Amy – Page 2 – SLA Profiles (2017)

Palio

On Tuesday when Rebecca, the teaching assistant in my language class, returned after an absence of a few days and I asked her where she had been, she replied simply: “il Palio”. For the Sienese, it is obvious that the four days of the Palio are a culmination of year long preparation and something never to be missed. For a foreigner, it is impossible to understand the exuberance of victory, the crushing pain of defeat, and the centrality of the Palio to the lives of those deeply involved in contrada life.

The two horse races per year are the pinnacle of excitement and surrounded by parades, passionate (inebriated) singing, and festive meals, but there is much more to contrada life than these spectacles. Originally created by the guilds and for military purposes, the contrade are social and family units. Children grow up and learn together, young adults socialize, and adults share a profound connection with their contrada brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews.

While visiting the Torre (the best contrada), a wise Professor told us that the contrada organizes programming for the children whose parents work during the Palio. During a visit to Pantera with Professore Andrea, I learned that it is not just during the quattro giorni, but all year long that adults in the contrada care for and pass down knowledge and traditions to the younger members.

My host brother, Alfredo, told me about the special bond that forms between young adults of the same contrada. They form very tightly knit social groups which, in his opinion, create negative social divisions. From his perspective, heavily participating in contrada life limits one’s social circle and experiences. For example, his ragazza is of the rival contrada to his own and they both choose to limit their participation in their respective contrade. The youth who decide to participate in this lifestyle, however, have an unparalleled community.

The Palio and the contrade are examples of living history. From the centuries old costumes worn during parades with drumming and flag twirling to the communal dinners that fill the narrow medieval streets to their capacity with tables of revelers, those who participate in contrade life embody tradition and create a family.

Briccone

One morning in the dinning room at Casa di Alfredo, I was was attempting to transport a rather large piece of mille foglie from the buffet table to my already brimming plate. As it slipped from the tongs, landing in a poof of powdered sugar and leaving a chocolate blob on the pristine

table cloth, my host grandmother (nonna) tottered into the kitchen and quipped “tu sei un briccone!” Thus I learned my new favorite Italian word.

As my friend Alex – who spent the last 6 months attending classes at the University of Bologna – told me, it is when we are mortified or hilarified, or both, when memories and bits of the language stick in our minds.

In this context and with her voice inflection, briccone was a light hearted admonition from an elder to a younger – “tu sei un briccone” roughly meant “oh you knave, you” . When I got to school that same morning and asked Giuseppe, a native Sienese and the student assistant in my class, what kind of word briccone is, he told me it would be a bad idea to call our professor, Enzo, a briccone.

Later when my roommate here in Siena, Alex, forked my king and rook and I exclaimed “tu sei un proprio briccone”, the Italian students watching our game laughed and nodded in agreement.

The next morning, I asked nonna if she would kindly indulge my crippling espresso addiction and make me un café per favore. When she asked if I would like any milk – or maybe even a macchiato, I replied that perhaps a café corretto – espresso and rum or grappa combined in a 1:1 ratio – would be appropriate at this hour. When she slapped my arm in mock horror and replied “no, no è sbagliato nella mattina,” I told her that all bricconi drink café corretto in the morning. She chuckled, and complimented my small, but important, linguistic achievement.

Post Departure

Reflect on your language learning and acculturation during your SLA Grant experience.

Before I came to Siena I was able to live in Rome for 5 weeks. Everybody, except my neighbor, refused to speak to me in anything other than English since they all knew English, and my Italian wasn’t up to par, not to mention my accent. I spoke with Pino, the very old carpenter a couple of times, but one time I apologized that my Italian was so bad but that I was learning, and he replied “I know.” I knew my goals coming into the program were lofty, but they helped me set the right intention for learning. Instead of hanging out with American students, I tried to spend time with my host family. In the beginning I was so exhausted from constantly readying myself to respond in Italian, even when relaxing at home, trying to think in Italian, and going to class all day. Eventually I was able to build up the endurance to casually watch Italian TV shows, even if they were mostly kid shows, as well as follow the dinner conversation without zoning out at the table. In the beginning I was relegated to the kids table having no social worth with my comprehension and speaking skills at the level they were. But by the end, I loved meeting people and having conversations about who they were and what they did (I even met the top gelato salesmen in Indonesia). When I returned to Rome, I went to dinner at a place I had been once before, but this time I ordered and had a conversation in Italian with the waiter who was very excited I could actually speak Italian.

