conversation with a Senegalian

While I'm writing about the subject, I recently had a bit of a conversation with a fellow immigrant in Via Dante. He was one of the Senegalian booksellers who pound the pavement in the wealthier areas of Milan selling books about African culture. I've always wondered how this works, where the books come from and where the money goes. I've never bought one of the books, but the sellers are always so cheerful that I frequently end up talking to them.

Last Thursday I had sat on a bench in Via Dante to listen to some street musicians, and I knew in sitting down I would attract the booksellers, if I was lucky also a couple of rose vendors and the guys that want to tie bracelets to your wrists. After a few minutes a bookseller approached me, said hi, and asked if I had ever been to Africa.

"Yes," I said.
He looked up, surprised, "Where?"
"Kenya, a long time ago."
"Ah, I'm from the other part."
"Senegal?"
"How did you know?"
I wanted to say something like everyone who has ever tried to sell me a book has been from Senegal but then I thought that was inappropriate, so I said, "I guessed!"

He tried for a bit to sell me a book but I told him I didn't want one. He tried to sell me a children's book, but I told him the children in my family didn't speak Italian. Then he got interested and asked me where I was from. He started trying to speak a little English, and I listened and helped him (I am a professional, after all).

He said he had been in Milan for a year. I asked him if he wanted to stay and he said that if he makes enough money he'll go back to Senegal and if not he'll remain in Milan. He said he missed Senegal, its ocean and la gente allegra. In Milan everything was different. I agreed with him there, the people here are grumpy and rushed, and that day I had been feeling a bit down about the milanese atmosphere.

He said he was trying to learn English. I asked him what languages he knew, and he said French ("Because they were our colonizers, but here no one speaks it"), Wolof, Italian, and a little bit of English. He introduced himself then, but I, being forgetful, let his name slip out my other ear. He told me he was always in Via Dante, so I should come back. I said, Maybe. He said, "Thank you," and I asked him how to say your welcome in French, and he said "De rien." Then he said, "If you come back to Via Dante, I will teach you French and you can teach me English." This set my imagination whirling with all sorts of fantastic scenarios, but I said, "Alright, we'll see."

So that's my story, two extracomunitari having a conversation. I'd like to know more about what he thinks of Italy and its gente, who he knows here, where his family is, where he plans to go if Italy doesn't work. I'd like to know what drove him to come here, to this place that puts up posters saying that he's a thief and a criminal. Mainly I'd just like to talk, because I think it's the best defense against prejudice, especially my own.

Italians and prejudice

We've just had elections here in Milan, and it looks like the center-left candidate, Pisapia, might have pulled off a victory against the ubiquitous Letizia Moratti, the candidate for Berlusconi's Popolo della Libertà party. Which is a poke in the eye for Silvio, as he had declared the elections to be a test of the people's will. Apparently, the people want to poke him in the eye.

("Houses and jobs for residents first" and "Stop Immigrants")

For the months leading up to the elections, there have been posters slapped all over town, new ones posted over the old ones every day until there were layers and layers of them, so thick that they started to peel off their base. The ones I found the most repugnant were the Lega Nord posters, and not just because I find their political ideology to be xenophobic, homophobic, and racist, though that was a big part of it. The main reason why I found the posters themselves creepy was that they never displayed the name of a candidate in the city, they always said either VOTE or some polemical statement like STOP IMMIGRANTS. At most, they said the name of Lega Nord's leader and backbone, Umberto Bossi.

Why, I wonder, don't they put up the name of their candidates? Every single other party does it, from right to left. The fact that the Lega doesn't makes them seem both completely tied to their leader, Bossi, and incredibly secretive, a society that wants to be known and unknown. They play on old fears of the Other and on campanilismo in a boldface manner that has to be seen to be believed. One poster literally says that what happened to the Native Americans will soon happen to Italians, and another says that keeping Italy unified is the equivalent of Apartheid. And they are arguably the most powerful political party in Italy.

Still, I can badmouth the Lega all I want, but I don't feel that this is just another instance of those racist Italians shunning political correctness. I see it happening from a distance also in the United States and in northern Europe, where racism seems to be creeping into even the most unlikely places. No one is immune.

