Word Reference

Just though I'd shout out one of my favorite sites, WordReference.com because I use it so often and have found it to be one of the best sites for learning another language (specifically, Italian). It's not like "free translations" which gives you a botched-up, literal version of what you're trying to say. While you can't really search entire strings of text, this site allows you to type in one word at a time and see it used in different phrases and even in forum discussions, which I have found to be very active and helpful, and super friendly! There are both Italian and English speakers in the forum, who are glad to answer any questions or help with translation issues. You can learn a lot about popular expressions, slang, and even some pop culture. For example, do a search regarding the phrase "TVB" or "ti voglio bene" to learn whether it means "I like you" "I love you" "I want you" or "I wish well for you."

There's also a helpful "conjugator" which allows you to type in any verb in the infinitive (or if you're not sure about the infinitive, type in a verb and it will tell you the infinitive and what tense it's in!) and get more than enough tenses to satisfy any writing need. And best of all, this is a completely free site! The only thing you would need to do is register (also free) if you want to ask a question on the forum, but browsing the forum is completely open to the public.

Finally, there's a cool browser plug-in so that you can have WordReference.com in your search bar! It couldn't be any easier to install and use:

Like I said, this site is a great word-by-word educational tool. It's not a shortcut for slackers but it will help greatly with the lifelong process of learning a new language:

English-Italian Dictionary
Italian-English Dictionary

Note: I have NOT been paid to write this (I wish). I just figured it was time I gave a shout-out to one of my all-time favorite websites which probably deserves a lot more recognition than it gets. Thanks WordReference!

Sibling Rivalry: Italian Brother Style

For dessert tonight we had strawberries with homemade whipped cream. Here is a snippet of some typical dinner-table conversation between the two brothers, which I am finally beginning to understand (they talk really quickly!):

Leo: "Who made the whipped cream? Ludovico?"
Ludo: "No, I didn't make it."
Leo: "Oh ok, in that case it's perfect."

Some things never change, huh?

Whipped cream & strawberries... uploaded by pieceoflace.

Semi-Summer: Ventotene

I had been meaning to write this post since last week, but I have been so busy with finals coming up, a doctor visit, credit card issues, and registration for the summer and fall semesters at Temple - there just wasn't time! Anyway, I went to Ventotene last weekend with some other students. It's a little island near Naples about one square mile total. We left at 6 am on Friday morning by bus to the ferry in Naples, which took about 3 hours. Then the ferry took another 2 hours.

Here I am on the Ferry

The weather that morning was a bit chilly and rainy, but by the time we got to Ventotene it had pretty much cleared up and was slightly warmer in the sun. However, our rooms were extremely cold, especially at night, as they had no heat. Most of us had not packed our winter jackets and I pretty much layered up all my shirts underneath a sweatshirt to stay warm. As long as we were in the sun, though, we were warm. Unless we were in the water of course, which was also freezing cold!

On Friday afternoon we met our tour dude for lunch, and later again for dinner which was a little pricey (as lunch had been) but still nice because all 18 of us ate together. Plus, the prices included water, bread, and wine, and primi- and secondi- plates (i.e. pasta, and then fish) and our accommodations were inexpensive and beautiful.

Hallway leading from the back of the house to the street.

View from Terrace

The terrace was so beautiful in the evening and at night, while enjoying some wine and star-gazing. I was feeling more relaxed than I have been since my arrival in Italy.

On Saturday morning we got an early start and headed to the beach. It wasn't raining anymore, and there was plenty of sun. Part of the group decided to take on the challenge that was clearly tempting: swim to the nearby volcanic rock island just off the shore. I stayed behind with everyone's towels and belongings, awaiting a call from our friend Tim who was organizing a tour for later that day. The group made it to the rock and stayed for about an hour, basking in the sunshine and taking in the views. Everything seemed to be fine except one person who stayed on another small rock about 10 feet away the entire time. Turns out, it was our friend Lindsey who had become slightly hypothermic due to the extremely cold water on the way over, and on the way back she refused to get into the water again. The rest of the group returned, explaining that they had stayed for so long to try and warm up again. I myself swam about halfway over to meet them as they were returning, and felt my chest constricting. Ultimately, an ex-lifeguard friend had to swim out and rescue Lindsey from her perch on the smaller rock with a type of surfboard.

After all these festivities, Tim came and told us where and when to meet for our tour of Santo Stefano, another volcanic island rising out of the Mediterranean, visible from Ventotene.