Reflect on your SLA Grant experience overall.

Thanks to the SLA Grant it feels like I have gone 0 to 100 with language ability and understanding of Italian culture. What I found most fascinating, however, is that my worldview didn’t change as much from being in Italy and learning Italian culture for myself as it did from observing how my non American classmates interacted with life in Italy. It was incredible to watch so many people experience Italy through their own lens, and in the process different parts of Italian culture were highlighted for me as well as parts of my classmates cultures. Everyday I was so thankful to have the ability to take the fantastic classes and live with a wonderful host family. I did get a little tired of Italy when I had a virus the final week, and my host family gave me pizza for medicine, but when I returned home I immediately missed Italy.

How do you plan to use your language and intercultural competences in the future?

I am grateful for this experience as next semester I am heading to Bologna Italy where I will be lining with other Italian students and taking all of my classes in Italian. Without this experience I would be much more unprepared and nervous for Bologna. This semester I am taking two classes about Italian literature in Italian. I am majoring in medieval studies but concentrating on the Mediterranean area and specifically Italy. I hope to continue I the field, with my ability to speak Italian majorly supporting my career trek. Post graduation I plan on living and working in Italy.

Giorgio’s Baptism – “Battesimo Contradialo”

One night walking back from aperitivo, my host family was discussing their weekend and asked me if I wanted to come to Giorgio’s, the baby’s, baptism that Saturday. Of course I jumped at the opportunity and replied “Sì, certo!!” They were very happy I said yes, but began explaining that this wasn’t a regular baptism.

First they told me it was a “pagano” baptism. With an obviously confused look on my face as I was trying to figure out if I had really heard “pagan baptism,” Donatello tried to explain the meaning of the word pagan to me. I was more hung up on what a pagan baptism was (what kinds of rituals would take place?) as opposed to the meaning of what Donatello was saying. Next he tried explaining that it would be a group baptism and lots of babies born that year would be baptized. This only added to my confusion, but after failing to understand for a full five minutes, I decided to let it go and see what would happen on Saturday.

It has been fun navigating the misunderstandings so far. Oftentimes, like the “pagan baptism” situation, I don’t necessarily have a problem with understanding the individual words; I just don’t understand the cultural context or the general gist of the situation. To make matters more complicated, my host family usually doesn’t understand what I don’t understand. In class the next day I asked my professor what she thought, and she immediately realized that I would be attending a contrada baptism.

Every summer each contrada has a festival week, which begins with the baptism ceremony to celebrate their patron saint/Mary. Onda celebrates Our Lady of the Visitation. Anyone joining the contrada that year has to be baptized into it, and you can only join one contrada. The picture I included above is Giorgio being baptized. In the image you can see the special scarf being tied around Giorgio. Every member of the contrada receives this special silk scarf at their baptism and wears it to contrada events and to be “patriotic.” The picture below is the contrada dinner celebrating the baptism. The whole community comes out to celebrate all the baptized babies.

Italian Soccer Moms

While in Siena I am staying with a host family. It seemed like the best way to learn the language, but it has turned out to be much more difficult than I expected. My host family is by no means anywhere close to a horror story but it has certainly taken some time to get used to living with them. My host family includes Katia and her 10-year-old son, Alberto, her husband, Donatello, and their 2 month old son Giorgio (my favorite member of the family since we currently have the same ability to speak the language). Below is a picture of “Babbo” (the grandpa) pushing Giorgio in his stroller outside of the apartment. Both sets of grandparents (along with other miscellaneous family and friends who are basically family) visit often making for long and loud dinners.

Language is a huge barrier, which I knew coming into the summer, but the cultural differences have been surprisingly challenging. These differences wouldn’t be so noticeable except for the fact that I’m staying with a host family, so I am constantly confronted by them. Not everything is totally different, though.