I've had two conversations on the subject recently too, one with a barista at one of my favorite cafès and the other by chance with my students.

I was drinking a coffee a week ago when this chatty barista came over to talk to me. He likes me because I'm American and I speak English (even though we speak Italian, I think people like to know that if they felt brave enough they could switch to English to practice, if only they felt like it), and now he can't let me leave without starting up a conversation. This time he asked me if I were staying in Italy forevermore. I don't think so, I said. For many reasons, but also because I don't think I can find a job that will get me a work visa. He looked at me, shocked, and said, "You need a visa? But you're American?" I said, well yes, but I'm not a European citizen, so I don't get a free pass. I am extracomunitaria. He said, "Well there should be some sort of deal between the United States and Italy. You came here to work, not like a Moroccan who comes here to steal!" With that I snapped my mouth shut and stared at him, but I didn't have the courage to reply. Of course in the next five minutes my mind was flooded with things I could have said and should have said, like the fact that the average Moroccan immigrant probably works three times as much and as hard as I do, that the fact that I was white and from a rich country didn't mean I should be treated differently. But of course I didn't say these things, instead I left the cafè and haven't gone back.

Then today in my first year class, I asked the students to practice the conditional by saying what they would do if they ruled the world. For example, one boy said, if I were president, I would fight corruption. Another boy asked me to come to his desk to help him. He asked, "Come si dice mandar via la gente?"
"Send away. But send away who?"
"Lampedusa!" he replied, referring to the Italian island between Sicily and Tunisia that has been inundated with immigrants and refugees from the fighting in northern Africa.
"You can't send away a place," I said.
"Gli extracomunitari! The immigrants!"
I pulled a face of shock and offense. "Me?! You want to send away me?!"
The kids all erupted in laughter, and the boy's deskmate said, in Italian, "Don't listen to him prof! He's a racist! He's a racist!"
I stormed away in mock disgust, listening to them recounting the story to their companions, still laughing. "The prof is extracomunitaria too! He wants to send her away!"

Italians never think of me as an immigrant because I am white and blonde, and for sure I don't suffer the way other immigrants do. But I try to remind them that I am an immigrant, that immigrants come from all over and for all sorts of reasons, often just for work and money, which is what one needs nowadays for a better life. We're not some sort of mass invasion, ready to steal your jobs, rape your women, and murder your children. We're all human beings navigating a new and strange situation together, and it's not going to just evaporate.

Sorry for the seriousness. I'll get off the pedestal tomorrow.

due sciure e una dieta

It's been hot and so I've been spending my time outside, biking around the city, reading in the park, eating gelato. Today I stopped at Garibaldi in Brera for a cono piccolo di pistacchio e stracciatella and sat outside on their wooden bench. As I began to eat, a well-dressed sciura milanese across the street called out, "Come on, what are you doing?"
A signora beside me with one foot in the gelateria replied, "I'm getting a gelato! Come get one too!"
"I don't want one!" the first woman replied.
"Well, I'm getting one."
"It's not even that warm today! Come on, you're wasting time."
"Who cares about the diet, I've earned it!" the golosona said. "I'm going to get a bel yoghurt!"
The first woman, her cell-phone clutched in her hand, crossed the street and joined the woman with the sweet-tooth, and as they entered the gelateria I heard her ask the second woman what she was getting.
After a few minutes I finished my cone and stood up to go, just as the two women were exiting the shop. The first woman had a two-flavor cone in one hand and her cell phone in the other, and she said, "Silvia? Ciao, I'm here in Corso Garibaldi with an amazing soy gelato. Now, as I was saying..."

chicken man

Later F. would tell me, "See what you would miss if it weren't for me?" and yes, I would have missed it entirely if he hadn't turned around on his bike and said, "Did you see that? Aveva una gallina!" So we stopped, backpedaled, and sure enough, a man was walking down Corso Garibaldi with a rooster on his shoulder.