This is the view from our rooftop terrace of Santo Stefano.

Several of us grabbed a quick lunch; delicious and outdoors!

"Jardino" Restaurant for Lunch

After our long morning at the beach on Saturday, we took a little boat to visit Santo Stefano. At least, half of us took a boat... the other half took something that more closely resembled an inflatable raft with a motor, including myself.

The Guys on the Dinky Boat

The Calm, Safe Harbor of Ventotene

Leaving the Calm, Safe Harbor

The buildings sitting atop the Isola di Santo Stefano served as a prison from the early 1800's until the 1960's. They held many political, war, and other prisoners, under the precept that criminals could be redeemed. It is now privately owned and treacherous to visit! Since we'd experienced the chill of the water that morning, none of us really wanted to repeat the experience in the late afternoon as the sun was disappearing. Anyway, we safely arrived at the island, muscles tense from holding on so tight to the rope running around the raft.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Then we had to climb up some very uneven stone stairs.

It was a long way up!

At the top, we had a "tour" in Italian. There was a woman there who knew English and Italian so she translated some of it for us. When the other Italians on the tour realized some of us knew a little Italian, they asked us what the heck we were doing there from America. We told them we were studying in Rome so they kind of understood that, but few tourists visit Ventotene and even fewer ever see Santo Stefano, especially given how remote it is.

By the way, the whole complex is in a state of decay. In America, we would have had to sign a waiver for this...

But there are really some beautiful views.

The tour basically consisted of us walking up the stairs, entering the prison where the cells were located, making a circle around the outside of a middle courtyard where mass was normally held, viewing some old photos in a binder held by the tour guide, and then exiting and descending the numerous stairs to meet our raft and return to the mainland.

Inside the Complex

I believe they held religious services here.

Tyler School of Art students at work!

Just outside the prison cells. My photography skills are improving :-)

I wish I could say the way back to Ventotene was easier, but halfway to the mainland, in the open, rough water, our driver mentioned something along the lines of "si e rotto" which translates to, "it's broken" and those of us who knew some Italian freaked out a bit. However, we got back to the mainland safely with our driver manually steering by turning the motor with his bare hands. What a day!

We had another dinner with the group and our tour guide that night. Later on, we made a bonfire on the beach which was a lot of fun except for the part where I sat on a nail that was sticking out of my improvised wood bench. It was nice to feel some real heat, though. When we went back to our rooms they were slightly warmer than the night before since I had left all the windows open that day to let some sunshine and air in, but still very chilly.

The next day the weather was beautiful again. We spent some time on our terrace and some more time at the beach before heading home on the ferry at 15,00. So sad to leave!

The ferry back to Naples was super-crowded, as it was the last one leaving the island for the day.

Arriving in Naples

We got back to Rome around 20,00 Sunday. And I got back to reality. As in, maybe I need to get a tetanus shot for that nail I sat on...

Departure – Chunk 1

*I am doing these updates in a series of chunks because it’s too much for one post!

Arianna helped Sara and I book a car service to Ciampino airport for our departure Friday, since no public transportation would have been open by 3:30 on Friday morning, except maybe the Thursday night buses. For safety and sanity reasons, we decided on the car service. Massimo, it was called, i.e. “the Best,” recommended by a friend of Arianna’s. The driver picked us up in a Mercedes, and he was very nice, so I guess it was the Best. We spoke a bit of Italian, mostly about how tired we all were, and arrived at the airport in no time. The driver told me to have Arianna call him again for our return journey. But the €30 each was a bit steep, so I nodded my head, said thank you and goodbye. I think he had interpreted my Italian wrong anyway, and thought that we were spending two months in Barcelona, Berlin, and Prague before returning to Rome. So he won’t be expecting us anytime soon.

Anyway, Sara and I had tried to do an online check-in with RyanAir, but because we don’t have EU passports, it wouldn’t let us select our nationality as “American” or “United States” or any of the things which apply to us. So we nixed the online check-in idea and decided to pay the extra €4 and stand in the line to avoid confusion. Turns out, we had to go to a separate line to pay by credit card because they don’t accept cash at the check-in line, and while on that line we met a few other girls who had actually done the online check-in but had specified “Italian” as their nationality (a thought Sara and I had thoroughly considered) but they had to pay extra and stand on both lines anyway. So boo to the US for not being in the European Union. And Sara had to check one of her bags, because she was being honest and asking. Otherwise they would have let her carry it on, as she did in subsequent flights. Morals of that story: don’t specify online check-in with RyanAir if you’re not an EU national, just pay the €4 when buying the ticket originally; and don’t ask whether you need to check your bag if you don’t want to, just shove it in the overhead compartment with the help of your friend or a burly Italian man, whichever is first available.

