Avventure in Italia

So….it’s been six months since I returned from Italy, and I never actually finished updating my tumblr. I know this. I’ve been reading this book called The Happiness Project, in which the author sets out to focus on certain resolutions each month for one year in an effort to increase her sense of fulfillment in her life. The first month focused on energy, with one goal being to “Do it now” to eliminate those unfinished tasks that drain you with their guilt.

So I’m doing it now.

It occurred to me while re-reading my posts that I left this tumblr on a slightly negative note, which really doesn’t do my time in Altamura justice or support my relentlessly positive view of my ACLE experience or life in general.

Oh, the camp was still frustrating. But it was here I learned two very valuable tools…

A little background - the main rule of the camp is to speak only English, leading some kids to act like they were smarter than us because they could speak two languages. Or so they thought. It was near the end of camp when the worst of them all, a girl named Isa, was complaining in Italian. I just looked at her for a minute, then fired off a stream of Italian acknowledging everything she had said and calling her out about how rude she was to her classmates. It was the first and only time the room ever reached complete silence. Every single kid literally froze and looked at me with a combination of respect and “Crap, you mean she’s understood us this whole time?!”

Not only was Isa not rude to anyone again, she even smiled at me and offered to help me the rest of the week.

The second tool, dodgeball. Enough said.

Despite all the frustration, or maybe even because of it, the end of camp showcase was so rewarding.

My class picked the song “Replay” by Sean Kingston to perform at the end of their talent show. The plan was to have three kids start it off, then have the whole class jump in at the end for a grand finale. The three kids had just started singing, when their phone stopped playing the song (they were holding the phone up to the microphone). I gestured “it’s ok, just start over,” so they did. And it did it again. They froze in front of everyone with no idea what to do. All of a sudden one of the other leaders, Jack, joined in singing and clapping. So I did too. Then the entire audience did too! The rest of the class came out, singing and dancing to the song along with their friends and families. I will never forget how happy they looked up there and how everyone celebrated the end of camp together with the song. I was fighting back tears, I was so proud of them.

Things came a long way with my host family, too. I could tell they really loved showing me off to all their friends & family and made an effort to do things for me like have my favorite breakfast cookies ready in the morning (there’s a reason I came back 8 pounds heavier). The girls were so excited to spend time with me, holding my hand everywhere we went. One night after dinner we had a dance party in the living room to I’m a Barbie Girl over and over. They even got help from another leader to write me a note in English telling me how great this experience was, how I was a part of their family now and forever, and how both me and everyone I know are always welcome in their home. They really are a part of my family now too, and I miss them a lot.

I also grew very close to my other leaders Charlotte and Jack and one of the helpers, Simona. Seriously, words cannot describe how much I care for every single person I became friends with on this trip!

Charlotte and I were sent to the next camp together, where our difficult Altamura camp experience proved to be the training we needed to survive in Tricase. In true irony (also I’m convinced Vincent hates me), I was sent to the very, very bottom tip of Italy despite asking to be placed farther north for my last camp.

The area was absolutely breath-taking everywhere. My last family had such a sweet, gentle spirit. Rocco and Luigina have two kids 8 and 12-ish, Giuseppe and Noemi.

I spent my last week with ACLE finally getting over my sickness, enjoying traditional Italian meals and nightly walks with my family, Charlotte and her family, and swimming in deep, bright blue water off the gorgeous black rock coast with our camp instructors…Oh, and going to this unbelievable lights festival.

At camp, I had a class eight-year-olds, 9 boys and 1 girl. The boys fought all the time, which was extraordinarily exhausting at the time and very funny now. For the end of the week show they each picked a superhero, and I wrote a short skit about good superheroes versus bad superheroes. I incorporated their love of fighting with an epic battle scene…Despite several explanations and demonstrations of fake fighting (and several successful run-through’s in the classroom), of course all hell breaks loose when we show our dress rehearsal to the camp directors for approval. One kid’s being choked, another is full-on punched in the face…ack. Oh well, what can you do? Long story short, we did make it through the show. I ended the week loving each and every kid, including and maybe even more so, the difficult ones.

And that was it. My time with ACLE, over. It felt so long when I started, but felt way too short by the end. It was the best experience of my life.

I got an email the other day asking if I’d like to return this summer for round two…

The reason I haven’t written in awhile is…I’ve been sick. And having a fever and a crazy cough while running around and playing games with kids (and at this new camp, yelling at bad kids All. The. Time.) pretty much takes everything I have out of me.

Now I’m in Altamura, which is a city near Bari. It is definitely not as quintessentially beautiful as Umbria. But it is pretty cool near the city center where the more historic part of town is. I walked around it last night a little with one of the tutors here and an Italian boy who helps at the camp.

This all sounds awfully positive now, but let me tell you, when I first got here…I may or may not have freaked out a little bit.

First off, I barely made the first train. My poor host mom had to speed across the countryside to get me to the next train stop on time. It’s been days but my arm is only just now recovering from hauling my enormous and very heavy suitcase up the stairs to heave myself on the train just seconds before the doors closed. Then, the other two tutors and I missed another train. Very very long story short, we traveled almost 17 hours total Saturday. It was awful, especially considering I was sick the whole way.