The man was strolling down the street at dusk, in an old blue shirt and jeans, and the rooster was happily settled on his shoulder, beautifully dark colored and shiningly clean. It hardly fluttered a feather as they made their way down the street together. We watched as the man stopped by a cafè and started a conversation with the three people, two men and a woman, who sat outside. While they talked, the men amused but willing, passersby feigned disinterest, turning around to stare only after they were out of the man's sight. Of the conversation, we heard the man say something like, "Sorry to disturb you, but I can only stay outside of locales, sai, they're always kicking me out."
And one of the men saying, "But it's not you, it's him!" Gesturing at the rooster, who adjusted his seat on the man's shoulder.
"Well anyway, I'm armed. Like in the old west." And he pulled up his shirttails to reveal a bottle of beer in each of his pockets. They all laughed and he continued on his way, but not before praising the beauty of the woman they were with.

"Che dici, lo seguiamo?" said F. Perhaps following a man with two beers and a rooster is not the city response to strange occurrences, but of course I agreed. We walked with our bikes a little ways behind him. He crossed the street and we watched as he greeted every person he passed, singing "Bandiera Gialla," sometimes stopping to talk, another time making an obscene gesture at a signore who offended him. The rooster rode peacefully, every so often flapping its wings to regain its balance. It didn't make a sound. On our side of the street three little girls and their moms passed, and the one in front cried,
"Cel'ha una gallina lassù quel signore! C'è una gallina!" That man has a chicken!
But her friends didn't believe her and couldn't see as far. "Ma era un cane, dai."
And we smiled because we knew the truth.

Finally we sped up and crossed the street, so that we would be in his path as he passed. I pretended to look at some flowers, watching him approach out of the corner of my eye. He stopped beside us, and from up close I could see he had a big bushy beard and sparkling eyes, a sweet face really but the kind that could turn frightening. He stood next to F and told him that he shouldn't be afraid of the chicken, non ti fa niente. And so F reached out a hand and stroked the rooster, who seemed to retract his head into his neck in contentment. A woman behind us was saying, "Che meraviglia, what a miracle, quel signore ha una gallina. Che bello."
And he said, "No, pardon me, you know what the miracle is?" Smiling he pointed at me and the woman who worked at the flower stand and then swept his arm to include the women passing by on the street and said, "Sono loro la vera meraviglia, they're the real miracle. Le nostre compagne. Our companions."
And excusing himself for the intrusion, he continued down the street.

ponte farini

When you cross the ponte Farini on your bike--probably on the red-painted sidewalk on the left side, against traffic, so that you can avoid the frightening intersection with the trams and easily slip onto your street, and probably on your boyfriend's graziella because your bike has a flat tire from a piece of glass picked up on that same street--you can see the Cimetero Monumentale down below. It'll be to the left, beside the train tracks that the bridge lifts you above, and even after the cemetery is closed the tombs will be lit up with yellow lightbulbs that are meant to imitate candles and from this distance do indeed seem like little flames.

Maybe if you come at the right time, early twilight, like I did tonight, you'll pass a straight-backed old man with large glasses and a crumpled-up expression on his face. He'll be kissing his fingers at the cemetery and he'll be whispering something inaudible. Maybe you'll wonder who he's kissing, and who he's whispering to, like I did.

sei a milano

A milanese cover of "New York State of Mind." The first two sentences are in dialect.

The webverse is complaining about the sub-par rhymes and the pallid comparison to the original. But hey, it's a love song to their city and, well, nice scenery.

la nebbia

Everything seems quieter when it rolls in, muffled as when it snows. I'm on my bike returning from a dinner. A boy there, one of my students actually, was worried at first about me biking in the fog, but when I told him I lived near the school he said, "Ok va bene, al meno non è dall'altra parte della città." As long as you're not on the other side of the city.

But I didn't really realize just how dense it had become. The city emerges bit by bit, people, cars, buildings becoming distinct and then dissolving behind me as I pass. There's a strange smell too, humidifier damp muddled with a strange musk. F says that we in centro don't even understand fog like those who live in peripheria. There, he says, is the real fog. But tonight maybe I do. It's so thick I can't see down my own street, when I look up at a lamp I see the tendrils of mist moving through the weak light.

