Lunchtime in Pangrati (On a Nice Day)
I spend more time than you might think standing out on my balcony in January. So I can hear the trains better, I think. They schedule my life here pretty intrusively, without actually being all that loud or closeby. I don't usually get out of bed until I've heard one. It's almost like having the Metra (or is it the Amtrak?) just across Waukegan Road. Almost.
This morning at nine I walk into a large room, sit down in the back corner and shake uncontrollably for a good hour and a half, until my professor calls me forward, in front of the other students, to give my exam. In Italy, you give
your exam, you don't take it. I sit down across from him, to which he responds, "Dimmi." And so I tell him, pretty much everything I can remember about his philosophy of religion class. In the middle he interrupts me to ask, and let me know that my response would not affect my grade, in what religion I had been raised. He can always tell just by looking at a person, he says, but all semester I had been a mistero. I figure Catholic won't ever really lose you points in Italy, though. My mom will probably kill me for this, but when he asked me 
to name the four Evangelists, I completely blanked on their Italian names. Matteo, Marco, Luca, e Giovanni. In case you were wondering.I have two more oral exams next week, to which one says "In bocca al lupo." And I have learned to respond, with enough strength to make it effective, "Crepi." In the mouth of the wolf, you say, May he choke, I say.
To me the sun in Athens is always blinding. I come home and can't see for days.
postato da Jenn @ 14:55
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