"FA CAL-DO!"

Arrived in Siena yesterday. I thought it to be very small, a cute little city with a medieval city wall around it. Actually, it's quite big and so my 30 kilos luggage and me got lost. I only knew the rough direction I had to take and of course I hadn't bought a map because I had thought that it wouldn't be hard to find the address I was looking for. Plus, I was too proud to ask anyone for the way (normally I can orient myself without maps or asking anyone). When I finally did ask a lady I was expecting her to tell me that I had to walk 10 km back... how surprised I was when she told me that I was directly standing in front of the house I was looking for!

Went inside and met Savio. Out of the four Italian inhabitants of the flat (two guys, two girls), he is the only one who is currently here. One of his first sentences was "Devi imparare italiano, non parliamo inglese. Gli italiani non imparano le lingue, e troppe difficile." (You have to learn Italian, we don't speak English. Italian people don't learn languages, that's too difficult for us.) Great. But that's what I'm here for, so I guess it's good that he only speaks Italian.

Savio is really cool. We sat down and "spoke" for a while. The conversation actually consisted of us trying to find words in a HUGE English dictionary that he pulled out, but we did manage to exchange some basic information (What do you study, where are you from,...). We laughed a lot though, Savio is very funny. He really doesn't know any English (although he studies economy), so the conversation was in Italian.

Then, la Signora (flat owner) came con la chiave (key to my room). Savio proudly explained to her that I don't speak Italian, but that he speaks English and can translate for us. Um, yea right. La Signora looked at me the way you look at a moron and said, loudly and slowly, "BUO-NA SE-RA!" (Good evening). "FA CAL-DO!" (It's hot.). Thanks, but I am neither dumb nor deaf. Oh well.
La Signora stayed in our appartment for a while to check on everything (Does the heating work? It's 35 degrees outside, but nevermind. Does the washing machine work?... and so on). Then I told her that I don't have any sheets with me. Disastro, because I didn't know the Italian word for sheets. But eventually we managed to communicate and la Signora went into another room and pulled out the ugliest sheets I have ever seen. They look like someone threw up on them. Whatever, at least I have some sheets now, at night it's dark and during the day I will try to avoid looking at my bed. :-)
Then Savio cooked pasta for me :-)) and we had another highly sophisticated conversation in flawless Italian.

Today I went to the supermarket. :-) I could go on and on about that, but won't. Back home I had to try everything I bought, the result being that I had to go back to the supermarket to buy more food. :-)

My head aches from speaking and thinking in Italian. I finally realize that I am here on my own, not really speaking the language... ma tutto sara bene.

By the way, we don't have internet here. Only the neighbours' wifi which we have to wiretap (doesn't always work).