And the people seem uglier, weirder. I see prostitutes for the first time on the corner of Viale Gioia, dancing from foot to foot to keep warm. A little man by Alcatraz is hiding behind one of the big show trucks because he is selling beer illegally, and when he sees me looking he says, "Vai a casa, vai a casa," and he keeps yelling it after me even as I pedal away. Go home go home.

La nebbia a Milano, wintertime is here.

tis the season...

...to put up commercially- sponsored Christmas lights in a Catholic country. So I thought I'd take a break from all the occupations and politics and what not and post some pretty pictures.

The Pretty and Well-Funded Lights in the Fashion Quandrangle (Via Montenapaleone, Via della Spiga)





The Sometimes Pretty/Sometimes Totally Weird Alien Pod Lights Near the Duomo:





Even the trams get festive!

skuola okkupata!

The students have taken over my school!

I received a message from my tutor, Giovanna, yesterday saying oggi i ragazzi sono in autogestione quindi non venire per il first, today the kids are self-teaching so don't come for class. Autogestione, like last year? I thought. Don't you guys plan these things ahead of time?

I came to school anyway because I needed to pick up and photocopy a few things. I left my bike at Cremona, noting the large number of bicycles out front and thinking, Weird, people saw a glimpse of blue sky and decided to ride to school? I went first to Zappa, the school next door, and so didn't notice anything else strange.

Returning back to Cremona via the basketball courts, I saw a lot of students in giro, heading towards the gym where I could hear whistles and yelling. Weird for them to have a game during school, I thought. I came in the back door and up the steps to find backpacks strewn all over the floor, the stairwell barricaded with desks, and a group of my students from last year milling around. "Grande Rachel! Sei venuta!" said a boy who had wanted me to friend him on Facebook. "Scuola occupata!"

The school is occupied! So no, not autogestione. More like coup d'etat. I went to the teachers' lounge and found all of my colleagues huddled in the overheated room, snarking about the fact that they were there and if the students wanted to have lessons they could. I found Giovanna, surprised that I had come, and she explained the situation a little bit more...

La Signora Chiara (the head custodian) had found many windows open afterschool on Saturday, but she and the other custodians closed them all. Still, apparently the kids arrived super early on Monday morning and, without open windows, convinced the doorman to give them the keys (still not clear on how this worked). They blockaded the school until 8 am, when all the professors showed up, but the vice-principal convinced them to let the professors in. So they entered, lessons were technically held, but no one came. So the profs all crowded into the teachers' lounge to look over their ledgers and grumble.

They are protesting la riforma and its subsequent budget cuts to school programs. Signs up around the school say that politics have become personal vendettas and power plays, and someone had scattered fliers making the students' case.

Giovanna said that the students and the vice principal had decided the occupation would last until Wednesday, but by that time, she said, most of the kids will probably be sleeping in rather than linking arms in front of the doors. She said she hoped they did something productive with their time off, occupations had become fashionable, they just weren't like they used to be. I kept hearing that from the teachers: it wasn't the same as it used to be back in 1968, that's when occupations meant something.

They asked me if these sorts of things happened in the U.S. Maybe in the 1960s, I replied, but nowadays I don't think we realize it's possible.


This morning I overslept my alarm by almost an hour, leapt out of bed, jumped into my clothes, and raced to the school. I was worried that with letting the professors in on Monday and negotiating an end to the occupation for Wednesday I would still be responsible for my 8 am lesson. I was relieved when I saw the huge group of students outside the school. A couple of my 2nd year students from last year were blocking the gate, but I said, "Good morning sunshines!" and passed through them. "Ciao Rachel," they replied, smiling, even as one girl said, "Ma non dobbiamo fare entrare nessuno!" We're not supposed to let anyone in!

