Italiano

Paola would have made a very good mother. She has the right face for it – does that make sense? Mothers need to have faces appropriate to child-rearing!

Italian is beginning to sound like a make-believe language, silly. I think it’s somehow the way I am translating the language, or maybe that I hear it all the time… I’m just beginning to think grammatical phrases like penso che and mi amo, things like that, sound childishly constructed, sound very elementary. I wonder which is traditionally more difficult to learn, English or Italian and other romance languages. Learning languages is certainly a fascinating practice; I wish I were more adept.

Every time I leave Florence, I am always amazed that “going home” for the time being means returning to Florence. I am vacationing, “getting away” from Florence. Who would want to do such a thing! But even now, I have that sort of vague sense of escape and wonder at the outside world; my homestay with Paola is truly becoming comfortable, a home, something normal to desire a breach from. At the same time, however, it has become a place I now desire to return when I am overwhelmed by people, my environment, the discomfort after a night wrangling with a poor mattress or pillow. It is certainly a home.