This is Rome...

{image via bugbog.com}

     A few people were asking me why I don’t mind the 40 minutes it takes to walk home every night...honestly, if you saw this every night, you’d be happy to do so.  I came on this trip for many reasons, but I think mostly because I wanted to see what it would be like to live here. Since I’m not independently wealthy (yet), channeling the experience through school made the most sense. I suppose I could say it is also because I’m a Classics major and studying Rome is what I do on a regular basis. In actuality, the Classics major came after my obsession with the Roman world.

     I’ve begun my Italian classes and since I haven’t studied Italian since 2005, there is much that I have forgotten. My vocab is pretty strong even if I’ve entirely lost anything besides the present tense. Studying Latin has come in handy and not just because much of the Italian language comes directly from the Latin; studying Latin taught me the basics of etymology. I don’t take to languages naturally, the way most musicians do. But I hope that once I have three solid years of both ancient Latin and Greek, I’ll be able to decipher most words by a peeling-the-onion approach...and I mean most English words.

     I don’t know why, but it always takes me about a week to figure out how to shower here. One would think that it would be like riding a bike and that my body would recall the process as soon as I was presented with a hand spray hanging in the corner, a shower basin the exact dimensions of a turkey pan, and a curtain that was probably once a bed sheet. But it always takes me a few failed attempts, a few cold, soggy episodes, and rather a lot of towels to wipe up the floor. Finally, tonight I had a satisfactory experience. I first sprayed down the wall and got the curtain to stick so there wouldn’t be water all over the floor. I carefully placed my feet so as not to occlude the drain, as the basin can overflow in exactly 14 seconds, but to be able to position my body so far forward that I would not strike the mixer with my elbow and upset what was seemingly the perfect setting. I do have plenty of hot water but no consistency. That is to say, it has never run out of hot water but merely runs back and forth from hot to cold. But the mixer still has to be on the right setting so that when it runs back to hot, one doesn’t scald oneself. Tonight was grand because I didn’t move hardly at all and that means that the shower curtain, which almost reaches the lip of the shower pan, didn’t shift, exposing the floor to the torrent.

     It has been mostly overcast and even a bit dribbly while I’ve been here. But every few days, it will be sparklingly clear, at least for a few hours. On those clear days, every cat and dog in the city will come out in the morning to catch some sun and look charming. I know if Jessie were here, she would (like every old Italian Mamma who is hunched over in her black dress, black sweater, black sneakers, and black apron) keep a bit of pasta in her pocket for the kitties. It’s a good thing I’ve been bit by dogs so many times because now I don’t fawn over animals the way I used to. I’ve snapped a few photos of the cats to use to bait Jessie to visit and spoken to them but they only respond to Italian, and I haven’t much in the way of conversazione per gatti...yet. But with when the animals come out, the streets are suddenly covered with shit. And I don’t just mean with little dishes of spaghetti and kibble...literally, the streets are covered in shit. It reminds me that I am going to Paris on Thursday.