Summer Coma

I have been officially unemployed for a little more than a week. This is the first time that I've spent a week in Bologna without working in more than 14 months - all of my vacation since then has been spent in Cambridge or (even cooler) Korea.

So it's been nice to see Bologna during the day, on weekdays. To actually be able to go through the day without worrying about having time to anything not related to work - grocery shopping, ironing, cleaning. All the boring stuff. But I've also been able to see more of the people I care about, and I've eaten good gelato. I registered for a library card and as dorky as it is, I'm extremely excited to start taking out books. Even better, tonight I went to dinner in the hills outside Bologna to eat a meal that's already been immortalized more than once on this blog - basically, bread and meat and cheese. But it's so good.



The restaurant is in an incredibly beautiful place, which looks like this.



Or more specifically, like this.



It's really hot here, but I have lots of sunscreen - brought from the US, where SPF 20 isn't the highest level of protection and doesn't cost 30 euros a bottle - and tap water runs freely. I don't regret the decision I made to leave my job, at all, even though I really don't enjoy the uncertainty of not knowing what comes next. I do miss my coworkers, but that probably won't change, because they're wonderful. I'll just have to get used to it.



Bologna is emptying out. Almost everyone I know is leaving for vacation next weekend. And I might be going too! We'll see. Plans are in the works for a trip to southern Italy. Hopefully I'll be able to re-imprint my brain with something other than memories from my trip south during June, which was less than ideal (to put it mildly).

It feels like it's really time to relax and I'm excited. My anxious brain needs to calm down for a bit, even if I have to force it. This is what summer should look like.

I Do

Skipping ahead a few weeks in my list of things to blog about, I want to write about the wedding I went to this weekend! Guido, one of my beloved ex-coworkers, got married on Saturday. Our entire office went, bosses included, and we had a good time - this was not a drunken celebration wedding, but a calm nice pretty wedding. Strangely, the live musicians also played Hava Nagilah - why on earth an Italian band would ever know this song, I have no idea. But one of the guests actually got onstage and sang along, and I felt a moment of Jewishness! (It helps that my choir is learning the song, so I actually know all the words.)



Anyway, the beautiful couple is pictured above, trying to avoid the rice that they were being pelted with. For my readers who actually want to know what her dress looked like - and it was an amazing dress - it's pictured below.



This wedding was an anomaly because the food was really good, the flowers remained perfect, the musicians had endless energy, and the newlyweds stayed pretty and fresh all night long. However, this is all very much in the style of Guido, so I believe it.



Pictured above is a collection of my male ex-coworkers. Is it any surprise that I have one of the vastest repertories of vulgar Italian language of anyone I know - including Italians? (And yes, I'm proud of it!)



This is me with Giovanna, who was my wholehearted supporter during all of the drama that took place at work over the past month. She fed me, reacted sympathetically yet wryly to my tears, lost sleep over my own problems and defended me with all her might. Pretty great, right?

Giovanna told me the bouquet-throwing story of her wedding. As a hard-core feminist with pink hair, Giovanna invited like-minded friends to her wedding. When it was time to toss the bouquet, she turned her back and blindly hurled the flowers, as tradition requires - only to turn around and find that all of her friends had fled the scene. The only woman remaining was her sister, who despite standing alone and having 100% bouquet winning potential, had let the flowers fall to the ground. No one received a guaranteed marriage that year.



That's me with Francesca, who was my partner in Marketing and Communications shenanigans. She titled this photo, "The Model and the Dwarf" - and yes, I do look way too tall. But really I just wanted to show you my awesome dress.



A general shot of the chaos that follows us around. But also, doesn't Guido look remarkably fresh and awake for a just-married man? There's an Italian tradition that I don't really understand, in which the groom has friends over for drinks while he gets ready to go to the church or town hall to get married. Anyway, Guido had 80 (!!) friends at his apartment, drinking, while he was getting dressed. Ten minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start, he still wasn't ready. But he managed to show up in fine form, regardless.

Here we are on take two - Sara, another ex coworker, looks quite inebriated. Already.



And of course, the dancing . . . which was interesting.

Thinking Time

It's funny how the past two summers have brought huge changes to my life even though I've been out of school (and therefore the summer should be a part of the year like any other).

Last summer I went home, went to Korea, and settled into my job. It was a whirlwind, but despite the confusion I felt as if I'd made the decision to make a go of my life in Italy.

This summer things are different. A year has passed in Bologna - I feel more confident with my Italian, I feel more rooted socially, I've become more attached to the city. And it looks like I'll also be leaving my job. So things have changed a lot.



