A 37 day imaginary travelogue of a
trip to Rome (with a few scattered other places such as New York).
This is written to match the journey I am actually taking, and so
each post is concurrent with the more or less actual day my wife and
I are experiencing in Rome.
What day number are we on?: 27
Level of writer's drunkenness (in
real life, scale of 1-10): just the one. It's still morning here in fantasy land.
What am I eating (in real life
again)?: Nothing. It's very rare that I eat before noon.
Map or picture?: a lemoncello display
Any other notes/Status: My back hurts and I'm missing another day of work. It is strange to miss so many days sick on the cusp of taking 5 weeks of vacation.
Oh, you didn't know I was going on a vacation?
Yes, I hardly mention it.
Oh, you didn't know I was going on a vacation?
Yes, I hardly mention it.
Today's Entry:
Yesterday we roamed the city broadly, almost at a distance. Today we are in everywhere. The more galleries and shops and cafes we go into the more natural it becomes, and so we wander into every little store nearly as a matter of course, or just to say "Buon giorno!" once again.
And now I am very good at saying "Buon giorno!" And there is the story of me and the Italian language. The hundred words I learned (again) before coming here are, with a few necessary additions, the same hundred I know now. The difference is in how well I speak them. They are readily available to me. I do not think "six" and translate to "seis". No, I need that number and speak it directly in Italiano. Before I knew 100 words. Now I speak 105 words.
Of course, the down side to this is it tricks the local people into thinking I will know more Italian than I do. Which is to say they conclude I might know anything else, which I don't. "Mi dispiace, non capisco." "I'm sorry. I don't understand." And I can say it beautifully, almost like a native speaker. After all, I have had much practice.
Yesterday we roamed the city broadly, almost at a distance. Today we are in everywhere. The more galleries and shops and cafes we go into the more natural it becomes, and so we wander into every little store nearly as a matter of course, or just to say "Buon giorno!" once again.
And now I am very good at saying "Buon giorno!" And there is the story of me and the Italian language. The hundred words I learned (again) before coming here are, with a few necessary additions, the same hundred I know now. The difference is in how well I speak them. They are readily available to me. I do not think "six" and translate to "seis". No, I need that number and speak it directly in Italiano. Before I knew 100 words. Now I speak 105 words.
Of course, the down side to this is it tricks the local people into thinking I will know more Italian than I do. Which is to say they conclude I might know anything else, which I don't. "Mi dispiace, non capisco." "I'm sorry. I don't understand." And I can say it beautifully, almost like a native speaker. After all, I have had much practice.
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