The pictures are pretty, aren't they?
Bella Italia. It's still surreal. It promises to be the experience of a lifetime. But if you'd like to know what it's really like on Day 21 of a family move to a foreign country, read on.
(Or just skip to point 5 for a good laugh.)
1. What language do you want from me?
Typical initial interaction:
Waiter: "Lots of fast Italian."
Us: Stunned looked, polite smile, then very slowly: "Mi scusi, parlo molto poco Italiano."
Waiter: "English?"
Everyone smiles in agreement that we are indeed native English speakers and clearly NOT FROM HERE.
In our travels to the Umbria region this past weekend (picture Tuscany but less famous) we just couldn't get it right. In one restaurant we sit down, do this routine, the waitress starts speaking in English, so we speak in English, and then she gets visibly frustrated and scolds us as she produces a tattered English menu.
The next day, following the routine, the waiter keeps speaking Italian to us. Then he says, "If you speak Italian to me, I think you speak Italian." Our smiles wilt a little and I politely point out, "I'm trying."
I suspect this may be a small price to pay for veering off the heavily-tread tourist path in to the region that we did, and I'm willing to pay it. But the bigger lesson is: we need professional language training. Yesterday.
2. What is going on with my body?
Week 1: Adjusted the sleep, stoked about the food and wine.
Week 2: Get in to a workout groove immediately.
Week 3: Why am I weak, covered in a light rash from head to toe, and my lymph nodes are popping out the back of my neck? Rash disappears and now my fingers and knees are swollen for three days? See the doc and he tells me I'm "stressed" and "adjusting." Trying to stay off Web MD.
3. Will I ever see my bed again? Or be the proud custodian of a dishwashing machine?
They weren't kidding about 60 days in a hotel. It could be much worse - we're in a two-bedroom suite with bunk beds and a teeny tiny kitchen. (So tiny that sometimes you trip over the trash pile when you back up to see what's in the cupboard.) The kids ride their scooters to school and we have the sweetest maids.
But my predecessors alluded to the agonizing pace of the machine that is the housing office: designed to protect the service members, but yielding a lease-signing process that takes a month or more after deciding on a house.
If you know me, you will know that this is the opposite of everything I value ... thus, probably one of the most important lessons I will learn here.
4. Fellow travelers with kids, regardless their nationalities, are easy allies.
Cases in point:
- The British family who ended up joining us at our table an hour in to dinner a few nights ago, after their daughter approached Drew and asked if he wanted to play Harry Potter Top Trumps. We stuck around another hour and a half getting to know them and taking travel notes.
- The sweet Italian girl who joined us for a few rounds of Uno and said all of her numbers and colors in English. It was the only English she knew, and she put a few European spins on the rules of the game. The boys politely went with her flow and we all thought it was cute when she proudly announced "One" when her hand was almost empty.
5. Cars are machines with limits... especially cars that are 13 years old and have no traceable maintenance record.
Even a Mini can face a space too small, and even a BMW-made vehicle can fail to climb a hill.
We did it. We took a wrong turn in hillside town of Assisi and found ourselves navigating a bend between two brick walls that I sincerely regret not capturing on camera.
We swapped drivers early on in the turn (Andrew is way better on a hillside, under pressure, in the lower gears).
After 13 or 17 angles, he even threw it in park, got out, and we attempted to LIFT THE REAR BUMPER and manually pivot the car.
Ultimately I watched (since I was out front "helping" with my hand motions) the car we've owned for nine days literally get smaller as she accepted a couple of new Italian smooches on the bumper and driver's side door handle.
It is what it is, and we bought her with scratches for a reason.
But wait - there's more. We never did park in Assisi. (The basilica was packed due to Easter weekend; we kind of expected that.) Our next stop was halfway up a mountainside at a recommended farm-to-table restaurant. There we were, switch-backing up dirt roads, 200 meters from the establishment ... and that's all she had. The mini just.... stopped responding. Andrew masterfully threw her in reverse and used gravity to back off the road. I found an olive tree to pee behind (long morning up to this point) and the kids and I decided to hike the rest of the way and let the man of the house do what he does best: wait patiently, curse under his breath, and try again.
I'm proud to report that the car came back to life and delivered us safely back to Napoli on schedule.
6. Until it's home, we will be homesick.
Easter was hard. We woke up to church bells in a castle, but a few hours later we sat on the couch and watched our church in Rhode Island stream Easter service live on Facebook. The family pictures came rolling in when Easter morning reached east-coast time. *sigh*.
We know this drill. It's "island" time for us again. I don't mean Jimmy Buffet island time, I mean the time where we figure out who our next village is and, in the meantime, we drive each other crazy and ultimately emerge a stronger family of four.
So here we are in our awkwardness and our loneliness, but it won't stand in the way of adventure nor our usual determination to make this place home. God put us here, and here we grow. As always.
