Rattle Those Pots

September 12, 2004

Buongiorno, tutti.

Classi Continuano a Scuola (Classes Continue at School)
Thom got his first little cut from dicing, so I assume I’m next. Our classes for the second half of last week were Wine Appreciation I, Italian Regional Cuisine, and Intermediate Italian Language (aka, Hell on a Stick).

Wine Appreciation (Thursday):
Ready for this? Our instructor for this class – no joke – is Diletta Frescobaldi. (Look up the Frescobaldi site if you want more context; www.frescobaldi.it). Frescobaldi is a 700+-year-old family-owned wine business, along the lines of Antinori, the Italian winery affiliated with Apicius, with holdings in several provinces. From a U.S. angle, they’re the wine family that teamed up with Mondavi in the U.S. I saw her when I arrived, but still didn’t realize who she was, until I saw her name on the syllabus.

She’s extremely gracious and it looks like the wine classes are going to be interesting. We stayed after class for a while to chat with her, and had a great time. She’s going to take us to one of their vineyards during harvest, so we’re really looking forward to that.

Funny story from the first wine class: One of the very young American guys, named Austin, who is in our section, has appointed himself Pseudo-Instructor for every class. He seems to annoy the instructors sometimes, but seems utterly oblivious to it. For our first wine class, the tasting was for prosecco (a popular sparkling white from NE Italy). Diletta had poured it, and Austin kept repeatedly (and loudly) telling all of the students at his table to “swirl it around a lot.” We were at the table next to his, trying not to bust out laughing when Diletta gently said, “You do not want to swirl when you taste prosecco or other sparkling wines. You will disrupt the bubbles in the wine, and give a clear sign that you are uninformed.” It was funny as hell. She also had to ask the same table to “please not drink so much wine so quickly” when they grabbed for their third refills (at 10 am). Tempted by this point to say I was from Canada…

Italian Regional Cuisine (Friday):
Our instructor for our Friday class is Marcella Ansaldo. During the first class with her, we made our first pasta from scratch and our first ragu sauce. We had a ball rolling out the pasta, cutting it, stuffing it and especially folding them together into specific shapes—I had always wondered how that was done! There are dozens and dozens of different kinds/shapes of pastas, and when we were flipping through them and found one called “Capello di Prete” (Priest’s Hat), this led her to tell us the story of a related pasta: in the nearby province of Emilia Romagna, the Church was harassing residents over a myriad of issues, particularly taxes. A pasta was developed in honor of the priests who were forever appearing in province doorways for their “collection,” called “Strangolare il Prete” (Strangle the Priest), a popular choice which still exists today. We thought that was a hoot.

During that class, Marcella had already gone by to make sure my pasta was rolled thinly enough, and had worked her way back to Thom’s station. A minute later, I felt a poke on my shoulder, and she exclaimed, “Beh? You are married?” I said, “Si, mio esposo,” and gestured toward Thom. She seemed to be very entertained by that, and said, “Does everyone know this?” I answered that we hadn’t mentioned it to a bunch of folks or anything, but that the school officials of course knew. So she proceeded to stop the class to announce that we were married, and “make sure everyone knew this.” She asked if we wanted to open a ristorante or bakery, where we were from, and what our plans were, etc.

I found out from Thom after class that she had seen his ring when she’d been watching him cut his pasta, and had said “Ah, you are married. Where is your wife?” And when Thom just pointed in front of himself, she apparently got a big kick out of that. She also laughed when I said “mio esposo” about Thom, and only later told us that that was a “charming, old-fashioned way” to refer to a husband; the Florentine way would be to say “mio marito.” I can’t keep all of this straight. Much fun, though, by and large.

Intermediate Italian Language (Wednesday):
And then, there’s Italian class. Ci sono a inferno. (I am in hell.)
I couldn’t even tell you a week ago in English what the differences were between transitive, intransitive, reflexive and modal verbs. But apparently, I was supposed to know all of that as it applied to Italian verbs and irregular conjugation — in different tenses — during my first class. Non sto bene.

Now here’s what makes the problem worse: the class is entirely in Italian; our instructor, Stefano, refuses to speak anything else. And our textbooks and exercise books are all in Italian – so it took me the better part of half an hour to even figure out that “Passato Prossimo” was referring to immediate past tense auxiliary verbs plus conjugated verbs in all these ridiculous different forms – meaning, I couldn’t even figure out what was being conjugated or why – until 30 seconds before Stefano moved on to the next exercise, that is.

At the end of the class he said stick with it for another week because my fumbling conversation was “somewhat understandable” (how encouraging), but all I wanted to say was, “Oh sure, now you’ll speak English, now that class is over.” I figured that wouldn’t earn me many sympathy points, though…

Noi Prima Volta per “Il Gioco” (Our First Time for “The Game”)
We have officially experienced our first bit of soccer culture in Florence, having witnessed locals watching matches on television yesterday afternoon and today. Even though the games are great, they pale in comparison to the sheer entertainment of watching the very emotional reactions of a bunch of worked-up Florentines – particularly the older gentlemen. “Vai! Vai a destra, ora!” (Go! Go right, now!), “Dio mio!” (My God!), and the often-used “Andiamo! Andiamo!” (Let’s go! Let’s go!).

Bars will transform from complete silence with zombie-looking men of all ages at the tables, to uproarious hysterics in under a second. It took a whopping two minutes for a beaming Thom to announce he was going to try to see a lot of games. Coincidence that in my Inglese pocket dictionary, “soccer” falls right before “sofa?” Probably not.

Un Regalo di Amico di Charlie (A Gift from Charlie’s Friend)
A couple of days ago, Filipo, our 8-year-old tutor, presented us with “la palla per CHARRRlee” (a miniature soccer ball for Charlie). It was so great—he spent five minutes trying to get us to understand that “the sponge ball won’t pop if Charlie bites it.” We didn’t know “sponge” or “pop” in Italian yet, so for a while I thought he was trying to tell us Charlie might choke on it. In the end, Filipo resorted to hand signals and the Slow Americans finally caught on…

What made it so much fun was how excited he was about giving his gift. We found out later that night that during the first week of summer vacation, Filipo was at the coffee bar with his mom (Cinzia, Marco’s gal and his partner in the coffee bar), and he was bored. So Cinzia gave him 20 euros and said he could go buy a toy.

He was gone for quite a while, so everyone just assumed he was taking his time looking for the neatest, biggest toy his 20 euros would buy. But what he wound up doing was buying a tiny toy for himself, and spending the bulk of his euro stash on a ceramic napkin holder of Florence to go on his mom’s coffee bar. Here’s the kicker, though: the note beneath it says, “Because you give me so many gifts, I give you this little one.” Since I can’t adopt this fellow, I may have to kidnap him.

The night before last in the piazza, he taught me every color in Italian he could think of, and how to conjugate “essere,” and I taught him how to flip euro coins off his elbow and catch them. He seemed to like showing his little buddies his new euro trick, but I’d argue the lesson he offered me held the greater value of the two. We had a grand time. Makes for a very nice memory.

Nothing else to report on our end, but thanks, everybody, but the updates a bunch of you sent! We really appreciate those, and it’s great to know what’s going on over your way.

Tanti baci,

Jen