Ciao from Teacher Jail

I recently attained two new classes of bambinis to teach along with the originals about whom I have already blogged.  With these two new classes of eight year olds comes a whole new pile of evidence that is going to land me straight in teacher jail.

Incident the First:

Yesterday morning I was teaching my original Great Bambinos.  They're around ten years old, know pretty excellent English, and all together stole my heart.  I was teaching them about how to say numbers in a dates and order format - "first (1st), second (2nd)" and so on.  The teacher told me to both write the number and write out the letters.  Easy enough.  I write them all out on the board and as I'm admiring my own goodness for teaching the youth of Italy such important things, a little pipsqueak is in front of me.  "Maria Rosa! Maria Rosa! Why you put two Ls in 'eleventh'??" Oh no.  Nope.  I did not just have a Quayle "Potatoe" moment.  As I'm in the midst of swallowing my pride, another little boy says "Oh! Does it have two L's in American English?"  Now I don't know why I did the following, but it just came out.  "Yes, yes it does," I said like the wise teacher I am obviously not, "In Britain (where their English books are from) they use one but America has two."  I'm not proud of what I did.  But it had to happen.

Incident the Second:

Tuesday morning during my own Italian class I realized that I had my (amazing) Budweiser sweater on and I didn't have time to go home and change before teaching my newer class of younger students.  I figured these kids wouldn't get it, being eight year old Italians and all.  I go to the class of my new students and we have question and answer time.  It starts out with the normal - questions about my cultural love of french fries and my lack of a boyfriend.  Then one kid says "What does Bud-wees-ur mean?", followed by every single child in this class room giving their best but failed attempt to say Budweiser.  A couple kids pull out their Italian-English dictionary.  I don't tell them that the King of Beers probably isn't included in their My First English Dictionary book.  I tell them it's a drink like Coca Cola.  They saw right through me.

Incident the Rest: AKA: The Gallery

These are actually adorable, and if they land me in teacher jail it will be worth it.  I got showered with drawings and homemade landyards.  I have uploaded pictures of the drawings for your viewing pleasure.

I like this one because it combines my name in English, Italian, and Christmas Cheer languages.

Please note the attention to detail on my sweater.  Yes, that would be the Anheuser Busch "A".  

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be me or not, but I will accept the compliment of being a British ginger any day.

Love you too bambini.

"You are very pretty. You are tall and sweet. Your eyes and clothes are pretty".  This is adorable, and shows exactly how gigantic these children think I am.

Teaching the children has become highlights of my week and this semester as a whole.  They are so enthusiastic about learning English, it's just adorable. 

Ciao tutti!

The Return.

First, an explanation as to why this blog post is so late.  Here at our apartment in Ascoli Piceno, we don’t rightfully have Wifi.  But, someone, somewhere in a close vicinity to us does.  They have Netgear.  They have Netgear and don’t even care to put a password on it, so of course we used Netgear day in and day out.  Free Wifi.  It was a beautiful time during our trip.  Then spring break came… and he changed.  Netgear changed.  We returned to a Netgear that wouldn’t connect us to our favorite websites.  It was like we were amish.  I just today broke down and bought the USB Wifi stick, and now have to figure out how many MBs are in a GB and a bunch of fiber optic stuff.  So rest your heads.  I’m still alright.  No one offered me a modeling job and drove me to a ditch.

I’ll start this blog post with the Cappuccino Saga.  When I knew I was coming to Italy for a semester, I knew I had to like coffee if I wanted to be a Euro-chic young lady.  I’d Google “How to make coffee taste good” and prance over to the local Starbucks with high hopes.  I was always let down.  I tried it all - Pumpkin Spice Latte, Macchiato, Mocha, Normal Coffee, all of it.  When I got to Ascoli it was much the same.  Until I got the bright idea to put sugar IN the cappuccino.  This happened about two weeks ago.  I started out with three sugars.  The next morning, two and a half.  Then my mother and grandmother came to Ascoli and Rome to visit me and I got myself to a respectable one sugar in my cappuccino!  I was feeling fun and European.  Then last Thursday happened.  I woke up earlier than usual to take out the garbage and indulged in a Diet Coke.  Afterwards, during our first class, our teacher took us out to discuss the film we watched over cappuccinos.  Brilliant!  Then came the thirty minute break during which Ben and Kelsey and I planned to get cappuccinos.  I told them “Get me two!  I love cappuccinos!!” I always thought the over caffeinated act was a joke.  I’m here to admit that I was wrong.  Very wrong.  After finishing these drinks I had three cappuccinos with three sugars in my system on top of a Diet Coke.  I was OFF THE WALLS.  My face got pale and sweaty, I kept hitting myself with my pen, it was bad.  Pretty sure my professor and Kelsey were legitimately concerned about my well being.  It took an entire day to get over that episode, and I haven’t had a cappuccino since.  Maybe I will tomorrow morning.  Learn from my mistakes.  Drink cappuccinos responsibly.