The flight went well albeit uncomfortable, cold chairs. What do you want for low-cost though, eh?

I Miei Genitori

(My Parents)

Mom and Dad were here all weekend. They arrived safely and on time Friday morning in Rome. I met them around midday at their hotel, we had a nice lunch, and then I went to school to study while they took a short nap.

We met up again for dinner with my friend Sara at a trattoria near the Spanish Steps, called Trattoria Otello alla Concordia. Our reservation was for 7:30 but we got there a little early, and the place wasn't even open yet! So we walked around for a while and did some window shopping. After dinner mom and dad went to the hotel again to catch up on some ZZZ's because neither had slept well on the plane and they were extremely jet-lagged. Sara and I went to Art Cafe for some late-night dancing.

The next morning mom and dad woke up early for a tour of Rome which lasted until the evening. I did some studying for midterms. We met up again for dinner at a pizza place recommended by a magazine called Where Rome. It was really good pizza but very slow service. We wondered whether they had forgotten about us! In actuality, that's just the way it is here. No one got their pizza very quickly; it is probably made fresh to order.

I took a cab home and attempted to do some more studying.

On Sunday at 11,00 mom and dad met me at the Ottaviano metro stop where we walked to the Vatican city together. Arianna also met us at St. Peter's, and we all listened to the Pope's address at 12,00. Being German, his Italian accent was a little more difficult to understand, and his English as well! But it was a great experience to be in the piazza for this Catholic/Italian tradition and I was glad they had met Arianna.

In the afternoon, I took mom and dad on a bus to my school. Dad was happy to finally see the Sycamore trees lining the streets on the way over, hehe. I showed them my quasi-campus and my printmaking studio. Then we walked towards Piazza del Popolo and stopped for lunch on the way. It turned out to be a sunny day so we ate on the tables outside. We shared chicken, rice with mushrooms in a white wine sauce, meatballs with peas, bread, and Coca Cola. After lunch we headed into the Piazza, and then into Villa Borghese. Mom and dad got Gelatto and I headed back to school.

Yesterday, mom and dad did a half-day tour of a hill town where the Pope stays on vacation. They said it seemed as though the bus wasn't going to make it over the small bridges and narrow streets. The place was not tourist-y at all, and the shopowners barely spoke English. They did a wine tasting and bought some pastries from a bakery.

After class at 18,00 I met them at their hotel again, where we exchanged much-needed items from home for my heavy sweaters and winter things. Then we went to a bancomat so I could give dad a short-term loan, since another bancomat had eaten his credit card the day before! When this was done, we ventured over to Casa Mia (my house) for dinner with Arianna and the kids.

Gifts were exchanged, and Italian words. Mom did very well! Maybe better than me as far as comprehension :-/

We had dinner of tortellini soup, my favorite bread with nuts, bread with olives, polpetone (like a meatloaf), meat with a "salsa verde" (green sauce), and dessert of fragole from Spain (strawberries) and homemade panna (whipped cream). And wine to compliment the dishes. Arianna is a great host :-)

My parents really enjoyed the dinner. We talked about a lot of different things like food (of course), colleges in the United States, taxes, previous homestay students, Iraq and the war, customs, family, and much more - in Italian and broken Italian. It lasted for a few hours and then Arianna graciously drove us back to the hotel. My parents have now experienced pretty much every mode of transportation possible in Rome... airplane, cab, metro, bus, car, and on foot! We said goodnight and goodbye, and Arianna and I went back home.

Today my parents are in Firenze (Florence) and I have a midterm at 18,00. Poo. I will be updating this post with pictures later tonight.

Play, Play, Pray

Carnevale is officially over now, but I posted some Venice photos - stolen from Facebook, courtesy of Denise - in my Picasa album.

*Teaser*

From La Dolce Vita: Month Two

The Chinese New Year was this weekend, so on Sunday there was a celebration in Piazza del Popolo. Pictures also posted from that.

From La Dolce Vita: Month Two

For Ash Wednesday (exactly one week ago), a few of us attended service at a cathedral called Chiesa Pontificia di San Gioacchino ai Prati di Castello. Yep, that's the whole name. It was all in Italian but I understood a great deal of the sermon, which was predictably about the meaning of Lent and that it is a time to return to the Lord, not just to give up a bad habit.

