"Noi" in Italia...Posting in Order Not to Forget It

Posted by Shiny

为了忘却的纪念 (written on 1st-6th March 2008)

Sometimes I enjoy writing hybrid entries with both Chinese and English as I find it easier to express my feeling to an optimal degree.

写下这篇日志，不是为了记忆，而是为了去纪念，为了短暂地忘却这段不堪回首的壮丽诗篇。 Memory is a knife, it always hurts me.  But I still cherish it.  That’s why I usually put it down and keep it inside a box.  Perhaps in a few years later, it will not hurt me again after I’ve learnt how to handle it.  By then, it would be a souvenir to me from life.

“兄弟姐妹就像天上飘下的雪花，本来谁也不认识谁，可是，一落到地上，结成冰，化成水，就永远也分不开了。”这句话用来形容意大利之行之后的感想就再合适不过了。在那所学校里，据说是专业的问题，三分之二的学生都是女生，我想，在那些欢乐的日子里，我们都已经成为了其中的一员，想起来，我们应该亲切地叫他们“姐妹们”。

There were so many things going on in my head these days and if I didn’t write them down, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on something else.  I should at least put a full stop on the journey.  After all, it was really an indispensably pleasant experience and I don’t want it to fade out in my brain by any means.  好想有一部带有时间留驻功能的神奇照相机，也许，在未来的一天里，真的可以凝固时间。人们都说照相机是记录人们美好一瞬的记忆天使。虽然这位天使总是给人以片面和局部的回忆，也许，这已经足够，相外之人与事也许会在记忆深处随着岁月的蹉跎而逐渐模糊和褪色，但我们依然能想起她们大概的轮廓和音容笑貌，想起与她们一起经历过风雨，一起看过很美丽的彩虹，想起来却也充满温馨。Therefore I've decided to write every piece of memory that I can remember so that it fits my own perfectionism.

“Ciao！”容忍长途跋涉的艰辛，是为了到达醉人的彼岸，雨后彩虹何其壮丽

19日晨六时许，天尚未明，Gary与我则动身同赴学院，Steve君早已开车在学院门口等候。天大寒。待老师与诸女皆至，吾等告别史蒂芬森君，开始了我们对意为其5天的友好访问。一路走来，只见“暮霭沉沉楚天阔。”窗外虽然雾气挺重，却也依稀能见到被霜花喷得雪白的草地和小树林在明媚的阳光下闪闪发亮，变得Shiny起来，逐渐地，车子里开始变得暖和。车厢里，我身后的Brian听着音乐，Gary则在欣赏沿途风光，我左后方坐着四位来自俄罗斯、摩尔多瓦和乌克兰的姑娘，她们用俄语津津有味地交谈着，不晓得她们在聊什么，因为我和Chris老师在谈笑风生。旅途之初，我们三个中国男生和那4位欧洲女生似乎坐成了两堆，到底两种文化能否和谐地交汇在一起？我知道这一层隔膜必须要有一方来打破，后来，“破冰之旅”的任务落在了Brian肩上。

After sitting on the school coach for over 2 hours, we arrived at the Heathrow International Airport.  It took us ages to check in as we had to change our ticket due to the strike of an air traffic controller in Milan.  Brian was keen on the Chinese Martial Acts, so during the time of waiting for a ticket change, he played the Martial Act show.  It was indeed a great time for us to relax in the half term.  We do need some time to entertain ourselves apart from the busy studies.  Therefore that was a good chance for chatting.  And Brian and I tried our best to recall many classical cartoon songs which brought us a marvelous childhood.

Honestly speaking, the first day of the trip was a bit boring as we had to transfer from Heathrow to Rome on a more than two-hour Alitalia journey in order to catch a plane to Bari.  When we walked out of the Bari Airport, it was almost 7:30 pm I suppose.  And we didn’t have dinner as the driver picked us out straight away and then we were on a mini-bus to Rodi Garganico, a small country in Foggia.

