Italia – Not so far away now!

Ciao a tutti,

I can’t believe it’s now febbraio! Only 12 more days until we arrive back in la bella roma… after 5 months! It’s a bit scary to think that this could be one of the last times we will actually be able to afford to go back, considering New Zealand is a lot further away than being just here in London! So we will definitely have to make the most of it. And I will have to make the most of the opportunity that these 5 weeks will give me to learn more of this bella lingua I have learned to love.

Some of la famiglia

At least this time in Italy will be more about la famiglia rather than the actual country, and I guess lucky for me, they don’t really speak much english. So I guess that is definitely handy as well, providing I can get out of my comfort zone, and not use Matteo like my english crutch that I normally do. I remember when I was last in Italy, I went a week before Matteo, so I could practise with the italian language, and I actually made a lot of progress. We managed to communicate, (I think largely to the help of google translate), but I was actually progressing, I could sit down and have semi conversations with everyone, and my listening skills were getting better, I was learning to understand what everyone was saying, even though it was a bit of a process of Italian -> translate to english -> decide what I want to say in english -> translate back to italian. I remember when Matteo and I first got together, he had the same problem with his english, now he thinks in english when he is with me, so no longer has this problem. It just seems like it takes a lot longer for me to understand and revise this way of thinking. And I don’t want to lose it when we do go to New Zealand, I think I will try to speak it more when I’m there, because I want to feel like I will have this secret language with Matteo, that no one else will really understand. But it will probably just come out sounding all wrong. 😦

I think one of my main problems is that I try very hard to listen to a conversation with la famiglia like on Skype or on the phone, I sometimes gather the general gist, but then end of getting lost in the conversation, which leads to me losing interest in trying, and then I give up. It feels like an ongoing cycle. Even when we are actually in Italy, I do the same thing, like sitting at the dinner table, trying to understand the conversations, then my brain hurts, so it decides to shut off, then I feel embarrassed if someone is trying to talk to me, and I’m lost in my little kiwi brain of mine, in a far of distance land, that isn’t anywhere near the vicinity that I am actually in that moment!

Let’s just hope in these next 12 days, when we are catching that plane to the airport in Rome, I manage to get some progress in this journey!

I will write again soon

A dopo

Anna x