As I mentioned, my mom and grandma visited me!!  We had a great time.  We went from cafe to cafe, restuarant to restaurant.  On our second day in Rome we got a great tour from our friend Carlo who studied abroad in Chicago seven years ago!  He showed us some great sites that were off the beaten path.  Then we had a great dinner at his house with his family and his amazing dog, Indio.  After our time in Rome, we went to Ascoli Piceno, where my mother met my true Italian mother.  They also saw Italian Cupcake and can verify that the dog is real and not a “vision”.  It was a very relaxing week, exactly what I needed!

This weekend was incredible, but definitely not relaxing.  Kelsey and I went to London and the whole weekend was GO GO GO.  We left on Friday with just enough time to eat some Chipotle (which we did three times during the weekend) and get ready for our evening at the theater.  The next morning we woke up early and did a triple whammy- Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Kensington Palace, home of Queen of my Life Kate Middleton.  I made us stand outside of that gate for a good thirty minutes waiting for a glimpse of luscious brown hair but to no success.  As I was talking to the guards about the best vantage points to see Kate, a man on a bike pressed a button to get out of the heavily guarded gated area.  I turned to the guard and said “WAS THAT WILLIAM”?  Apparently this guard thought it would be funny to toy with my emotions.  “Yes!” he said, “Didn’t you see his face?”… to which I broke down in hysteria.  William did NOT ride by me without me getting a selfie or a hello with him.  I think the guard realized what kind of devastation he just caused in my life and told me it wasn’t William, it was just a nobody.  But a semi-important nobody if he lives in Kensington.  Following our morning of royalty we saw the matinee of the musical Once which was really great.  Then we had exactly enough time for some Chipotle and time to go back to our hotel to get ready for our evening show.  I loved London so much, which is special seeing as the only prior association I had with it was Heathrow Airport, home of long layovers and Hefner meltdowns.  I could definitely see myself living there or spending a longer time there, but I’m pretty sure I would run out of money in one day.  London is EXPENSIVE.  At the airport, I forked over seventy USD and twenty Euro, to which I received forty pound.  Great. That about covered my Chipotle and a piece of gum.  It made me miss the Euro, but more so the dollar.

And that’s been my life!  Straight up.  Now that I have reliable Wifi I’ll be back to blogging on a more regular basis.

Still Alive!!!

Blog tomorrow I PROMISE!!!!!

"I Thought He Was Moses Until He Told Me He Was A Terrorist" - Carnevale.

I don't know who you are.  I don't know what you want.  If you are looking for ransom, I can assure that I don't have money - I spend it all on white wine and pizza.  But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills that I have acquired over a very long career of being passionate about gelato.  Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.  Gelato thieves.  If you bring back the gelato scooper now, that will be the end of it.  I will not look for you, I will not pursue you.  But if you don't, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Gelato means a lot to me.  Dare I say it is my main food group here.  So when some wannabe lumberjack has the chutzpah to STEAL the gelato spoon from my turf (Cafe Lorenz), that ain't going to fly.  Meredith and I witnessed this crime to humanity in the flesh and immediately went on a wild goose chase to catch this punk.  We never did.

This was only one of the many highlights of Carnevale.  For those of you unaware or confused, Carnevale is the Italian equivalent of Mardi Gras.  I'd like to consider myself a seasoned Mardi Gras-er thanks to none other than Daniel Hefner, but I wasn't prepared for this.  It's like Mardi Gras, Halloween, and April Fools all packed into one week.  Some of the costumes were a bit on the iffy side, but "everything is politically correct during Carnevale".  Like the man who inspired to the title of this post.  It was the evening of the gelato thievery, and being typical Jesuit students, we thought this man was dressed up as Moses.  Great choice, lovely Biblical man!  Wrong.  He told us he was dressed as a terrorist, so we put a big old "nope" on that one.  Then there was the man dressed as Zoro who tried to take us and called us Pinnochio.

On the less creepy side of Carnevale, there were fun gatherings during the day.  The piazza was packed and people were performing little skits.  Our professor told us a lot of them talk with a dialect so we probably wouldn't be able to understand.  Accurate.  It all went over our heads, but it was still really fun.  We danced with what I think were Oompa Loompas/Smurfs/Peacocks.  A man put a cone of shame on my for using my phone.  There was even some Chicago representation in the form of a man dressed as Al Capone.

It's not even over yet either!  Tomorrow is the grand finale of Carnevale, and seeing as this weekend has already been so strange, I'm intrigued and scared to see how they could possibly close it out.

Ciao!

Sad News.

I must revoke my claim that I know even one bit of Italian language or culture.

It's "Carnevale", not "Carnivale".  It's in reference to meat, not carnivals.

Sincerest apologies to Dante, Roberto Benigni, and all the other important Italians I have let down in this whoops.