Hello, Cornell! And friends, family alike. It has been an exciting two weeks here in Rome. My Duolingo lessons have not taken me past level two yet, but I think I am faring okay so far. It’s especially helpful to have friends who have taken language classes both in Ithaca and within the historic walls of Palazzo Santacroce.
For example, an instance where dear friend Fabiana Berenguer Gil’s two semesters of Italian were of great use to the two of us happened the day after I arrived. Annalisa took a group of students to Testaccio early in the morning to submit our permits to stay.
We let our bodies go to the lurching movements of twisting boulevards on the bus to Testaccio, a more residential area located along the southern outskirts of the city center. Fifteen minutes later, we file out into the warm red and yellow streets. The quiet is comforting, much easier than the constant rumble of fast taxis, angry scooters,and bumbling street sweepers I am accustomed to hearing outside my apartment in Largo Argentina. Five minutes of walking brings us to the Ufficio Postale di Roma Ostiense, where we wait for about an hour for our information to be processed. Waiting makes us hungry, so we follow the advice of Annalisa and peruse an open air market down the street. This is where we meet an older man with a tanned face and thick glasses named Giovanni, who knowingly sees us walking around the stalls without objective and approaches us with ‘Seguime’, which Fabi later tells me is ‘follow me.’ Although as a stranger he is a little suspicious, we follow as he begins to explain the history of Mercato Testaccio. The area in which the current market is located was part of an artificial hill made of ancient amphorae used for storing olive oil during by the Roman empire. During the late 1800s, a man named Heinrich Dressel began archaelogical excavation of the hill, uncovering many of these remains.
Had it not been for Fabiana’s Italian language skills, this conversation would have gone over both of our heads. However, she was able to follow along pretty well to the fast pace of his words, and she conversed for him for about twenty minutes. I managed to understand the gist of the conversation with amphora, monte, and l’oglio. So all was not too lost on me. I mostly nodded and rejoiced silently when I recognized a word or comprehended his frequent gestures to some images on an laminated information sheet. He gave us a flyer and left us feeling both accomplished and pleasantly surprised to see how nice the local community can be.
Each day is filled with new curiosities that I hope to share. Of course, some will be school related, but no need to speak about it yet… Summer is still strong in la bella Roma!
More news to come.
– R