3 months have passed already...

Can you believe it, I'm halfway done with my time here in Italy.

It's been a bit of a sobering thought for me because I feel like I've only scratched the surface in terms of my work and my projects at Cossato. I've done alot of observations and learned alot... you should see my notes... comparable to notes for a novel! Honestly the methodologies for teaching students is so different here that I'm not even confident anymore that I can impart any knowledge or advice because the thinking is different. It's frustrating.

Other than that, I've got 3 months left and I want to try (TRY) to use the rest of my time to visit as much of northern Italy as I can and visit with the different Italian Fulbright alumni to Gallaudet (the teacher I work with is one of them)... they are valuable resources here in Italy.

I'm exhausted - spent the weekend at a conference in Verona, Italy, which is close to Venice. If only I could have gone to Venice as well!! I was sorely tempted to take a couple days off from Cossato to go to Venice after Verona, but time is so precious, and everyday I have something important to do. Today I taught my first ASL class... it went well, but I hope I wasn't too basic! Luckily my students are interpreters of LIS, so they already have a strong foundation of sign language knowledge from which they can use to understand ASL (grammar, especially). It was strange, at the end of class I had one person come up to review the info I'd taught them in class, applying to themselves (name, age, where from, family, pets). She said, ok, go ahead and ask me. I had to remember this is Italy... students are used to the teacher doing "interrogation" in which the teacher asks the student a barrage of questions to see how well they know a topic. Ha! She missed one sign, and was like, oh!!!! I didn't pass did I? I laughed and said she did great.

Here's a story from last week...

While waiting for Daniele to get off work so I could ride with him back to Biella, I went to the bar close to the elementary school and did some work on my laptop. The guy working at the bar is not the owner, but works there once in a while in place of the owner. He was talking with his friends who were playing games on those casino tv things at the bar, reading the newspaper, or just rattling off in Italian as they always do. I was working on my laptop when I saw them get up, put their jackets on, and tuck cigarettes behind their ears with lighters in their hands. The assistant was just coming around the corner of the bar when an old couple came in. I saw him roll his eyes and slump his shoulders as he bent down to give the old woman a kiss on either cheek and talk to them. They stood in the same spot for about 10 minutes, with the man giving obvious body language that he really wanted to go outside for a smoke. The couple was either oblivious to his need, or they didn't care. I'm leaning towards the previous.

I was trying not to laugh, when his friends looked my way. They probably thought I was eyeing the assistant, because ever since that day he has made a point of waving when he sees me. The friends went outside, lit up, while the assistant, stuck inside, was visibly agitated by the nicotine addiction nagging away at him. The older couple finally left through the back door, and he started his way towards the door, the cigarette having migrated from behind his ear to between his lips when a middle-aged salesman came in the bar with a big briefcase of samples for sale. His shoulders slumped again, he rolled his head, and spent time talking with the salesman, all the while the cigarette was bobbing up and down between his lips. His friends by now had come back into the bar, a noxious, dark cloud of cigarette smoke wafting in after them.

I continued my work with an eye out for what was going on - after what must have been an agonizing 10-15 minutes, the salesman finally left and then the assistant started sweeping the bar. He still had his coat on and the unlit cigarette was still between his lips. No one was in the bar - his friends had left by now and I was the only customer left. I started to think maybe he wanted me to leave so he could smoke in peace. I looked up at him several times but I couldn't communicate with him what I wanted to say, so I just made gestures that he should go outside and smoke. Finally he walked out to smoke. An amazingly fast 45 seconds later, he was back inside, cloud of cigarette smoke lingering just outside the door of the bar, visible through the window from my seat. Nicotine habit satisfied, he was smiling and bustling about.