I Try to Disappear

My Italian class moved back to the big, echoey room. I think they are just trying to confuse us.

Blas started the class off asking everyone what they did on the weekend. One person answered and then he looked at me. I knew what was coming next. "Reeshard?" Everyone laughed. People now laugh when he calls on me and I don't think they are laughing with me, unless, they are seeing the face I make every time which says something like "why are you calling on me again?", but I think it is more that I have become one of the jokes in the class. I try to hide, but it is hard. Every now and then Blas will turn to me and say in a loud, booming voice, "Reeshard?" or "Reeshard!" Everyone in the class knows my name.

For homework we had to write the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare in Italian. This would have made sense to me if we had studied any vocabulary relating to the story, but we had not. The closest we came was reading a story last week about the Hare and the Eagle. I learned (after we finished discussing the story) that a "hare" was "lepre" in Italian. I thought the lepre was a leopard when I first read the story and couldn't understand how an eagle could eat a leopard (since that is what happened in the story).

I feared that Blas would ask me to read my story. My philosophy is that as a language student, I should use the words I know to try to express myself. I was not going to write the story in English and then try to translate the whole thing to Spanish. So instead, I wrote the story, using the words I knew, and I looked up a few that I wasn't sure about. This made my story kind of short, which was fine with me for a level 1 Italian class... until I saw everyone else's stories.

Hanna, the crazy non-emo, non-flogger who sits next to me, wrote almost a half a page. She told me how she did it but I didn't understand because she speaks really fast and her lips don't seem to move when she speaks.

Matias volunteered to read his story.

At one point I thought that maybe Blas and Matias had something going on because Blas went over and kissed Matias. Blas is not normally a kisser like Ybtisaam, my Arabic teacher. Everyone kisses her hello and good-bye. Blas only kissed me once when he ran into me in the bar.

So when Blas kissed Matias and no one else, I wasn't sure what was going on. Then I realized it was Matias' birthday. Somehow I had missed that in the discussion between Matias and Blas. I miss a lot in the discussions that happen between Matias and Blas.

During the break, Matias broke out a cake that he said he made. He cut it and one of the ladies who sit on the other side of the room distributed it. It was actually a good cake. Another girl who hardly ever speaks had revealed last week that she works in Havana. Havana is a chain of cafes that sells alfajores, a cookie sandwich filled with dulce de leche and covered in chocolate (that reminds me, it is still in my bag). We sang Happy Birthday in Italian, but I didn't sing because I had no idea what the words were.

I discovered why some of my students like it better when we do things in class like filling out grammar worksheets. After the break, that is what we did. I felt less lost. The kind of free and easy discussion stuff that we do, often in the beginning when students are still trickling in gets me lost easily. Even listening to the tape that comes with the book with our books closed, I am unable to understand as much as some of my other classmates. But when we do a grammar worksheet, usually, I'm ok and know how to ask for help when I need it.

This Italian class has been an interesting experience for me. I thought it would be easy, since it is Italian 1 and I've taken Italian 1 (and 2) twice already. It has not been easy and now I am getting some insights into what some of my students might experience in my class.

I came home and Norma was still here. Norma likes to talk. I sat in the living room and worked on making some flash cards in Arabic while she finished up. Every now and then she'd ask me a question about how things were going. At one point she asked me if I knew how to make popcorn. I don't know what that was about, but she said her husband would show me if I didn't know. She apparently knew I had popcorn because she opened my cabinet and said she had seen it. I don't know what made her think I didn't know how to make it.

I was glad I left the chocolate bar for her last week because she also mentioned that she got a call from the office telling her to leave things where I leave them. She'd had this habit of putting my dish drain away, putting my clothes in the closet (when I'd left them out for a reason) and moving things so I couldn't find them when I came home. I was hoping by now she had forgotten all about it, but she didn't, but I think leaving the chocolate might have smoothed over any ruffled feathers. Her husband is supposed to stop by later and fix the broken toilet seat (one of the hinges mysteriously broke a few weeks ago).

I spent the afternoon napping because I was supposed to meet Raul, my conversation exchange partner tonight, but I just got a text from him that he's too stressed out and has to cancel. This is the 2nd week in a row that he has canceled, the week before I was in Uruguay and next week I am not going to meet him because I have a meeting with the vestibular specialist at 4 and don't want to have to trek across town afterwards. I'm kind of thinking that this arrangement isn't working out.

It's a beautiful day again, warm with a hint of coolness in the air and a clear blue sky.