La vita napoletana

Bondì!

Ok, so..wow. A lot has happened. This is going to be a long post – let me warn you. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to update. It’s actually about 7am right now. I woke up with a mal di pancia* and because of the time change I can’t go back to sleep. Comunque*! After we last spoke, I made it to Brussels and had the most torturous 5 hour wait in my life! Luckily on my plane to Brussels I met a women, Nancy, who was also going to Naples to visit her daughter who had just had a baby on the Navy base here. We walked around the airport, exchanged money and that lasted for about…two hours. Then we just kind of sat there and tried not to fall asleep.

Then my plane to Naples kept on being delayed and kept on being delayed by ten minutes and by the end I got into Naples almost 40 minutes later than expected. Then we got off the plane and took a bus to the arrivals area and waited for our luggage. For those of you who already know, you know I have HORRIBLE luck with receiving my luggage when I travel internationally. Well…I ended up waiting for almost TWO hours for my bag but luckily, it did come. I was ready to dare uno schiaffo* to some Neapolitan men who kept on cutting me off to see the incoming baggage.

Then I came out and saw Serena which was such a nice pleasure. We grabbed a taxi and headed to my place, about a 20 minute ride. Then we got to my place. Oh. My. Gosh. I am going to upload pictures as soon as possible but believe you me, it is more than I expected. It’s simply divine and simply, Neapolitan. Walking up to my apartment I heard people shouting in Neapolitan, “We we, me ch’ vuo’ fa’ staser’?”* and “Te rap’ a’ capp’ sce’!”*. I met Alessia, which was a bit comical because I’ve come to learn that most Italians, when they first met, shake hands. But then afterwards, when they’re ready to go, they kiss each other’s cheek. Well, Alessia was expecting to kiss me on the cheek and I was expecting to shake hands, we ended up colliding and laughing. I surprised her with how well I spoke Italian. I dearly love my apartment and she’s a lovely girl. The area is full of kind hearted and quite nosy Italians – which I’m perfectly OK with!!!

I ended up unpacking halfway and then Alessia made dinner (penne with le zucchini and prosciutto) when Eugenio arrived. He and I then finished unpacking everything and he left and I happily (and tiredly, because I didn’t sleep at all on the flights) went to sleep.

This morning I woke up, took a shower and Alessia and I walked to my orientation (also where I will talk classes, al Palazzo Mediterraneo dell’Orientale). I had already been there before with Serena so I was a LITTLE familiar with the surroundings, which is comforting. We got there, I met my Architecture professor – she’s studied with some famous people at some famous universities and spoke English 100% perfectly (although with a British accent!). She seemed wonderful, I’m actually excited for the class. Then I met some administrators and for the rest of the morning we talked about CIEE, what they’re about, what I’m to expect, how to handle emergencies etc. etc. But tomorrow (or I should say today, seeing how early it is) we’re going to cover academics and things. Anyway, then we had lunch with a bunch of Serena’s students (who all spoke English). And it happened, again.

Everytime I’m with a large group of Italians who don’t know me, they’re ALL sooo nervous to talk to me, especially if they speak/study English. They feel that I might not speak Italian very well or that I might judge them for their English. So it takes them a minute to warm up to me, so I always put forth an effort to be charming in Italian. Usually after the second time of meeting me, they’re ready to be friends haha. But we ate at La figlia del presidente, which there is a famous pizzeria that’s named the president and so to start a chain they have the president’s daughter and the president’s son. And then we went back to L’Orientale and ate a ciambella* that a girl named Assia had made. It was a lot of fun because I got to talking linguistics with a boy named Gateano and then I spoke in Portuguese with another boy named Jon (I think). Then we went back to Orientation and we finished early, much to the surprise to Serena. We went up to the CIEE office and filled out a permesso di soggiorno which, in Italy, after you get your visa you have to stop by a police station but before you do you need to send in a request to be summoned by the police station to sort of say, “Hey, I’m here in Italy with a visa so in case if you arrest me or something, I won’t have illegal status!”. This morning Serena and I are going to drop that off by the post office. Then I came back to the apartment (it takes right about 25 minutes walking) and then Eugenio came over. Alessia ended up going out and he and I cooked spaghetti with olio (that was flavored with garlic). Eugenio ended up leaving and Serena had called him with some bad news – she wasn’t going to swing by to pick me up and Alessia has something to do.

So I’m on my own this morning to find il Palazzo Mediterraneo by myself! But I remember the street fairly well and it’s not too difficult to get to, it’s just a map is kind of useless because street names aren’t written, they’re just sort of known by Neapolitans haha. It’ll be interesting.

But before going to bed last night I was looking for an open network and managed to find it. I was online for oh…about ten minutes before they figured out that I was connected and put a password on it, haha. So this weekend I need to get one of those wireless flash drives, a cellphone (which I’ve come to find out is essential), a bigger converter for my laptop and some groceries.

But anyway. Now that I’ve written a lot, I should probably get off of here. I’ll try to post these (what I’m doing is writing them in a Word document and saving them) the next chance I get. I feel sort of disconnected from my home world right now, which I suppose is a good thing but also a bad thing. Anyway. Pictures to come!

Ciao cari miei,

Kevin

*stomache, anyway!, to slap/hit, dude, what do you want to do tonight?, I’m going to kick your ass, idiot!, a donut/cake dessert