The cathedral was beautiful and "la cenere" (the ashes) were placed on our hair, accompanied by the traditional phrase: "Ricordati che sei polvere e in polvere tornerai" (Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return).

Taken from the bulletin:
• La cenere ricorda che siamo niente, siamo polvere, siamo creature; è simbolo di caducità e di penitenza. L'uscire dai nostri posti per ricevere te ceneri esprime la nostra volontà di impegnarci in questi quaranta giorni nell'ascolto della parola del Signore e nella conversione.

My (fairly literal) translation:
• The ashes remind us that we are nothing, we are dust, we are creatures; it is symbolic of our falling and of penitence (of sins and penitence). The going out of our place (out of our way) to receive ashes expresses our desire of undertaking in these 40 days in listening to the word of the Lord and in the conversion.

My (interpretive) translation:
• The ashes remind us that we are nothing, we are dust, we are but creatures; it is symbolic of sins and of penitence. By going out of our way to receive ashes, we express our desire to undertake in these 40 days of Lent the listening to the word of the Lord and self-conversion.

Aided by Webster, now I can see the problem professional translators have in keeping the fidelity of the words versus expressing their meaning as un-clumsily as possible. Nevertheless, you get the point.

Italian Keyboards

Interesting to note that the Italian keyboard differs slightly from its American counterpart. Punctuation marks are in different locations, so I keep making weird typos, and the @ key is impossibly hard to find when attempting to send e-mails. I still hesitate for a good 6 seconds every time I go to send something before I find it again - which, by my book, is molto lento (very slow). You have to hit the "Alt+Gr" key in order to type it. Whatever that means. Alt+Gr, you're crampin' my style!!

Also included in this fascinating keyboard are shortcuts for € (Alt+Gr+E) and àèìòù near the Enter key, plus éç°§ accessible with the Shift key. And a host of other pecularities which make me very conscious of my fingers while typing, such as a minuscule Shift key on the left.

I'm just glad I didn't study abroad in Temple Tokyo. Imagine how lost I'd be on THAT keyboard...

Verba volant, Scripta manent

(Not Italian, teehee)

My homestay family was talking about this expression a few weeks ago. They explained it to me with gestures, and Italian words, because it is in Latin. The kids study Latin, Greek, and English classes at school... English least of all.

The translation goes something like:
Spoken words fly away /
While written ones stay

So here's to the written word...!

And speaking about the, well, spoken word, tonight was particularly interesting because I was trying to explain to Arianna the concept of "hanging out." Slang is realllllly hard to translate. Our conversation went like this:

• Arianna: Esci stasera? (Are you going out tonight?)
• Me: No, non esco. Voglio andare alla Residenza, ma purtroppo, i "guests" non vanno dopo l'undici. Dopo le venti-tre.
  (No, I'm not going out. I want to go to the Residence, but unfortunately, guests cannot go after 11 o'clock. After 23 o'clock -- notice how I corrected myself!)
• *Arianna makes some comments, she understands what I am saying, yes this is Italian law for Residences, etc.*
• Me: Sì, devo incontrare le amiche che vivano negli appartamenti!
  (Yes, I need to meet girl friends who live in apartments!)
• *Arianna makes some inquiries about the other homestay girls, thinking I must be talking about them, and remarks yet again at the fact that there are only 4 of us. She says that in the other program, Italidea, there are more homestay students.*
• *I tell here in more broken Italian that yes, most of the students from Temple are in the Residence, and that I don't really know any with independent housing (i.e. appartamento indipendente). Then I make a big mistake in trying to describe that I just want to "hang out" or "chill" tonight somewhere, but that it is very difficult with the Residence rule.*
• Perché non? In Roma, devi andare alla Colosseo, alla cinema. Forse vedi un film inglese!
  (Why not? In Rome, there is so much to do at night... you can go to the Colosseum, to the cinema. Maybe you would like to see a film in English!)

So now my host mom thinks that we are all lazy Americans who do not want to see Rome at night. All I was trying to say is that we've had a long week and would like to do something calm now!

ALLORA, how do you describe "chill" or "hang out" to an Italian?
Restiamo a casa? (We are staying home)
Facciamo chiacchiera? (We are making small-talk, chit-chat)
Non usciamo? (We are not going out)
Sai-tu? (Do you know)
Capito? (Have you understood)
Ummm? (Self-explanatory)

You don't.