Looking up to see the front doors completely blocked by desks and inside no one but students, I realized that maybe things had escalated. Another prof was trying to get past the first guards, so I returned to hear what they were saying. Basically, the girl explained, no teachers were allowed inside, but if we wanted to go around back we probably could get in if we really insisted. The other prof decided no, I decided yes, I was curious. So I locked up my bike and went around back, where I was greeted with more of my second years, including the ringleader, a girl with a partially shaved head named M.

They smiled at me and said "Ciao Rachel!" but M said, "Non puoi entrare." You can't go in. I wasn't going to insist but I asked them how occupations worked, this being my first. M explained in Italian that they had let professors in yesterday and they had held some assemblies but today no, today began the real occupation. They had slept there overnight, I heard one boy say that he had stood guard outside from 11 pm to 5 am. M continued that the principal and the vice principal were going to call the police but what could they do? "Siamo 500 cristiani qui dentro." There are 500 Christians inside. One boy said, "Io non sono cristiano." I'm not Christian! and she replied, "Vabbè, per dire." It's a figure of speech.

So I bid them good luck and turned on my heels, saying hi to the kids that were arriving. I unlocked my bike and went home.

My thoughts later on...I think this entry is long enough.

Rocco e i suoi fratelli

It's the last day of All Saints vacation weekend, it's raining, and the only food I have in the house is food that needs something else to be not gross (like rye crisps). So of course I'm delaying my inevitable drenched venture to Esselunga by staying in my warm room and writing in here.

Last week, F and I went to Gnomo, Milan's community art cinema, to see Rocco e i suoi fratelli, a 1960 film by the great Luchino Visconti. Actually we thought we were seeing Napoleotani a Milano and we didn't figure out we had mixed up the days until a Corriere della Sera movie critic came out and started talking about scenes of violence and prostitutes and false moralism. I was a little bummed that we had traded a fishes-out-of-water comedy for a three-hour melodramatic opera, but I soon got over it watching the film.

This movie has traumatized me a bit, I keep thinking about it. I enjoyed seeing old Milano, the train station, the Navigli before there were so many cars to foul things up, and watching a portrayal of the southern Italian immigrant experience. The brothers together with their mother were fascinating, and Rocco, the saintly brother, was beautiful and frustrating. Nadia was a unexpected force, and I can't help but think that her fate was unfair. The 1960s scenes of violence affected me greatly, me the jaded millenial, and I've been thinking about them a great deal.

Anyways, if one has 180 minutes to spare, I would recommend this one, if only to get you thinking about a movie for more than five minutes.

la riforma

The teachers have been a little grumpier this year. Or, at least, the circles under their eyes have deepened. Perhaps the reason is la riforma Gelmini, the reform proposed by education minister Mariastella Gelmini and passed last year by Berlusconi's government. Gelmini began in 2008 to fire teachers, justifying her actions by saying that the school was for instructing, not for insuring jobs. This newest reform has further cut school budgets, reduced hours in certain subjects, cut hours from teacher's pay provided for substituting, and in some cases doubled the size of classes. One of my teachers has told me that this is all an effort to slowly transfer education responsibilities from the public sector to the private one.

For example, four of my third year classes at Cremona have been combined into two mega classes of thirty students. Thirty sixteen-year-olds, corralled together in one room! In my class with Prof. Scafi we divide into two groups as we've always done, but an intimate discussion is a bit daunting even with 15 students.

As a result, strikes have been occurring almost every week. But they're gentle (not in the style of the French, for sure), two times just for the first hour on Friday. Many teachers, confronted with this brevity, come to school anyway even if they agree with the idea of striking. My friend X, a middle school science teacher, told us over dinner that he thought the strikes weren't enough. Non crea abbastanza disagio, it's doesn't cause enough disruption to just skip the first hour. We need to block the schools for a week, keep the kids at home, before the power will feel anything.

Technically, the strikes are for the teachers, not the students, but of course when the kids listen to an announcement that their first hour of lessons can't be guaranteed, they hear, "NO SCHOOL ON FRIDAY!" and disappear for the whole day.

The concept of striking in general is new to me. That even the teenagers can skip school for ideological reasons seems a little tricky. It might be too easy to excuse shirking responsibilities with political motives. But still, people taking any action at all when they want to communicate their frustration with the government is già something I appreciate.

