February 3, 2010
She hoped to read Dante in the original, my sister did, to discuss him in his native tongue.
But first she needed to pick up some basics.
So she came all the way from Los Angeles to enroll in ibla!, a tiny Italian language school housed in a palazzo just steps from Ragusa Ibla’s cathedral.
I’d already spoken with the director and head teacher. They’d assured me that their teaching method was “communicative” and “fun” and “modern.” But I wondered. I’d seen language classes in Italy where teachers clung to an approach as antiquated as the Roman Forum itself.
But here’s what Linda has to say about the experience: I spent a week studying Italian at ibla! school in spring 2009 and loved it! The teachers were hip and fun and tailored the classes to our level. They used conversation, games, interesting exercises and homework and really helped us become more skilled in speaking Italian. I made some good friends, loved the comfortable classrooms and also the historic setting (Ragusa Ibla is beautiful). I recommend this school and am looking forward to returning and taking more classes.
The classes at ibla! are very small, especially in off-season—sometimes just two people. This can be a beautiful thing if you like lots of practice and individual attention. But the downside—at least for some people—might be that you don’t get to meet many classmates, and you may be hanging out alone in your free time.
Haven’t you always wanted to speak the language of love? It’s never too late to learn. ibla! runs a special “Over50 Program” that combines Italian with the study of culture, wine and food. Yum. What are you waiting for?
If you’re lucky, you may end up speaking Italian with a baroque accent. Sicilians love exaggeration. Baroque is in their bones. Consider this: no food in Sicily is merely good, buono, it’s always buonissimo, to die for. No human being is just plain ugly, brutto, he’s bruttissimo, hideous. No car or view or cake or shoe in Sicily is ever beautiful, bella, it’s always bellissima, drop-dead gorgeous.
If it’s excitement and glitterati you’re after, study Italian in Florence or Rome. If you’re looking for baroque charm and hospitality in a sweet (and relatively inexpensive) stone village, I recommend ibla!
Here’s ibla!’s website.
If you can’t make it to Sicily to study Italian, if you can’t leave home at all, think about taking advantage of a distance-learning program to polish your language skills. Cyberitalian is a website devoted to teaching Italian and Italian culture. The director, Maura Garau, once headed the Italian program at the United Nations Circolo Culturale Italiano, and she knows what she’s doing when it comes to language instruction.
If you’re already at an intermediate level of Italian and want to speak more idiomatically, enjoy and learn from Dianne Hales’ fun (free) blog Becoming Italian Word by Word.
Follow your own star, as Dante would say, or more precisely, “Se segui tua stella, non fallirai a glorioso porto.”
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Do you have a yen to speak Italian? If you already know Italian, do you have a secret to help the rest of us?
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January 30, 2010
I hire a team of architects.
I fire a team of architects.
I leave my husband in New Mexico and take a job in Rome in order to be “close” to Sicily.
And, oh, what a job it is (why don’t I have any luck with Italian bosses?).
The whammies start to add up.
I hire a project manager (the handsomest of men) with a swagger, cool sunglasses, a Range Rover, a mop of curls, an Etna-like temper and—how best to put this?—a hands-off management style. Which I only learn later. His mantras are Non sono d’accordo and Non e possibile.
My Roman job swallows me whole, but on rare occasions I sneak down to Sicily to prod, cajole, wring my hands, and gnash my teeth. I prowl around the damp house—it’s twice as cold inside as outside—and wonder how it’ll ever be livable. Why in the world is the building permit taking so long?
Pazienza, Sicilians tell me. I’m not a patient person, but I’m beginning to suspect I’ll need some endurance to get the life I want to lead.
What is the life I want to lead, anyway?
A stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off life, a turn-back-the-clock-a-century life. A new life. A second life.
A friend forwards an email from a British guy who is temporarily living in Italy: “Anyone buying any kind of property in Italy needs counseling. I send my deepest sympathies to the lady in Sicily…”
New Roman friends respond with audible gasps, like in a comic book, when I tell them I’m renovating a house in Sicily. They call me coraggiosa and then laugh themselves silly.
My husband remains reluctant, though not opposed.
Lo and behold, 8 months after I buy the damp old house and after endless phone calls, faxes, and DHLs (my project manager avoids email), I am in possession of a building permit. The legitimacy of my existence is confirmed.
“It’s your Christmas present,” says my best friend on the island, an expat Sicilian-American upon whom I lean like a crutch.
Never mind that the dollar is at an all-time low. Or that our retirement nest egg is about to dissolve like salt in water. Or that I feel I’m flying off a cliff.
Let the work begin.
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January 21, 2010
Here’s how I got into trouble.
