Oh, and just a tiny detail I forgot to mention about the family: None of them speak a word of English. Luckily, I've picked up enough Italian to understand most of what they say to me, but I feel bad when I talk to them, because I'm sure I'm slaughtering their verbs. Having studied Spanish helps a biut, but it also confuses a lot of things too. Things that I am sure would be the same in both languages are not, etc. However, it's really kind of exhilerating to communicate with them despite the language barrier. I feel like I'm learning Italian and creating my own dialect of sign language all at the same time!

This camp is certainly not my favorite, but it's almost time to move again, so that's good. The camp was two weeks long, but I entered only for the second week. When the director picked me up from the train station, she told me that the current tutors are not getting along at all and I needed to be the peace-maker and the bridge over troubled water (ps: that's a great song!). Then she tells me that half of my class is elementary students and half are media (middle school) students. So I am having to teach two different levels in the same classroom. To top it all off, I've never had such an unintelligent class. I don't mean to sound cross, but they really are stupid. Here are a few examples from there work books to prove my point. (Keep in mind this is AFTER I have taught the lesson and done two or three games with them enforcing the lesson.):

>What's in front of the computer?
---"No, there isn't."
>Describe ACTIVITIES you don't enjoy.
---I don't enjoy "kiwi".
>What's in the box?
----"In the box what's dog."

And here's one that made me laugh for a while!
>Comparatives: A ___ is better than a ___.
---- A "cat" is better than a "boy".

>Then, as the camp assistant walks us around the square, she points to a statue of a naked man and says "He has a very nice... how do you say? ....library!"
Then the director says: "No, no, not a library... the word is ass!"
I feel bad making fun of someone who speaks more languages than I do, but of all things to get mixed up, it must take a very special person to confuse those two words.

In addition to not being very bright, they are also very ornery. I assumed that the child I lived with (who is also in my class) would be no trouble at all since he is being raised in a Jehovah's Witness family... WRONG! He is one of the least Christ-like children I have ever encountered. On top of annoying me every second, never listening, and not memorizing his lines for the show, which I unfortunately take too seriously (This week I'm doing The Jonas Sisters.), he got me wet today. If you know me well, you know that I really hate getting wet without wearing the proper getting-wet attire. Today we played water games with the kids, and they thought it would be really funny to dump water all over me. -*Sigh*- I guess I should expect to get wet when I play water games with ten year-olds. But a boy can have hope, cant't he?!?!

As far as being the peace-maker, that was a piece of cake. We all went to Venice on Sunday and had plenty of bonding time. It was one of the best days since I've been in Italy. That city is so incredible... it really feels like you've been dropped into a different world. We bought the most horribly cheesy tourist hats we could find, toured the city on a gondola (€120 for 45 minutes), ate the cheapest food the city has to offer, and just had the time of our lives!!! We went home exhausted and pennyless (quite literally: I had to scrounge around for 5 cent coins until I had enough to buy a departure train ticket). It was also one of the most ironic days I've ever experienced... really of double-irony, if you will.

On the two hour train ride to Venice we were having a very intense conversation about irony, and how most people say things are ironic when they really aren't, instead of using words like coincidental or bad luck. (My Welsh friend Alex also wants me to include in my blog that all of the examples of ironic situations in Alanis Morisset's (spelling?) song titled "Ironic" are not actually ironic at all.) ANYWAY, we came to the conclusion that ironic situations are much more rare than usually assumed, and that they are truly special occurences.

Fast forward to the end of the day (makes zooming noise in head)....

As we approach the train station to return home, we hear the beating of a drum coming from around the corner. When we walk around the corner, we see this huge crowd of people gathered around these Native Americans who were in full tribal dress, playing music and dancing. So there I am, an American boy from the Mid-West, who has traveled all the way to the other hemisphere of the world to indulge in Italian culture, and I'm watching Native Americans (most likely from the Mid-West) who have traveled all the way to the other hemisphere of the world to indulge Italians in American culture. IRONY

Then we board the train, and we're about an hour away from our stop. Paul repeats a question word for word that I had asked Jordan about two minutes earlier. We tease him about not paying attention, and he starts telling us that he can be really ditzy sometimes. Then Alex admits that she's ditzy a lot too and has no common sense at all. Then I explain that I think I have a lot of common sense, but that my brother always tells me that I don't... so I'm a little bit self-conscious about it. This of course leads to about a hundred and one hilarious stories from all four of us about our ditziest moments. About an hour and ten minutes wizzes by... I look at my watch and say "Shouldn't we be home already."
...And at that moment the four of us start laughing uncontrollably at how absurd it is that while we were sitting there talking about ditziness, we missed our stop. IRONY

And because of the fact that we had discussed in the morning that ironic situations are so rare and don't occur as much as most people think, it became the day of double irony! Which Alex and I decided to shorten to DIRONY.