This past week my host mom brought me to pick up her son at soccer practice and invited me to join her and her friends at lunch. As I had only been in Siena for a of couple weeks, I was still trying to get a feel for the culture and way people interact, so I mostly remained in the background and observed at these events. At lunch, after a few brief conversations about who I am and why I was there, I sat quietly, limited by my speaking ability, but all the while listening. It turns out a bunch of Italian moms like to gossip the same way American moms would back home. At soccer practice, I watched Katia interact with the other moms in the same way my mom acts when she takes my younger sisters to soccer.

My comprehension has been getting much better. It has taken me awhile to get used to the speed, musicality, and accents of native Italian speakers, but now I am able to understand the gist of what’s being talked about. At lunch I learned what everyone’s kids and husbands were up to and whom everybody wanted to win in the Palio the next weekend (none of their contrade were participating). At the soccer practice I watched the miniscule drama play out between the moms and between the boys. Italy is definitely not America, but people are still people, so some things are universal.

I am very happy to be living with a host family because it really has made my experience here so much more immersive. At least twice a week, my host family and I go out for aperitivo at the di solito (“the usual”) bar. Now the bartender recognizes me even when I am on my own. The neighbors/family friends say hi to me when I pass them on the street. My host family has included me in their life in a way that opens up experiences for me that I never would have had otherwise.

Siena: a city of the past?

The day I arrived in Siena, I took a taxi from the train station to my host family’s apartment and waited outside to meet them for approximately 30 seconds before a parade of men dressed in Renaissance garb, colorful tights and all, beating drums and waving flags, marched through the streets around me. Needless to say I was slightly overwhelmed by the fact that it seemed like Dante Alighieri himself could be in this crowd, and it was almost impossible to hear anything except the beat of the drums as I attempted to greet my host family.

I asked myself, “Harriet, what have you gotten yourself into this time?” My host family is wonderful, but at the time I had no idea what was happening around me and barely understood anything my host mother was saying. But seriously, why were there men walking around like it was a completely different century? [see images below]

In the beginning, I could hardly utter anything other than “ciao” and the occasional “come va?” to my host family, but slowly but surely I was able to gain the confidence and language proficiency to gather information about the modern day medieval city I’m living in. It turns out almost every weekend during the summer, one of the contradas marches around the city in their traditional costumes.

One of the neatest things about Siena is the 17 Contrade. The best I can do explain the enigma is that they are essentially neighborhood organizations that developed from the guild system during the medieval ages. Most tourists and other non-sienese know the contrade as the different participants in the Palio (a horse race that occurs twice a summer).

So far the contrada has been a great way to experience Sienese life. I join my host family at the contrada dinners, try new foods (like anchovy bruschetta), meet new people, and observe how Italians interact. There are lots of spirited discussions every time we go. Most of the people my host family knows and says hi to while walking around the town seem to be from their contrada; however, the contrada serves as more than just a place to get dinner and socialize. They keep the history of Siena alive as well as serve an important role for the community. In the Onda contrada, there is free academic tutoring everyday after school for all of the younger members. Contradas maintain traditions, such a “faciando un giro,” and each one has its own museum and church to collect significant artifacts such as old costumes, Palio banners (the prize for winning the Palio), artwork made by their members, etc. Each member is baptized into the community, usually when they are just babies. My host family has invited me to their son’s baptism into the contrada, so more on that soon.

The picture above is Onda doing a giro, which is a march around the entire city. The men of the contrada walk through the streets for the whole day in the hot sun, wearing their traditional costumes. There are flag twirlers and drummers, and each man has been practicing the particular flag spin and drum beat since they were little. My host dad plays the drum and hopes his 2-month-old son, Giorgio, will follow in his footsteps.

While Siena is definitely a medieval city in its architecture, society, and activities, the tradition is alive and constantly evolving. Even the most notable activity, the Palio, which originated as a war between the armies of the different contradas, has evolved into a horse race based on strategy. It’s still changing today due to recent interests of animal activist groups. The Palio races or the highlight of the summer and even inspires tears (happy or sad) and fights depending the winner. I could read about the contradas and the Palio, but anything other than experiencing them for yourself is missing something.

