Damme cinque!

I have so many good quotes from the last two days, so prepare yourself! I've gotten to the point where I have to write down some of the funny stuff that's been said to us, how lame is that! But at least that way you'll get the full impact.

We'll begin with Tuesday. I didn't write about it last night because I was starting to feel sick; you know that achey-all-over feeling right before the flu hits? Yep, it was that. But I slept all evening+night and now feel glorious. Anywho, Tuesday morning all of the internship groups were supposed to meet at Piazza del Popolo, which is on the opposite side of Rome, because we have nothing else to do. Of course my apt group was more than an hour late. We took a random bus and then just kind of got off when we felt like it, which I guess was near the Spanish Steps. This time they were nearly empty! We wanted to stop and take pictures, but felt badly about being so late and thus only took one or two. The group of women we asked to take a picture of us were American and asked where we were from; when we said Seattle, turned out they were too! Except a few of them were Cougs... But still, what are the odds?

Once we finally made it to the Piazza our group was just leaving a church (perfect timing for us, you can only see so many churches). While we waited for them to cross the massive square, we took a few pictures sitting on these lions/fountains, and street vendor kept trying to offer us roses. They're tricky here, they get you to try something on or take a flower like it's free then ask for money. This time the guys kept telling us we were beautiful and needed beautiful flowers. Then when he asked for money (which he called a "donation") we all handed the flowers back, and he said in is Indian accent "Physically you're all beautiful, but mentally you're so ugly!" I guess we should have been insulted, but this cracked us up. Maybe you had to be there, but trust me it was funny!

We later climbed some stairs into a park surrounding the Villa Borghese, and had an incredible view of Rome. And dear God this park was beautiful! Massive too, right in the middle of the city. We chilled there as a huge group for a while, playing soccer and eating pizzette (small pizzas, like bagel bites) just hanging out and trying to speak Italian. I managed to ask a few of our female volunteers if they were married because they were wearing rings, and found out that in Italy if you have a boyfriend you wear a ring, then once you're formally engaged you wear a ring with a diamond, then later a wedding band. Thought that was an interesting little piece of culture. One of them, named Ilaria, has been seeing her ragazzo since she was 11!

Class was again dull, we had a quiz and I was the first one to finish. Then in the seccond class Giuseppe actually remembered I was in class and asked me a few questions! After class I went up to him with Caitlin and we introduced ourselves and told him our names. I hope we didn't insult him, but it had to be done.

Afterward, my roommates and I decided tonight would be a good night to watch one of the Italian movies we had gotten, we chose Johnny Stacchino, and get pizza and a cake. At the bakery around the corner we picked out that we thought was part chocolate cake, part custardy stuff. Nope, it's like a solid mouse/custard cake; I'm not really in love with it. But while there the woman at the bakery asked us if we were American, and we said yes. Then she made my day by telling us we spoke Italian well, and we all laughed, then she corrected herself and said we all understood well. I told her we understand a little, that we're studying here and we have been learning Italian for about a year. She seemed very impressed, and that little comment made me very happy.

Continuing, once we made it back we all chipped in for the cake, $5 a piece. That's when I heard Megan say to Kelsey "Damme cinque!" which means 'give me five' as in high five. Then a few seconds later she continued "...no, actually give me 5 dollars." I about cried laughing. Here we say "damme cinque" or "batte cinque" pretty frequently because, lets face it, it's pretty fun to say. Megan simply used it at the perfect time; it's her ninja skills.

Speaking of batte cinque, you all have to watch this video a guy in our program made for Italian last year. It's a spoof on predator (it's dubbed in English) and it is positively hillarious. Along with batte cinque, that's where we get the quote "hella bene" that we use just as frequently amongst ourselves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2smk6A9e0JE

We didn't have internships this morning so we got to sleep in! I hung out around the house all day until class at 3:30. We just did homework and lounged around eating nutella. Megan has gone as far as to make nutella a new personal food group eaten with every meal; I'm sure we'll all get to that point given time. Here we like to keep the tv on as background noise, and we all like different stuff. Megan likes cheesey 80's throwbacks like Walker, Texas Ranger (Chuck Norris dubbed in Italian is the most bizarre thing you will ever experience); Roxanna likes infomertials because she's the only one patient enough to try and understand them; Kelsey, Mary and I don't really care, though we often opt for MTV. Today was an MTV sorta day, and we realized Italian pop is horrible, they just don't do it right. But otherwise, they showed some old music video, I think it was for the song Wake me up before you go go, and it was excruciatingly 80's but hilarious all the same. Megan chooses then to point out "This is bad, but still more fashionable than some of the Italians I've seen." And she's so right. They're fashionable here, but a very strange sort of fashion, almost 80's in spirit.

Ok I'll wrap this up soon I promise! In Giuseppe's class today we mixed it up a little bit; instead of reading fairy tales for an hour we discussed our expectations and stereotypes about Italy. We then got to discussing Italian men, and how aggressive they can be, when the conversation turned to different things to say to get them to back off. We proceeded to learn various insults and curse words. Then one girl said someone had asked her how much she costs (I immediately thought what could she have been wearing to make an Italian guy yell that out in the Campo!), and asked what she could have said in response. That's when we learned how to say "I cost as much as your mother/sister/etc." Now this is the most useful Italian I've learned yet!!

Finally, we had dinner at a restaurant in the Campo before going back to the Rome Center to watch a few episodes of HBO's Rome series for fun. This was the best dinner I've had yet, even though the food wasn't very good. The host that seated us kept coming by and flirting with me and Mary, and even gave us each little flowers. Also there was this guy there, I guess he would be considered a bus boy, that gave us our food and wine, and my god he was so good looking! Plus we ordered patate fritte (french fries!) just for the hell of it, and I could not get enough!! They looked at us very funny when we asked for more ketchup but didn't want any mayonnaise. Soon I'll be making another McDonald's run--don't judge me you would too. I tried gnocchi tonight for the first time and I didn't like it much, I feel a little sick when I think about it. But now I know. Then before we left our flirty guys at the restaurant tried to offer us free beers to get us to stay longer, but we had to leave to watch Rome. But I'm definitely going back, that was such a fun cena!

Tomorrow we're going to a bunch of churches I've never heard of, I think they're all supposed to be related to the start of the Jesuit order. Apparently they have magnificent frescos so hopefully it'll be interesting. Then afterward I'm going to pick up my Easter tickets!! yayyyy