So I might have been a little premature with my excitement. I saw a little more white on the ground than the frost I would see some cold mornings back home and I felt I had to yell the thrilling news from atop a mountain. I would find little piles of snow in the park and think, “Look at all the SNOW!” “How cool is this!”. I had to actively search to locate small patches and I was still as excited as a 5 yr old xmas morning. I feel like an Idiot now because that was only a hint of what was to come.
On Monday afternoon, after a hard day of sleeping in, reading, and watching Sports Center 3 times on my computer, it was 6 O'clock and time to head on over to the pool for practice. I gathered my stuff, walked out the front door, put a dumb and confused look on my face and asked myself, “Dude, where’s my car?”
Unbeknownst to me it hadn’t been snowing a little during the day; it had been SNOWING! I was stuck in my footsteps looking up and down the street, “What the hell happened?” I felt as though I was in a completely different place. It had been dumping all day long and everything was looked magical. It seriously felt like I walked onto a set of a movie, I couldn’t believe that much snow had landed outside my door without me knowing.
I looked down the street and could barely see the clown car. I was covered in so much snow it completely blended into the whiteout that was everything else. With snow piled up all the way to the wheel wells, there was no way I was going to be able to drive it to practice, let alone move it from that spot for the next week.
I called up Cano and he said that he was at the university but would be there in 10 mins to pick me up. He arrived with Michele sitting shotgun and they immediately started going off about how stupid it was that we had training. We putted down the road but once we hit the main street it was apparent that we weren’t going anywhere fast. It was complete gridlock and it took us 20 minutes to travel the 100 meters to the main light.
Captain and Co captain up front had a quick discussion and decided that there wasn’t practice tonight after all. The called up the coach, told him the situation, and then flipped a “B”. I thought I was going back home but we went straight past it and ended up a few mins later at their university. We exited the sanctuary of the warm car and shuffled through the kneed deep snow and arriving at the study lounge. “Why the hell are we here?” I was contemplating as Cano opened the doors to a room full of drunk idiots running around. He informed me that one of his friends had just graduated that day and they were all celebrating; in the study lounge of all places.
Bottles of cheep champagne floated around the room and the kids confidence in their English skills as well as their fascination with an American present was peaking. I quickly became the center of attention, but not in a good way. They would ask me questions about home which was cool but then they started, as they always do, trying to make me say stuff in Italian. When it’s a drunk college kid trying to make you say something in Italian, it’s not so much to help you as it is for his own amusement. They try to have you repeat all the bad words and sayings and they think it’s a riot. I felt like a monkey. At one point I had to remind them that just because I didn’t know their language didn’t mean that I was retarded. It really made me think back on all the foreigners that I’ve met, befriended or just casually conversed with back home. While they would try their best to talk to me in English I would always subconsciously make a judgment on their competency as a whole based on their level of communication. Thinking back on it now makes me feel a little sick as I’m sure I talked down to or even treated someone as if they were slow because they couldn’t fluently speak MY language. It is a whole new experience being on the other side but I believe it is good as it has not only opened my eyes to my previous behavior but also motivated me more to work diligently to conquer Italian.
After the booze fest in the biblioteca we traversed over to a restaurant where I had my 5th pizza this week. The whole time it kept snowing outside and after the meal we congregated in front of the pizzeria for a huge snowball fight in the plaza. The snow was perfect; fresh but because it was so cold out it was incredibly dry. A quick scoop with your right hand, one molding pat with your left and this baby was compact and ready to rifle. This probably wasn’t the best idea for a sore shoulder. I knew firing light pieces of snow in the cold as hard as I could without warming up was going to set me back a little but I couldn’t pass this experience up!
-Bus #10
No comments:
Post a Comment