Below are some images of the setting for the living history in Siena.

“Hoha Hola” and Accents

All the different accents and dialects in Italy make it very difficult to for the beginner speaker. I first noticed the accent in Siena when my host brother Alberto asked for a “hoha hola” and received a coke. In Siena they pronounce the “c” sound as an “h.” No wonder I couldn’t understand when my host mom said we were going back to the “hasa.” Eventually I was able to tune my ear to the Sienese accent, but everything would change when I met someone who didn’t live in Siena and didn’t speak proper Italian like my professors.

It turned out that these accents almost always go further than just pronunciation. In different regions they use different words to refer to the same thing, different slang, and sometimes even different grammar. In Siena they call watermelon “cocomero” but some regions use “anguria” and others use “melone di acqua.” In the Bologna area, apparently they use “zio” meaning “uncle” to say “bro.”

“Cathedral, Milan”

In Milan they use the formal third person instead of the informal second person like they do in Siena. I visited Milan one weekend, and despite the heat and mosquitos, I managed to have lots of conversations in Italian, whether it was with my taxi driver, with the owner of a pasta food truck, or getting sightseeing advice from an old man in a bookstore. A couple times I tried to ask why each person used the formal tense with me, but quite frankly could not get my point across. After fifteen minutes trying to explain what I wanted to say to my cab driver, he finally understood my question and replied that that’s just something you do.

On reflection, I realized the reason I was having such a hard time explaining my point about the intricacies of Italian grammar was because I have a completely different understanding of Italian grammar than native speakers do. I think of conjugating verbs with a chart, but Italians just speak. In the same way the verb “to know” is the same regardless of the person i.e. whether I say “I” know, “you” know, “he” knows…, in Italian the verb sapere has the same significance whether I say io so, tu sai, lui sa… Italians don’t even realize they’re conjugating verbs.

This realization was actually very helpful for improving my speaking ability. Later that weekend when I ate lunch a pasta food truck I decided to stop thinking about how I was conjugating verbs and just speak. I ended up having a 45-minute conversation about food trucks- how they were up and coming in Italian cities, their popularity in Italy and the US, and what the legislation was like in both places, and how this guy started his business. Once I was able to just let the conversation flow, I received my highest marks yet for my conversation ability. I was no longer “abbastanza bene” (pretty good, sufficient), I was simply “bene” (good).

“the pasta food truck”

The Vaccine Debate: Italian Edition

Who knew the question of whether vaccines should be mandatory was as big of a question in Italy as it is in the United States? The first protest as ran into in Italy (there seemed like there was a protest or strike every week) was an anti vaccine march. While I steered clear of any protest I encountered, I did try to figure out what “la liberta di scelta” meant after the fact.

Recently, Italy passed a law the mandates vaccines for all children attending schools. It turns out there is a fair amount a disagreement with this decision and many Italians want the “liberty of choice.” The more research I did, the more I found that the same arguments made in the United States, such as the link to autism, were being expressed on the protestors’s posters, through their megaphones, and in the courtroom.

I asked my host family what they thought about the mass protests across Italy as a result of the mandatory vaccine laws. My baby host brother was getting vaccines at the time and I was curious about their take on the issue. Katia and Donatello basically said that those people were “cretini” meaning stupid. Even though Giorgio cried for the entire day after he had to get a shot, my host parents both said it was important to get vaccines, and that they didn’t have a problem with the new regulation since they would have already gotten Giorgio vaccinated.

I asked my professor what he thought, but he was more interested in me describing the debate in Italian to practice explaining a point. He has refrained from commenting on the issue for now.

Welcome to Italy!

The motto of my time so far in Italy has been: do it for the cultural experience. Before I arrived in Italy I promised myself I would never speak English when interacting with Italians, but that turned out to be more difficult than I realized. It wasn’t just a language barrier; everything was different, even if sometimes it was only slightly different. The first time I walked into a bar for coffee I immediately panicked. I had heard the horror stories of tourist asking for a latte and receiving a cup of milk, and I frankly couldn’t figure out how to go about ordering. Completely intimidated, I walked out of the bar and after a brief pep talk to myself walked half a block down the street and went into the next bar.