The highway was incredible straight leading us to the small country.  I’ve never seen such a long straight road elsewhere before.  There were not many cars on the road and it was dark around and on the two sides of us, only ordinary land and ancient houses could be seen or even nothing could be seen in the darkness.  We looked at the signs pointing out the direction.

The boys and gals were sitting at the back chatting happily although they may feel tired as well.  As for me, I was sitting in the middle seat in the front, so on the left hand side sat the driver whilst Mrs. Chris seated on my right.  Sitting in the front may have a better view, but my feet suffered in the limited space. 

The driver seemed to know little Inglese (English).  What he did was concentrating on his own driving.  Perhaps I haven’t known how to appreciate life yet.  I do feel grateful that it gives me the chance to go to Italy, but life is so short that I really don’t want to waste such a long time on transporting.  That’s one of the reasons that I would like to study transportation engineering hoping to launch a revolution in terms of this. (Recently people are thinking about getting rid of traffic lights and start using traffic police again.) 

Yes, you are right that we can pay attention to the scenery besides us, but as time passes, I don’t think I will still like that.  It is said that traveling somehow is like paying money for suffering.  Perhaps when people ask me what I saw during the journey after I arrive at the destination, I would just say “land, endless road and broad land narrowed in the darkness”.  Oh come on Shiny!  Don’t be so pessimistic although sometimes life is so hard!

The only thing which made me insistent and perseverant in the journey was that I was sure things would be breathtaking at the destination on the other end of the road.  As long as there is a belief in my heart, I will keep surviving, striving and thriving until the end of my life.  It is always worth it.  As expected, the car went into a small country and after ages we saw some ancient buildings which looked old-line.  Never did we see any buildings on the way until we enter the town of Rodi.  They look quite similar to the countryside of China. 

Not as many overseas students in the UK, I was born in a small village or country in China.  And I was brought up in that small country, once I had a holiday, I would go back there to stay with my grandparents, my relatives and the villagers.  Everyone there seems to be very friendly.  So are the lovely Italian people. 

When we just got off the bus in front of the Hotel America, where Mrs. Chris would be staying in for 4 nights, we were surrounded by the many smiling angelic faces of students.  I think they might be guessing who were going to be their guests, but I was not sure.  I was shocked by the hospitality of them and I wasn’t able to give them any responds besides smiling.  Time in Foggia is 1 hour earlier than that in the UK.  It was almost 10 o’clock at night, and after shaking hands with many people who I couldn’t remember since I was still in surprise, Olesya and I were picked up by three girls.  Never had I realized that one of the “girls” I said was indeed my housemother until we got home.  However, I still couldn’t remember their names yet.  After the mysterious adventure in a car along a curving long road, we got to Ischitella.

After we got back home, we entered a gate of three-floor building.  They told me that in Italy, it is normal for a big family to live together.  So the first floor is Irene’s uncle’s house while the second floor belongs to Irene’s grandparents.  Finally the third floor was our house. 

The house is actually interiorly well-designed.  The house was broad and the walls were painted red nicely-decorated by a number of paintings.  The furniture was combined harmoniously within the warm and fragrant dinning room and kitchen.  As far as my bedroom is concerned, it is the bedroom of Irene’s sister who is currently studying in university.  And we could see toys, bears, photos, cushions and some other lovely stuff in my clean and tidy bedroom.

Joseph, my housefather is an official, yet he can only speak a little bit English, so for most of the time, he spoke to me in Italian rather than English.  I was unable to speak any Italian words apart from “ciao”, but on the 2nd day, I had a breakthrough and could speak a couple of Italian sentences.  But I still couldn’t understand Italian unless they were speaking something I know or something I don’t know with their gestures and other body languages.  Lucky enough, Ana can speak English fluently.  During the time at home, she acted as a professional translator.  Her daughter i.e. my sister Irene is “molto bella” and she’s learning English, although she thinks her Inglese was also “così e così”, we could communicate in English.

