the only real italian we know...

SOPHIA

Sophia is going to university in Bologna, a larger city in northern Italy. At 21, she fluently speaks Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and (thank goodness) ENGLISH. As part of her studies, she is required to complete 100 hours of work as an intern at Santa Chiara. She is here everyday from 9 to 5:30, of which most of the time is spent teaching us Italian. We kindly reciprocate by teaching her about America. One of our first exchanges was about how we describe the tingling sensation in a limb as it “falling asleep.” She was stumped, how can a foot sleep?! She just exclaims “Formica!” meaning simply “Ants!!”

So from the beginning, it has been a constant eye-opening educational exchange. We talk about politics, history, but mostly pop-culture (apparently girl-talk transcends all borders). Our favorite afternoon has been spent enlightening Sophia on the American view of Italians, i.e. MTV’s “JERSEY SHORE” and the indescribable east-coast Guido. “Guido” is not an actual Italian word, as it literally translates to “I drive,” not “I make poor decisions on national television.” We used visual aids to better help her understand what we were saying. Bare chest. Hair gel. Bump-its. The word “gross” was used, which apparently she had never come across in her language studies at school. “What does this mean? Gross?” “Eww! Ick!” we tried. It wasn’t working. We needed something more concrete than onomatopoeias. Okay, gross can mean one of two things, Sophia: a) insects. b) men flaunting chest hair and pinky rings. “Eh! Caspita!” (“Oh! Gosh!”) She finally understood the word gross. Madalyn and I are so glad that we are able to teach her as much as she teaches us.

Sophia is beautiful, inside and out. And most upsetting, she is a HIT with the ladies in the kitchen. It was an instant favoritism. We’ve worked four weeks to get where we are and in one lunch she was talking about her future career and the happiness she’s found with her boyfriend of four years. The deepest conversation we’ve had with the cooks has been “Come imperato a cucinare?” (How did you learn to cook? It was answered with one, terse response: La mia madre. Oh, thanks. Good talk, ladies.)

But, honestly our italian has improved because of her. She’ll be leaving us soon, which kind of scares us. Who will answer the phone in the office for us?! The only people that call Santa Chiara are lightning-fast-speaking Italians with little patience for new learners. She is our resident Italian whom we depend on like a crutch. She spent all day Monday searching for tickets to the concerto di Elton John in Roma for me and our friend Marquesa. She had people on the phone all over the country looking for two more tickets to the sold-out event. No luck, but it wasn’t for lack of perseverance.

I hope she gets a Facebook so we can be friends forever. And so she has a place to use all the new vocabulary we’ve taught her like “JK”, “LOL”, and “Guidos.”

*hugs.

our co-workers

So basically all our pre Italy language studying did not get us very far. I think we have the vocabulary of 4 year olds. We come up with beautiful sentences like "I like work with you." and say "si, si, si" when actually we have no idea what they are asking us to do. We have become very dependent on hand gestures and pointing...I think i've really uped my charades skills. Regardless, we are quickly becoming friends (?) with the staff here.

Christina: She usually only works lunches and we probably spend the least amount of time with her. Even still we have think she is the fastest washer at Santa Chiara. We can also tell she is quite the jokster. I look forward to understanding the jokes someday.

Laura: Pronounced Louda. She tries the hardest to communicate with us. She knows some words in english like "wash, put, stop". These are very helpful. SHe told me last night that she thinks of herself as our Italian mom (I think that's what she was trying to say). Which is very sweet. Adaly (that's Italian for Haley) found out that she has one son and one daughter. The son is available and "very free" (one of her english phrases). Laura also likes to remind us that we are strong women and we don't need men to work here. Although it would be nice to have even one semi strong guy around on delivery days. She's one of our favorites.

Lydia: She is such a complicated woman (we think). The problem was that her reputation preceded her. We were told by Kelsia (Italian for Chelsea), the other RC, that Lydia is the less patient of the two cooks. She will not hesitate to tell you when you're doing something wrong or too slowly. The legend goes that one night a RC was not preforming up to Lydia standards and before her shift was over Lydia told her "Buono notte!" Meaning get out of my kitchen right now because you are the worst! So needless to say we were quite nervous when working with her for the first time. However she hasn't really lived up to that reputation yet. Yes she talks loudly and works quickly, but she still jokes around with us at the dinner table (that one time) and wants to have a good relationship with us. The Italian intern here, who speaks fluent english, told us not to be scared of her, and that Lydia wants to get to know us.

Guiliana: She is a typical Italian cook. She's very silly and jokes around alot in the kitchen. She makes us feel welcome and not like we are completely useless. To give you an example of her antics, on our first night working a dinner shift she locked Haley, Laura, and myself in the kitchen when she left. She was just on the other side of the door laughing at her joke. Me and Haley didn't quite understand what had happened because we were feverishly washing dishes, and all Laura told us was "Guiliana closed!" Every night in the kitchen with her is light-hearted, and the dinner conversation is always amusing. She has an infectiously little smile, her favorite thing to do is listen patiently as we try to spit out our next question, like "How many years you work here?" or "How many you have children?" We'd like nothing more than to pack her in our suitcase when we go home.

I'm looking forward to learning more about all these ladies, and I think we have many interesting dinner conversations to look forward to.

The entire kitchen staff with Lydia (far left).

And with Giuliana (third from the left).