In my lesson about the Declaration of Independence in my other 30-student third year class, I began by asking the students if they had any complaints about how teenagers were treated at the school. They mumbled and a few said no. I asked them if that was the case, why did they go on strike on Friday? More mumbling, a few answered that they disagreed with the reforms. Don't forget to be informed, I told them, when you take action. Maybe they were, they just didn't want to risk explaining in English.

I'm the opposite. I think and inform myself and think and end up going about my day lo stesso. Though Fridays I don't have class, so maybe I was striking by default.

Bonus: This is the education minister on the cover of a right wing news magazine, Panaroma. Welcome to Berlusconi's administration.

home again, home again, where is home again?

I'm back. In Milan, I mean. It might seem like I just left (I did, four scant months ago) and that I just wrote that I was home in the U.S. Though, really, I'm not so sure where home is anymore.

Coming back to Milan was a hard decision, and then easy. I agonized over whether I would be able to make it through another winter of fog and bone-soaking rain, whether I was coming back for the wrong reasons, whether I shouldn't settle down with a Real Grown-Up Person Job already. My brother helped me break it down nicely, though: live in the U.S. with no guarantee of a job, especially not an intellectually stimulating one, probably in Northampton where the winters suck just as much if not more as the Milanese ones...or return to Italy for maybe my last opportunity to live in Europe, where I have a job I like and find interesting that (just barely) supports me, friends, and someone I love. Oh, I thought. Well, when you put it that way...

Quindi, eccomi qua. The summer felt like a brief american pause in a continuum, my life italiana. Arriving in Milan I was suprised by how comfortable I felt. My amoroso met me with a bunch of wilted flowers picked from the Parco delle Cave and helped me carry me egregiously large bags. My speaking wasn't so rusty after a summer of skype dates. I knew the train and the station where it arrived and the bar nearby where we stopped to recharge my phone. I knew the tram to take to get to the apartment where I would be staying with a lovely professoressa. Everything was much easier.

(My ensuing apartment hunt was easier too, though made longer and more frustrating by my knowledge of neighborhoods and average rents and bedbugs and old world attitudes towards guests. The specter of bedbugs haunts my dreams.)

Now I've found a place to live after three weeks and a run-in with old Sicilian sexism and I've begun working. Same characters, different year. The kids know me and greet me in the hallways (a quick and urget "Hi RAYchel!") as I round the corner of the stairs. A couple of my classes erupted in delight when they saw me walk in the door, but they're more happy for not having a test than for speaking English with me. Still, it feels good.

So I'm starting up the blog again. I have to keep stock of the wonderful things my kids do, and I have to keep stock of myself.

my experiments milanesi

I've inherited an old Nikon camera, almost untouched and only in need of a little "re-foaming," and I figured that there was no better place to practice taking old timey pictures than Milan. I have no idea what I'm doing (though thanks to the instructions of my mother I have a vague idea how to use the light meter), but I like the feel of the camera and the noises it makes.
In honor of the arrival of warm weather (finally), here are some of the experiments from my first round of film.


A few weeks ago, F lead me to the countryside outside of Piadena (aka middle of nowhere) to a festa di cultura at a country house. Meaning neverending amounts of wine, grana padano, polenta, gorgonzola, burger, and best of all leftist folk music. I felt my old joy for this stuff and even saw Suonatori Terra Terra, the first Italian folk band I ever saw playing la musica popolare. Pictured: F leading the way along the highway into the countryside, mandarino e vino, and the maestro of the gorgonzola.


Here are some kids painting the walls outside of a centro sociale, one of the occupied buildings converted into a hangout space for young people (especially leftists). We saw a police car pass by without a backward glance. An elderly couple stopped to talk to the adolescents and compliment them on their work. "Almeno così i muri sono belli eh," said the elderly man. At least this way the walls are beautiful.

Before spring break, I had an absolutely lovely Sunday in Milan where I woke up early (gasp) to go to the junk mercato senegalese near F's hood. After wandering around looking at appliances from the eighties and instruments and vintage place settings, we headed to Bosco in Città for greenery and a picnic...

