Italian Bureaucracy and Other Musings

I was supposed to teach English to my tiny Italians (five-year-olds!) Wednesday morning at 10am. However, this being Italy, plans changed. The service director called at 9,00 (I’m getting to like the 24-hour clock; it saves some confusion) to say he’d talked to the teacher who had said, no, it was actually 11,00 that I was teaching. We arrived, therefore at about ten till eleven. We first went to the door of the preschool and tried to get the attention of the teacher to ask where the entrance to the kindergarten was. While she made her way over, there was a whole posse of two-year-olds with their hands and faces pressed against the glass, staring up incredulously at the blond lady in the garish red coat (Italians tend to dress in more somber colors) and the incredibly tall man (Mike, our service director, is 6’5’’). I wish I could teach them, instead . . . not that they’d actually learn, but playing with small children counts as service, right? So we finally found the door to the scuola materna, and the teacher came to meet us to say that, actually, it was Monday, and at 10,30, and, besides, she had to check with the students’ parents and let them know they were starting to study English first. This explanation actually took about 10 minutes of incredibly fast Italian, after which she shook my hand and asked if that would work, and all I think of to say was “Sì.” I swear Italians must think my language skills are none too grand because I don’t quite have the quick response thing down. I can understand what they’re saying darn near perfectly, and all I have to say in response is “sì” or “no” or “va benne,” which means okay. At any rate, this sort of organizational difficulty is apparently typical and perhaps the reason why no two clocks in any home or office will give the same time and the buses are always arriving early or late. Not that I’m complaining. A relaxed sense of punctuality actually suits me quite well.
Now, for your viewing pleasure, a couple of pictures of what this lovely city looks like in the winter.





Also, a short Italian lesson o’ the day:

When in a shop or restaurant, to be more polite and avoid directly demanding something, you can use, of course, the conditional:

Vorrei la pane con olive. I would like the break with olives.

Or, as we talked about in class today and I’ve heard a few times, you can use the imperfect:

Volevo la pizza margherita. I was wanting the pizza margherita