I know that I want to stay here, at least for now. Strangely, my non-school life ha s only taken place in Bologna (I almost called it "my grown-up life", but that it is not!!). I'm probably more attached to things here than I would be if I'd stayed in the States, because being on my own has led me to invest more energy into everything I've done. And giving a lot, you receive a whole lot in return. I think that the most wrenching part of this change will be saying goodbye to my office and my coworkers. I was incredibly lucky to find a job among a group of young people who have been incredibly understanding and supportive. Our office has become my point of reference, and in its own way, my home away from home. I know how everyone drinks their coffee, what they eat for lunch, how they express their thoughts, how they dress. I know everyone's bathroom schedules! So it's not going to be easy to leave, and the next few weeks will probably be pretty sad for me because of it. But adjustments always happen, even if they happen slowly.



In the meantime, instead of having deep or heavy thoughts, I need to figure out what I'm going to do with my free time (other than look for work). I've had some thoughts of my own. Like, buy a bathing cap and actually try swimming for athletic purpose. Or visit some of the cities nearby that I've still never seen - Parma, Pesaro, Mantova. Or try cooking more often. In the end, there are lots of possibilities . . . Do you have any suggestions?

Dreaming of Beaches

It's so hot in Bologna. Doesn't this water look nice? It's really that color, too. I took the photo in Tropea, a town on the coast of Calabria. That's the part of Italy that's the toe of the boot. I have to say that it won my love for one thing in particular: Calabrese cooking is full of hot pepper.



And it's extra special because the surrounding regions DON'T have the same prevalence of spiciness: this tradition evolved because of specific geographic and cultural requirements in this little pocket of the world. The motivation is the same as it is in Korean cooking (and maybe every cuisine that uses lots of hot pepper?): spice helps preserve food. So there's super spicy sausage, and preserved vegetables, and regular old hot peppers everywhere. At the restaurant where we ate dinner, you are given a platter of 4 different kinds of hot pepper condiments. The best ones were the round little hot peppers stuffed with tuna and capers.

I miss Korean food.

Anyway, I also wanted to write a little bit about the birthday dinner I had before leaving for the trip. It was badly planned, at the last minute (my fault!) but it was still a really touching, happy dinner, with some of the people who are most important to me in Italy.



Perhaps the most notable present was from Massimo, who gave me a series of books to facilitate my life goal (as he sees it): becoming Italian. I have now, at my disposal, four books to study: one each on Bolognese cooking, soccer, dealing with idiot bosses, and sex. Apparently these are the four main points of Italian life; here I reserve the right not to comment.



My lovely friends made me feel very special. And it was pretty unexpected, really, considering that I haven't been in Italy for very long and I was feeling a bit down about the fact that I was spending my birthday away from home. Grow up, Emma! It was wonderful.



We ate at my favorite restaurant, San Carlino, to be found about 50 feet from my house. Very convenient. They also had my favorite main course, which is baby pig cooked in milk. Sounds strange, but it's amazing.


So, in the end my birthday went just fine. Thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate.

And my lovely roommate has left me for Barcelona. I'll have to go find her one of these weekends! Maybe I'll find a beach when I go there.

Trials and Tribulations

This is a little entry meant to tide you (or me) over until I gather my thoughts and actually write about the past few weeks.



Thanks to everyone who wrote birthday wishes up here. Meglio che lo scrivo in italiano: grazie a tutti che mi hanno fatto auguri! (Considerando che eravate quasi tutti italiani.) I actually spent my birthday in Sicily, on the first leg of a Wine Tour (sponsored by work) for which I was the translator/guide. In this case, obviously, I was a co-guide - because what do I know about the indigenous grapes of Southern Italy? But I learned an incredible amount of information. Simultaneous interpreting will do that to your brain - you're forced to absorb the info so that you can regurgitate it properly.



The tour was a massive challenge for me personally, emotionally, mentally - in every which way. I've only been back home for about 18 hours, so I haven't really processed it yet. However, I wanted to list a couple things I learned. Did you know that . . .

- A certain kind of grape native to Puglia grows in heat resistant soil?
- That in Calabria you can drink wine made from the same grapes that Ancient Greeks used for the celebratory wine at the Olympics?
- That the pressure created by fermenting wine can break a sheet of glass three inches thick?
- That you can put a train on a ferry boat? (Between Sicily and the mainland.)
- That there are cities in Southern Italy where you can see old cave dwellings that are 10,000 years old?

And most importantly . . . that in the south, you can find a level of warmth and hospitality that, in my cynical American brain, I had never even imagined? The people I met on this tour, especially in the vineyards we visited, made me grateful to live in Italy, and even a little bit proud.



I also learned that I'm stronger than I thought. I hope that I can hold on to that.