...followed by a tour around Parco delle Cave and a sip from the fontana dei vechietti (Cue F's old lady voice "O sisi signora mia, ormai non ci sono più le mezze stagioni.")...

...and then a trip to the monthly Mercato dell'Antiquario sui Navigli, basically like the junk market only 10 times more expensive. I thought these typewriters were beautiful.

It was a Good Day.

Finally, to close, a portrait of the bici on my terrace on a sunny day, the one that we keep meaning to fix up.

all downhill from here

I'm beginning to realize just how little time I have left here. Six weeks. Six weeks is nothing...and the sun has just started to come out! Che sfigata.
I spent a lovely Easter break in Avignon and Paris with my close friend from Smith. We took the train from Milan, something I've always wanted to do, and ended up in a 17th century studio by the house of an old friend of my mom's in Saint-Hilaire-d'Ozilhan. Chuck was a grandfatherly Brazilian-American who regaled us of his human rights efforts during the Dirty Wars in South America. I felt I had arrived during the idyllic and beautiful conclusion of a film, just after the dramatic action.
Paris was also beautiful, full of the street performers I miss in Milan. I think at the end, however, Emily and I were sick of butchering the French language and both ready to get back to countries where we could be understood...
In other news, I've begun a new round of classes (my last), which means a new round of students to meet. Yesterday, I introduced myself to a 3rd year class at Cremona. When I said I was from the United States, a boy up front said he liked South Africa better.
"South Africa?" I asked, thinking maybe he meant South America, as opposed to North America, a preference I've heard before.
"Yes, South Africa."
"Well, they're very different places. What do you like about South Africa?"
"I like the Negro Woman," he said with a grin, waiting for me to be shocked.
This took me aback, I have to say, which is rare. I have become relatively accustomed to the politically incorrect (at best) and blatantly racist comments that pepper conversation here.* I raised my eyebrows and said, "Ah, well we all have our preferences. Does anyone else have a favorite country?"
A boy in the back said, "USA!" but the others remained silent. I asked, "Maybe Italy?"
"No," several kids said, others shook their heads. The first boy said, "I hate it here. When I wake up in the morning, non riesco a respirare, cioè I can't breathe."
He was Albanian, and he first immigrated to Puglia before moving up the peninsula to Milan. And he did not like Milan, for sure. I found myself defending our strange smoggy city. Look on the bright side, I said, thinking in my head that, with more knowledge of English, he might have replied, "There's no bright side, it's cloudy all the time."
In a way I understand him. Milan has offered me its share of challenges and smog. But there is much here that I don't want to leave, and sometimes I forget what a pleasure it is just to interact with strangers in Italian. To be missed when I don't go to my favorite bar, wave to the workers at my neighborhood gelateria, go on long bike rides in the sun, to be close to someone I love.
The time is creeping up when I will have to decide whether to come back for another year or not. I told my mentor that I have applied to return, and we have already made a toast to it over Cola in a fifth year class. But I am not so decided. I will have to think about what I should do, the best idea for my career and my personal development, and perhaps most of all what I want. Non lo so. We will see.

*Another example: At a world sustainability fair here Milan full of green products and charities, Fa la cosa giusta, a charity had made posters expressing solidarity for Africa. Their solidarity took the form of white Italians in blackface with wide grins. I did a double take. F called it a cagata.

Bars e caffè

And the autogestione continues. I went into school for about an hour today, read Faulkner, and chatted with Fabrizio about grammar (Does the sentence "The question was asked to her" sound as weird to you as it does to me?). Doing very little tends to make me all sorts of hungry, and since I couldn't justify lunch at 10:30am, I headed to the bar around the corner for a cappuccino e brioche (I miss my sfoglia crema I used to get in Florence, Milan is all northern-European-y and frequently shuns my pastry of choice).