So we get to Altamura FINALLY, and there is no camp director waiting for us, just a couple families that speak basically no English whatsoever and don’t know who belongs to who. Also, they only have our middle names. Trying to explain first names and middle names at 11:30 p.m. in a different language after that much travel time…so hard. So I’m put off into the car with a bunch of little girls bouncing around the backseat (Italians don’t believe in seat belts apparently), arrive at their apartment where they have a huge spread of food out for me (and I’m stuffed from just eating in Bari), and have to figure out how to communicate. Oh and I’m still sick. I feel so bad for my new host family, it’s like “Oh great, they sent us the sick girl.”

But my new family is very sweet. It’s a family of four, with 5-year-old and 7-year-old girls who like to wake me up with a “Buongiorno!” and watch me put on my make-up. The family bought me lots of tissues after noticing how I go through practically a roll of toilet paper a day with my nose and try to buy my favorite foods. Oh, and they took me to the beach my first day. Everything is great now, we are even communicating a lot better now as my Italian is getting worlds better.

The new camp is….kinda awful. I feel bad saying that but…the kids are so bad. I yelled and disciplined today more than I probably have in my entire life. Not exaggerating. Italians, especially here, don’t really believe in discipline and especially don’t like when other people discipline their kids. Consequently kids think they can do whatever they want. They spit, they walk out in the middle of class, they pour water on each other. If one more kid tells me “One moment” when I ask them to do something, I might lose it….again. I finally lost it today, not at a kid, just in general around the camp director. Just yelling and gesturing about how difficult it is to accomplish anything around here when this little Italian lady wouldn’t let me past her mop to get a tissue despite the snot streaming down my face and an entire group of kids waiting without supervision in the other room.

I’m an expressive, angry Italian already.

Part One of this day is called, Nerves. I was worried that I wouldn’t think of anything to do with my kids. Or that I wouldn’t be theatrical and crazy enough for them. Or that they wouldn’t understand anything I did or said. On one hand I didn’t know if I had what it took to go through the orientation week either, but it turned out I did…so I hoped camp would be the same way.

It was.

Part Two is called, Italian Children Love Love LOVE to Love You. Yes, that many love’s are necessary as even one less just would not accurately describe just how much Italian children love on you. I have a class of ten 8 and 9-year-old boys and girls. The girls hold your hand, hug you, kiss you, etc. The boys…well some hug and kiss too, but only after they drag you around by the hand, praise your long hair, propose marriage and make you a card professing their love.

That’s right, I’m engaged now. Everyone said I’d meet an Italian while I was over here…

But really, a boy at the camp calls me “mi amore” (my love). He made me a card with a picture of me on it with hearts and brought me flowers. Seriously. This kid is 7. One of the other kids called him a womanizer. For real. Ha.

Apparently, this is all quite normal in Italy. At orientation we were encouraged to let the kids hug us or hold our hand if they want to. This is all very funny to me after working at the YMCA, where you can only hug by turning sideways and barely patting the kid, and even then it’s discouraged.

Part Three is called, The Consequences of Blow Drying Hair. And no, I’m not talking about split ends or dried out hair.

Tonight after my shower, I started to blow dry my hair. I know, seems pretty normal right? Then, all of a sudden, I’m not blow drying my hair anymore.

So at first, I’m embarrassed because apparently I blew the bathroom fuse somehow (it worked fine yesterday) and that’s going to be awkward to explain and apologize for. But then I hear feet coming up the stairs towards the bathroom. And I knew.

I blew the fuse for the entire apartment. Every single thing. The oven turned off in the middle of Michela cooking dinner. The tv turned off in the middle of the kids watching “How to Train Your Dragon.” …And I thought explaining and apologizing for just the bathroom fuse was going to be awkward. I felt SO bad. Michela had to go all the way to the garage under the apartment complex 5 floors down to reset everything. Twice. Ack.

Hey, it could’ve been worse.

I could’ve blown the fuses for the entire complex too…There’s always tomorrow.

I don’t think I can even put words on how much fun everything with ACLE has been so far. I have met more people than I can count in less than 2 hours, and they are each so nice, fun and super interesting as they are from all over the world! I’m just so proud I remember nearly all their names!

I’ve met quite a few people from South Africa, who taught us (me, Chelsea and Monica) the phrase “What’s putting?” which is like what’s up or what’s going on. Met a Brit names Stefano who is just thrilled with American culture (he had never met Americans before this). He’s super eager to learn as much American slang as he can. We taught him “ya’ll,” and he told me my British accent is actually quite spot on for an imitation. It’s so funny to hear people react to our American-ness, like the South African girls we had lunch with: we said something about getting the check and they go, “ ‘Check,’ that’s cute.” Or the Irish boys who thought it was so funny when we said “Freshman” instead of “First year” and then exclaimed over how we call “Fifth years” “Super seniors.” They liked that one a lot. Or the Canadians who really do say “Eh?” at the end of lots of statements, putting Monica’s “Canadian” (aka Australian) accent to shame…

This morning my roommates (two from Canada and one from New York) woke up early – before 7 am – to go to the Italian market. It was so worth the early wake up. I bought some cherries and a peach for only 59 cents. And spoke Italian to the people working there! I also talked to a guy selling bottles of wine for only 2 Euros, some of which is from Piemonte, a part of Northern Italy that my family is from. Piemonte and Venice, apparently.

Today was our first day of camp training. I should’ve taken a picture of it to post. Also, so much fun…I feel like this blog is going to get redundant, as everything is really just so much fun. We learned games, songs…and met even more new people all along the way.

Must run to group dinner at 8 pm! (Which is in about 10 minutes, if you’re wondering about the time change).