The only way to learn the language and learn the culture is through trying, even when it is awkward and uncomfortable. After my first couple experiences ordering myself un café and un cornetto I decided to try having a conversation, even a short one, every time I got coffee.

The image above is my favorite place to get coffee during my midday break from classes.

My favorite experience so far has been when I accidentally ordered a cappuccino at 1 pm. After I ordered, I remembered that you’re not supposed to order coffee with so much milk that late in the afternoon. So I decided to ask the barista if it was ok that I was having a cappuccino so late. Maybe she was just being nice, over the quick conversation I had standing at the bar, but I learned that it was totally fine for me to be drinking that cappuccino. Yes, most people tend to drink espresso in the afternoon, but every day around 4 pm, plenty of university students come into her shop to have their own afternoon cappuccino.

The best part about these little conversations is that even though they are about seemingly meaningless things, I can see myself improving each time I practice. I’ve perfected my “script” to explain that I’m learning Italian and I’m from the United States, but I’ll be studying abroad in Bologna in January. The real challenge is when the conversation evolves, and I stray from the comfort of the well-known phrases and the ease of the simple present and past tenses. The real trick is trying to remain active in these conversations. Instead of thinking about the next thing I’m going to say while the other person is speaking, I’ve been trying to really listen, understand, and ask a couple questions about a few critical words that I might not know. Instead of relying on asking questions so that the other person is almost always speaking, I’ve been trying to form my own opinions and actually participate in the discussion. Now I even start talking with someone I normally wouldn’t, such as the person eating her cornetto next to me at the bar, just for the “cultural experience.”

Finishing Up

My time in Russia is now drawing to a close. On the one hand, it feels like I have just arrived, but on the other hand, it seems like ages since I set foot in America. In my next and final post, I will offer my reflections and thoughts on my time here, but for now, I want to discuss my final actions and closing activities.

My class has now finished up. I won’t know my grade until early September, but it seems that I did well, probably receiving around an A-. I was in Group 2; there were six groups ranging from absolute beginner (Group 0) to fluent (Group 5). I have only 1 year of experience; everyone else with one year tested into Group 1 (plus some people with two years’ experience). I was the only one one in my class with less than two years of Russian, and two of the ten people had taken Russian for three years. In spite of this, I was the top student in the class or close to it, including receiving the only A on the midterm. My Russian abilities have vastly expanded during this brief time here. Russian grammar is not particularly complex; by now I have essentially learned every major grammatical topic. The major job of learning which I am undertaking is the expansion of vocabulary and the promotion of active knowledge over passive knowledge, that is, learning to produce forms and sentences on the spot, rather than simply recognizing them. I learn around a dozen words daily on average; I reckon I have learned around 400 words in my time here and been exposed to hundreds more. This experience has been hugely helpful for my Russian abilities.

I have been spending this last week, in addition to seeing whatever sights there are left to see, trying to meet some more Russians. During my first weekend here, the program director said that Americans are like peaches and Russians are like coconuts. Peaches are soft and sweet on the outside, but inside is a hard pit that is difficult to break into. Likewise, Americans are kind and happy on the outside, glad to talk with strangers and always putting up the façade of a great life, but on the inside they can be hard to truly get to know. On the other hand, coconuts have a hard outer shell that is very difficult to get through and hides everything. Once you break through that shell, however, the inside is sweet and rewarding. Russians likewise are very difficult to get to know, but they are amazing once you get inside. This analogy has proven accurate. Unfortunately, as a foreigner with still limited Russian conversational skills, I have barely managed to break through the coconut with any of the people I have met. I hope in this last weekend to finally do as much.

My final organized activity was a toast given in Russian by all the students in the program to our professors. Unfortunately, my professor had to leave town and could not be there, but my class nonetheless took part and thanked our instructor for all she had done for us. It was great to see how everyone has learned.

I leave in just a couple days. I will have an overnight layover in Vienna. While I have limited time there, and I know no German beyond basic phrases, as someone strongly interested both in foreign culture and in classical music, I hope that my brief time there will be rewarding. After all, a lot of this study abroad is about becoming a citizen of the world.