I walked in and said ciao to the barman, who always responds, "Ciao prof!" Then I heard "Ciao Rachel!". One of my students from the first two months was there, milling about in her raincoat and backpack. Her mother works the cash register. I immediately switched to English. During a short and terrified exchange half in English, half in Italian, she explained that the vice-principal had sent her class home early for the day. Then she helped me pick out my brioche. The barman whipped out a plate for my pastry and put my sugar in my cappuccino for me. When I finished, I went to pay, and I found out that my lovely student had paid for me. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside. I thanked her profusely in English (sweetie!) and headed on my way...

Bars are the best. Good things tend to happen in them. At Brother's Bar, the first bar I went to in Milan and where I go every time I tutor at the family's house, the two old barmen always seem so delighted to see me. They always ask me, "Come stai?" and when I respond bene, "Ah si vedo che stai bene," and then make some comment about being too old. At the bar near the school, the young barman knows what I get, knows what kind of sugar I like (grezzo), and always calls me prof. Returning for a visit to Florence with friends from study abroad, the barmen at our favorite cafè (TabacchiBar per sempre) not only were delighted to see us but bought us our coffee. It's one of my favorite parts of Italy, the ritual of ordering an itty bitty coffee and standing by the barman to down it in a minute or two, making a mess of crumbs and cream, eavesdropping on conversations, making friends...

English as bread and butter...

On November 28th, I will have been in Milan, Italy, for two months. Two months is not the sort of anniversary that requires a fancy dinner or a ring, but it's exciting nonetheless. Because I didn't start writing this when I arrived, I have a bit of catching up to do. Here's the story so far...

Who I am:
I am about to turn 22 (beginning of boring birthdays!). I was born and raised in South Carolina, terrona americana. I attended Smith College, graduating with honors and an English major and International Relations minor. I spent a year abroad in Florence, Italy, where I discovered adventure and self-reliance. I am lost in love with books and languages (though only two languages: English and Italian. If I knew more, I would be in love with them too!). I write short stories and think of myself as a writer, though I'm lazy about it. I have a very vague idea of my future...

What am I doing in Milan:
I came here to teach at two schools, un liceo scientifico Cremona and un istituto tecnico Zappa, as a native speaking assistent. I will work at them until May. As an assistant, I am never alone in the classroom, but most of the time I plan lessons and lead class conversation. I teach in 11 different classes every week, 7 at Cremona and 4 at Zappa.
To feed myself, I've also taken up odd jobs. I stayed with a family during my first three weeks in Milan, and I still return to their house every week to tutor their four children--Chiara, 16, Cecilia, 14, Tancredi, 10, and Caterina, 7. Chiara dislikes (perhaps "dislike" is too weak a word) studying English, but her mother wants to her to take an English proficiency exam called the First Certificate. Cecilia is more enthusiastic, perhaps because usually we just chat, chiaccerare, instead of practicing tests. Tancredi groans and rolls his eyes when we work together, but he can't hide how bright he is. Caterina is adorable and a bit of a terror, who likes our time together but really just wants to draw on me with markers.
The mother of the family, Elena, also gave my resumè to Chiara's high school, un liceo classico called Parini. I didn't expect much to come of it, but they contacted me to teach a preparation course for the First. I teach this class every Wednesday. Parini is famous for being ritzy, and I can see the difference in the students when they whip out iPhones or talk about their long summer holidays bouncing around Europe. My roommates have teased me that I should find a husband there, preferably with two last names.
Lastly, the teachers at Zappa asked me to teach a conversation course just for them. Every Thursday we get together in a little classroom beside the elevators and chat (sort of) in English. They make up for their open-mouthed, blank stares with a genuine desire to learn, a desire that I don't find as often in my teenagers. I generally start from a topic (an article we are reading, how to describe our personalities) and teach them whatever comes to mind.

I am beginning to find my place here after two months. I have a better sense of the classroom, how to cajole quiet students and settle down rowdy ones. I am not afraid to joke with them or look like an idiot (though after misspelling "uninterrupted" on the board at Parini twice, I've been more paranoid about making mistakes). Even with the stress and confusion of the Italian school system, I enjoy teaching. Who knows, maybe this year will bring me some sense of purpose, or maybe it will make me ever more of a vagabond...