On that night, Ana told me to feel free and don’t stand on ceremony and I did feel extremely homey. Although Ana was having a cold, she still tried her best to cook me a dinner with bread, mozzarella (a special kind of cheese), spinach, potato salad and tomato salad with some other vegetables.  It was like a feast for welcoming me.  I was curious about the mozzarella and I tasted it, it was salty and a bit fragrant.  And I was impressed by the food but as I had been traveling through for the whole day, I almost lost my appetite and I didn’t eat much which was ashamed.  I thanked Ana for the tasty dinner and after a nice shower, I went to bed immediately as we were supposed to get up early to go to school on the next morning.

It was a long long day, but everything was going more than well.

Integrating of “Noi” 沟通，由我做起，从“心”开始，敞开心扉，方能拉近你我！

On the 2nd day, after the morning call by Ana, we went out for a sightseeing trip along the coast with students from Italy and Romania.  It was supposed to be the Commenius Project in which students should be exchanging ideas.  But on the bus, the Russian gals were sitting together and so were Gary and Brian.  I didn’t take a seat until more people got on board as I was thinking that if I sat down first, some shy people might not come to sit next to me.  Perhaps I was wrong, but I didn’t know. 

So I waited until most students were seated and then I selected a seat next to neither the British group nor the Italian group.  So I didn’t sit among many Italian students, but just on the boundary of the group with a few Italian students.  In that case, I would not be isolated in the centre due to the inconvenience of language.  Meanwhile I could chat with some Italian students which were not bad. 

The journey started and I was actually surrounded by five girls.  I tended to be the most special students in our British group and Brian said he was jealous about me merely because I was surrounded by girls…  I was aware of the difficulties in communicating as English is not the first language to either of us.  It was not tiresome but fabulous since it made me think and organize a sentence to explain something in an as-simple-as-possible way, and at the same time with my intelligent body language. 

It really took time for us to understand each other, and sometimes those students whose English are nice would help, so eventually we could understand each other in laughter.  Actually Mrs. Chris is right, we should have known each other before the sightseeing trip, but as for what I have done, it seemed to make a little difference to me.  And at the same time, Brian had already broken the ice. 

When we became a bit silent, I decided to warm up the atmosphere around me by writing our miraculous Chinese characters.  And the students showed great interests in this and more and more students came and asked for a Chinese translation of their names and sentences.  And in return many lovely students such as Emilio taught me Italian.  People kept calming down and then cheering up waves after waves.  The gals then sang us some fascinating Italian songs at the back.  The whole trip was full of laughter and happiness.  And I subconsciously fell asleep when I got tired after playing a lot.  Yet we took photos whenever we saw beautiful sceneries outside the window and sometimes the bus dropped us to take some photos.

During the time of taking photos and the time on bus, I looked around and found some familiar faces. Although normally it seems to be hard for Asian people to recognize the faces of Western people, yet this time, without making any mistakes, I recognized one after the other three girls who have been to Brighton last March.  I really didn’t know why, we just met once in last March and we didn’t even know each other as we didn’t talk much last time, but I just could remember them and I was wondering whether that was the destiny or not.  As I’ve got a good memory about faces (especially those female faces), Mrs. Chris suggested me to set up something like “Spotting Institute” which is specialized in recognizing or picking out people among thousands…

The coach dropped us near the school, and we went back home by car and I started counting the number of S-turns on the road, and it was over 30. 

At night, I had dinner with my host family.  Although I was trying to understand the words of Joseph, I could only understand some sentences, but Ana was a good translator and she was so considerate that she didn’t want me to get bored among the conversation of them, so she kept translating between Italiano and Inglese.  But virtually, I didn’t find it boring at all for not understanding any Italian words. Even when she didn’t translate the sentences for me, I still found it funny looking at the faces and expressions of them.  I was interested in the way they spoke and the beauty of Italian as well as their smiling to each other when speaking.