After teaching a short course in Ragusa in 2002, I’d returned year after year to Southeast Sicily to root around for a little casa. The Fates pushed back with all their might and I finally admitted defeat.
In the spring of 2007, I came to see friends one last time and close the Sicilian chapter of my life. Ciao, Sicilia.
A day before bidding the island farewell, I scaled the long staircase up from Ibla’s Piazza Duomo to see the cupola from on high. After many years cocooned in scaffolding thick as wool, it had reemerged triumphant.
It looked good enough to eat, like whipped cream on a tumbler of granita. I felt a secret joy. Bells tolled, clouds slipped up from the valley. I inhaled la zagara—orange blossoms on the breeze—like a drug.
I turned. There, on an unassuming little row house with a mottled wall and weatherworn door, I saw the magic words: VENDITA.
I saw. I called. I bought. Cast myself into a new world just like that. 1-2-3.
Never imagining for a minute what was in store.
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January 12, 2009
A reader emailed to ask me about Arab influences in southeast Sicily—in addition to the majolica mentioned in my last post.
There are so many leftover traces!
I want to share a personal story.
Do you see the man on the left, in the baseball cap? That’s Emanuele, assistant to my beloved (new) stonemason, Giorgio, the cap-less fellow, who warbles Sicilian love songs as he works, though that’s beside the point.
Here is a typical exchange between Emanuele and me:
Me, shaking his hand: A domani! See you tomorrow!
Him: Se Dio lo vuole, if God wills it.
Me: I think you’ll be able to finish tiling around the bidet.
Him: Se e la voglia di Dio, if it is the will of God.
When I first met Emanuele, I’d just returned from Morocco, where Inshallah, God willing, is a constant refrain. The fact that he used the same refrain astonished me. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked if he was Muslim.
His eyes bulged from their sockets at this suggestion, and his head jerked back on his thick neck (an Arab gesture for no.). Gianna, no! Ma che dici! Sono cattolico! Sono proprio, cento percento, cattolico!”
Scratch a Sicilian, I heard somewhere, and you’ll find a Saracen. Never mind that the two-plus centuries of Arab domination of the island ended more than a millennium ago.
*****
NOTE: There’s a new book written by Alfonso Campisi, Ifriqiyya and Sicily: A Mediterranean Twinning, that retraces Sicily’s Arab history, but I haven’t been able to find it online. For a good summary on Arabs in Sicily click this link to Best of Sicily Magazine.
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Jann Huizenga
December 3, 2009
For a year my showers were icy, my radiators cold. The new Renzo Piano stovetop just sat there, shiny and useless. I’d filed a dichiarazine and oodles of other papers, had a friend fake signatures and make phone calls when I wasn’t in town, shelled out €450 in utility fees at the post office, lost hours in grouchy mobs hoping for face time with a bureaucrat. I fawned, flirted, cajoled, and sobbed. After each trauma I self-medicated with chocolate.
Then one fine day in October, Enelgas—like God Almighty—said Let There Be Gas.
The experience soured me on bureaucrats, known here as fannuloni, slackers.
But I could no longer put off a visit to the dreaded water office, l’ufficio idrico. It was time to fess up that I hadn’t paid a centesimo for water since buying the house in 2007, nor even reported a change of ownership.
I take a number, A30, and wait. The slip of paper in my fist bears no relation to what’s flashing on the wall monitor, F6.
“Non funziona,” says a farmer in from the countryside. The crowd swells. We take matters into our own hands and politely number off.
Finally seated at the sportello, I’m shooed away. You must, says the woman, purchase a marca di bollo at the tabacchaio, then proceed to the post office to pay another fee. Which I do. Back at the water office, my bureaucrat pulls out a form from a cracked blue folder and writes the date. “Friday the 13th!” she says. “A lucky day!” (Just goes to show how topsy-turvy things are here.) The clock above her head is running ninety minutes fast.
I hand over my passport, my codice fiscale, and my water meter reading. Clickety-clack goes her keyboard.
“Our computer does not accept your name.”
Perché?
“There is no key for J.” She fusses and gripes and stares at the screen. “And no key for H.”
She calls over the boss. After much ado, he locates the problematic letters. The printer whirrs, spitting papers onto the floor.
The name is spelled wrong; the date of birth incorrect. Corrections are made; the printer whirrs again. More signatures required.
“Are things the same in America as here?” my bureaucrat asks.
“Well, there’s less paperwork there.”
This produces a sudden outburst. “O, siamo maestri della bureaucrazia!” We are the maestros of bureaucracy.
An understatement, seems to me. I slink out of the office across Piazza San Giovanni to Caffè Italia, where I calm myself with a chocolate eclair and hot chocolate thick as pudding.
 
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