Culture Shock

Today I sat down with our director and watched a Ted talk called something like, "Why Culture Shock is Good for You."  The speaker talked about how the more new a situation is, the more uncomfortable we are, and the less new it becomes, the more comfortable we become.  He had a nifty graph and everything.  And even though we were watching this to prepare for advisee meetings next week, I kept thinking variations of the following, Yes!  That's me!  Oh, that's so true.  Oh, gracious, I did that, too.  Man, I'm glad that I came here two weeks before Daniel and the kids.

It took me over a week to go to the fruit and vegetable stores one block and two blocks away because I liked feeling more anonymous at the Emme Piu, the grocery store just a seven minute walk away.  I could linger and struggle with the names of the foods, and no one was going to care or even notice me.  I was likely not going to offend anyone if I walked in, looked and looked, turned items over, didn't find what I wanted, bought very little, and left.  At Emme Piu I could listen to Italian pop or American pop (uncensored, no less -- gracious), putter, debate, wander.  There was a strange comfort in music and weird lighting and no one I knew or who knew me.  (I felt the same way about cappuccino: the first time I went to a bar for a coffee I went a town over (on my bike ride to Lago di Vico), very comfortable where no one was going to recognize me two hours later.   Someone here might notice my discomfort, my self-consciousness, and I might do something wrong to offend.)  Kristopher Gilmour (Ted talk guy) calls this culture shock -- my avoiding the local store in favor of something more comfortable.  I hadn't considered it this way, but I can see it entirely.

Yesterday Daniel and I went for a walk around 6pm.  (As we ate gelato afterwards, sans kiddos who were at home, I was thinking, When at home do we ever take a walk together at 6pm, then go for ice cream, and then deal with children and dinner and work afterwards?...then I had to consciously recall those two hours at 10pm when I was still grading reading questions on Sherman Alexie's Flight...which, side note, is quite wonderful to read with high school juniors...)  At one point Daniel stopped to use a restroom and I kept walking.  I walked up a pretty, shady, green, narrow street, and I had to laugh.  I thought, "Oh, golly, Maureen, you thought this road was so scary your first week here!"  Now I'm more comfortable and I'm not scared at seven o'clock at night on the exact same road.  This was the road I biked on for maybe half a mile my first week here.  Then today, the Ted talk....yes -- I'm more comfortable now, so this road is less scary.

This is not to say that I'm always comfortable.  I'm still working on the morning coffee break, which my colleagues are often nice enough to remind me of/invite me to.  At home at work/school during break time, I talk with a friend or colleague (often one and the same) in the hallway or check email or get started on the walk I want to take between classes.  I often do the same at the lunch break at home -- snacking on my Kind Bars and saltines and carrots and whatever else suits me.  I take a break from people-time, get a little more work done to avoid doing it at 10pm, eat what I like.  But here, I'm the newbie.  And I'm the American.  I know it's good for me to head to Bar 103 on the corner with the others, order my cappuccino (Nadia, the owner, now knows me, and this is good and lovely...and also somewhat confirms my thought weeks ago that someone would get to know me and I could totally be screwing up some custom or cultural norm), and stand there awkwardly while my Italian colleagues chat with each other or other folks who wander in or with me.  I just stand, try to drink quickly even though I really, really don't want to (I want to sit outside and sip sip sip and use my little spoon to scoop out the last of the sugary -- I add a good bit -- steamed milk that's in the cup at the end), and try to catch a few phrases.  No doubt I look horribly awkward, gawky American.  But it's okay.  I'll keep going.  I like the cappuccino, and even though I say little in halting poor Italian, I like the company.  Perhaps in a few weeks or months, my bar-coffee-break-awkwardness will be less new and more comfortable per Kristofer Gilmour's graph.  (I love the little glass of fizzy water the servers put out with your coffee.  I always think, Perfect: it will be so good after the coffee for hydration and for getting rid of coffee breath.  Yesterday I had an inkling that I was doing this backwards, so I asked my colleague Ale, "Are you supposed to drink the water before or after the coffee?"  "Oh, before," she said.  "You need to cleanse the palate before your coffee.  We take our coffee very seriously."  She smiled, not critical of my gaffe, just happy, I think, to share Italian culture with me.  Interesting...I feel just fine about my gaffe when I had so much concern/fear about making one for weeks...)