Pause in Action

I'm currently traveling for work, and I have lots of photos of my birthday that I wanted to put up here, but instead I'm using the resources I have at hand.

The photos below were taken by the amazing camera of Robert Marnika, who has recently been visiting our choir and possibly thinking of joining. (We need more baritones!) Robert is Croatian, and runs an amazing-sounding photo workshop in Croatia in August. Worth drooling over.

He lent the camera to my friend Michele, who then took these photos (which I love). There are quite a few crazy-looking ones of me, which will not go into this entry, but I liked many others. We had a party last Friday, with lots of wine and music, and these were the results. (The above photo was taken by me, in the hills outside Bologna. I think it's some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen in Italy, but I might just be biased.)

Dancing!


Critiquing photos.


Sarah, sei bellissima e abbronzattissima. Colpa del giardino! (E vedi che ti ho scritto un messaggio in italiano?)


This is me being Korean. Jean, do you appreciate the peace sign?


Also, the poetry reading that I mentioned below went off without a hitch. I actually managed to speak in Italian in front of 50 people and I wasn't too much of an idiot. I spoke in sentences, didn't sweat too much or turn neon red (as I am wont to do), and I read my poem from start to finish. How amazing is that?

Traveling to New Places

I'm about to go to a poetry reading organized by my friend Carla, in which foreigners will read poems from their native countries, accompanied by an Italian translation. I chose an E.E. Cummings poem, which I've pasted below in English and in Italian. I originally chose it by instinct - I read it and I loved it immediately. But later I realized that it's really perfect for the event. The idea of opening one's heart, for me, is very closely related to the experience I've had as a foreigner in Italy. For all that it's been difficult or exhausting, it's also been an incredible rewarding 20 months. So, while I harness my stage fright, enjoy. (The photo above is a classic Bologna skyline, taken from my friend's rooftop terrace. Bologna is so beautiful!)


[somewhere i have never travelled]


somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands



In un luogo dove non ho mai viaggiato


Da qualche parte ove non ho mai viaggiato, gioiosamente aldilà
D’ogni esperienza, gli occhi tuoi hanno il loro silenzio:
Nel tuo gesto più lieve è un qualcosa che mi cattura
O che non posso toccare, perché mi è troppo vicino.

Uno sguardo tuo, il più rapido dei tuoi sguardi mi dischiuderà
Sebbene mi sia chiuso in me come si chiudono le dita nella mano
Tu poi sempre mi schiudi, petalo dopo petalo, come la Primavera apre
(con tocco esperto, nel mistero) la sua prima rosa.

O se vorresti chiudermi, la mia vita e
me stesso ci chiuderemo a riccio, all’improvviso, splendidamente
Come quando il cuore di questo fiore si raffigura
La neve che scende piena di cura, in ogni dove.

Non sentiremo nulla, nulla in questo mondo
Che il potere eguagli della tua fragilità intensa
Le cui forme mi stringono nei colori delle sue terre
Donando morte ed eternità ad ogni suo respiro.

(Non so cosa in te abbia il potere di chiudere e aprire
Soltanto, in me qualcosa mi dice
Che la voce dei tuoi occhi è più profonda di ogni rosa)
Nessuno, neanche la pioggia, ha mani più minute.

The First Constitution

It's strange that my brain is still on a school year calendar, even though I've been in Italy, and working, since 2006. Now that we're on the border between spring and summer, I feel like all the hard work should be winding down, and it's time for vacation. Is it ever possible to stop thinking like a student?

Bologna is already hot and humid. Now that it's warm after the sun goes down, at nighttime the streets are flooded with students. In the area of the university, people even sit down along the sidewalks (and sometimes in the street) to drink and talk. It's really nice, unless you need to get around them, and then it becomes an obstacle course.

Something happened at choir practice a couple weeks ago, one of those events that makes me think, "this could only happen in Italy". I also have the "this could only happen in the US" reaction, like when I see the selection of salad dressing in the supermarket, but I think you'll get the idea when I describe this anecdote.

Next weekend my choir will perform in Florence, at the Palazzo Vecchio, in the most important room (the Salone dei Cinquecento). Because the event commemorates the creation of the Italian republic, the concert will be accompanied by a reading of the Italian Constitution. My conductor described to us his efforts to pair certain songs with particular passages: for example, after the passage about womens' rights, we'll sing a lamentation (really a lullaby) of the pain of being a woman without choices.

After providing us with a few examples, my conductor admitted, "It's really difficult, because most songs are about love, and there's not much about love in the Constitution."

In the silence that followed, one of the tenors responded, "But love is the first constitution."

We applauded, my conductor bowed. The next day I bumped into Elio, the tenor, on the street. He didn't even remember what he'd said.

Superheroes

This is a much belated post that I've been meaning to write for weeks now: in April, I went to Modena with some friends/coworkers to eat a traditional Modenese dinner as chosen by Massimo, a beloved ex-coworker. There was also Letizia, who was an adored work companion, Tiziano, and Massimo's girlfriend, Katia.

The food is pictured above. It centers around gnocco and tigelle, the bread - gnocco is like fried dough (but it's savory, not sweet), and tigelle are like little English muffins. They come to the table piping hot, and you put in prosciutto and other meats, with soft cheeses like squacquerone (try saying that 10 times fast). That cheese is actually from the other half of this region (Romagna), and I have no idea how it ended up in a meal that's traditionally Emiliano. Suffice to say that these longstanding rival areas will just have to admit that they eat the same food.

One of the highlights was lardo, pictured below. It's a mixture of lard, bacon, rosemary and garlic (I hope I got that right, Massimo must correct me if I'm wrong). You put it on the hot bread and then sprinkle on parmesan cheese, and make a little sandwich out of it. I have to say that it did not appeal to me much at first, but it's sooooooo good and sort of addictive that you can't stop eating once you start.



Anyway, this fat-saturated meal is accompanied by cut up raw vegetables, which you dip into a bowl of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Incidentally, balsamic comes from Modena. It's so, so good. And somehow the acid-y vegetables cut the fat of the bread/lard variations, so that you can go on forever. (My parents may or may not be proud to know that I was the last standing at the table, eating-wise. Not just because I'm slow, but because I ate everything in sight!)

The post-dinner activity was one of the more bizarre experiences I've ever had in Italy. Katia works in an action figure importing company, and she took us to visit her office. This is an insane place. There are action figures of every type, all over the place, including some very gory ones with blood tubes that you can use to make vivid injury scenes. The mechanically animated figures, some of which are monsters, are light activated. Katia explained that it could be a bit scary to work in a place where monster figures randomly start talking when you turn the lights on. Indeed, it was incredibly creepy.



Tiziano enjoyed the blood and gore. (Typically!)



Massimo enjoyed the laser swords. (This is what the company owner's office looks like. And the entire place was like this. There were toys on every available surface. Literally. Can you imagine having light sabers and 3-D Godfather posters and Simpsons action figures in your office? For business purposes??)



All in all, we had an enriching experience. Gastronomically and culturally.



Postscript: At the end of the evening I was forced to harass this poor statue, which was completely dusty and forgotten at the beginning of the stairwell. Massimo and Tiziano, in particular, were hoping for obscene gestures. This is my original reaction - uncontrollable laughter and inability to carry out their requests. (I eventually succeeded, though. Please contact me for those photos!)

Baking Red Velvet Cake and Other Pastimes

I write this blog entry in a haze of jet lag: I just got back from a 10 day trip home, which was wonderful in every way, and I will spend the next few days trying to recover. (Why is jet lag worse every time I travel?)



The trip was great. I am also proud to say that I managed to visit Vermont and Connecticut along with Massachusetts, which almost makes me feel like a world traveler (though I spent most of the travel time sleeping). I saw my wonderfully talented sister perform (twice) in a crazy and entertaining play - The Increased Difficulty of Concentration by Vàclav Havel - including a mistreated fish and a robot.

My mother and I made another famous red velvet cake. It looks scary in the early stages.



But it's amazing when finished.



Thanks to generous friends and family, I ate my fill of raw fish and all the wonderful things that I can't get in Bologna.



Raw fish and raw egg together: super protein. No salmonella.



Vermont was super beautiful. It was cold enough to wear a jacket in the house, but everything was turning green and it was nice to see spring arriving.



The landscape was somehow more wild than usual. And there were lots of animal noises, though luckily I didn't get too scared at night when I heard them from my bedroom. Without Rosa there to protect me, it could've gotten a bit hairy.



Other exciting adventures included buying my first powder-based makeup, being reunited with pickles, and trying to make a dent in the debris of my bedroom in Cambridge (which is a high-school time capsule).

My friend Natasha became a doctor, or more specifically, a PharmD, and I saw 99 people take pharmacy's version of the Hippocratic Oath. I didn't even know that such a thing existed, but Natasha's wealth of pharmacy knowledge has helped me realize that she can be my on-call doctor. We got her a cake to celebrate, since she turned 24 the day before she graduated.



Wish-making is very stressful. But spending time with close friends is not.



And we're trying to become more normal as we age.



It's always bittersweet to go back and forth between homes. There's always something on one end that you can't have on the other. If only there were a highway that connected Bologna and Cambridge. The trip would be that much easier, and maybe I could even get my family to come back and forth with me.