The kids start school tomorrow.  Unanticipated culture shock may be an understatement.  (Daniel and I feel it for them.  They seem strangely okay and even excited.)  They have gotten so comfortable around Viterbo: the guy at the pasticceria across the street gets them their cannoli when he sees them come in (they tell me); they've got their asking for gelato in Italian down; they can find most places we send them (including the olive oil store/museum I assigned them a couple days ago...and where they paid nine euro for half a liter of olive oil.  Wow.  I mean, that was the assignment, and it is really good olive oil, but....); they feel strangely confident that they'll learn Italian soon enough.  Connor and Hannah are actually excited about the blue with white collar smocks: this shocks and thrills me.

So many articles these days praise the lost art of letting kids just do whatever they like instead of structured activities.  For good or bad, we have aced this practice these last three months.  For every error we have made parenting in the past and present (losing kids; having kids not do homework; being snappy with kids; upsetting kids; getting updates from teachers because kids are not doing what they need to in school; dealing with electronics issues; being late for school; missing deadlines at kids' school; being late for activities; missing kids' practices because we just forget or fall asleep; etc.), we have been outstanding at scheduling very little for the past three months (even if it drives me batty at times when I get home from work and people are sprawled out reading or doing whatever they're doing and the house/apartment is a mess).

Here's what they've been doing for the past three weeks with virtually no schedule:

• They read a ton (Kindles have been a lifesaver, Daniel says.  If not for them, they would fight even more.) 
• They practice conflict-resolution (read: they fight a LOT).  
• They found origami paper this week in a bedroom, and the boys spent hours making who knows what shapes that have taken over the dining room table.  
• Hannah bought some pearl clay -- that made me think of slime and consider banning it; she and Connor made it into an octopus today.  To ban or not?
• They make forts (again, it thrills me and drives me batty as I think, Oh no, now this room needs to be cleaned up, and we now need to wash those sheets, dang it, and at the same time I say, Kids -- this is so cool! as they show me the entrances and exits and windows and nifty bells and whistles of their creation).  
• They sit around.  
• They lie in their forts with their kindles.
• They bake (Mary has made at least three batches of cupcakes and frosting, improving with each one as she finds substitutes for baking powder or vanilla or other ingredients that we get easily at home but with more difficulty here.  Again...the joy of baking...not so much of cleaning up....).  
• And yes, they go for walks (which we encourage) and use their spending money (which we don't) to buy gelato and cannoli and random silly things at Tiger.

Strangely, they never say that they're bored.  (But perhaps their fighting indicates they are?)

I grade a lot, meet with kids about showing versus telling in their essays, work on my cappuccino and bar visits.  Daniel works out how to keep his eleven sixth-graders engaged, running ideas by Mary and Sebastian and me (bad wife moment: Daniel, what are you doing for your first class today?  Daniel: We're going to read Wonder some, do an activity, work through a grammar worksheet.  me: A grammar worksheet on the first day?  Death by grammar on day one, eh?  Daniel: Thanks for the pep talk.  Oops.).  The two of us have been adjusting to work life a bit, and I'm sure we have more adjusting to do.  I've felt exhausted this week, and I'm not even officially teaching yet -- online teaching = assigning writing and reading and grading homework and essays every day...lots of grading...

Santa Maria dell'Paradiso tomorrow for the little people.  I have to wonder how many awkward cappuccino/bar moments they'll have.  Likely quite a few.  And I'll have to remind them afterwards that the awkwardness is okay and they'll get through it.   And it's likely even good for them.

I have to remind myself, too.