I just realized that I’ve fallen in love with the people, the country, and the hence the language. After dinner, we students went to the local pub.  We chatted and drank in the pub.  Gary and I seldom drank, but we also ordered a spirit “sapor di vino” and we spent the whole night drinking a small glass of wine although they said, “If you don’t like it, you don’t need to drink it.”  The wine was actually “buono”.  It was a small pub at the corner of the some alleyways.  We saw some “bella” and young men inside.  People knew each other well and they were quite friendly even when making fun of others.  It was doubtless a great place for communication at night.

《山路十八弯》，弯弯系吾情

This morning, Irene gave me a morning call.  Today we decided to go to school in Rodi by public transport instead of by car.  Irene bought some tickets for us and we waited for the bus. It is said that the bus doesn’t come often, and if we miss the bus at that time, students will have to go to school by their own.  The bus was always crowded in the country.  Students were happy talking with each other.  I sat next to Irene and some boys started chatting with me.  Every morning, these students will have to take a bus to school for more than 15 minutes.  And as I said on the former day, there are at least 30 S-turns on the way.  That’s the life in Ischitella.

We were learning the song for the Europe+, and I realized that what I said in a previous post appeared in the Italian people’s mind.  People in Italy tend to use double negative to emphasize something instead of showing a positive result.  So we saw there was a sentence “but people didn’t do nothing” in the lyrics.  It is indeed definitely interesting to notice the characteristics of diverse languages. 

After learning the song, we went to a music school to listen to a concert of teachers and students.  We watched a wonderful big drum show by three people in a room.  They cooperated incredibly well, but the saxophone performance was much more amazing. 

There were four artists sitting on the stage with different-sized saxophones.  They played soft music at first which made me totally relaxed and even fell asleep.  But suddenly the lively music woke me up which reminded me of “Tommy & Jacky”.  I couldn’t remember how long it lasted as I totally lost myself on the wonderland of music.

Finally, at the end of the concert, Brian, the chairman of the Music Club in our college, represented our college and played the piano on the stage and indeliberately his eye-catching performance won a round of applause from the audience.  I was very proud of us Chinese students since Brian played a Western music instrument in such an adept way that every audience was astonished although he is only a college student whose major is not music.

Just before noon, we walked around the centre and visited some places of interests including a church.  And then it started raining.  Ana was organizing a fashion show from her school, so in the evening, Irene and I shared the seats with four lovely models in a car to get to the school.  We had a fashion show in the theater as well as some performances after which we had a disco dinner party. 

After that we went to a pub again, but I chose to drink peach juice instead.  We talked a lot again, but time flew, we’d got to go back home.  A curious thing was that we saw two cars playing “Drifting Car Game” which we called it “漂移”in Chinese within the centre.  As it was midnight and there were not many people standing outside in the cold wind, the cars kept drifting on the smooth floor.  I’ve never seen somebody drifting his or her car in front of me.  It might be safe as the people didn’t drive very fast.  What I think was that the “show” was fascinating.

我们都有同一首歌——默契，是一种不需要出声就能令人明白的语言

Something amusing occurred today.  We were supposed to go have class with the Italian students.  They study several subjects at the school.  Some students such as Irene and Veriana study tourism whilst some other classes study business.  Students have class six days per week and everyday all classes finish at around 1pm.  I realized that the education in Italy shared some similarities as that in China although they are still quite different in many ways.

Olesya and I stayed in the same classroom which was Class 4 to have some classes.  The first class I had was tourism economics.  The teacher kept speaking to me in Italian, yet I couldn’t do anything apart from smile back at her.  Irene translated some sentences to me, but even so, it didn’t utterly make sense to me.  What I could understand were only a few words such as different forms of “economic”, “economy”, “economical” and then “Keynes”.

What they were learning seem to be quite different from ours, so I used English to tell the teacher that we mainly learnt something about supply, demand and Keynesian economics.  The teacher wrote down some letters on the blackboard and I read a bit in Irene’s textbook, but that really meant nothing to me. 

After a short while, I took my notebook out and started writing down some Italian words I had learnt recently.  I don’t know when the class finished, but I just kept writing down my own stuff until the economic class was over and students went outside the classroom for relaxing.  Maria didn’t leave the room, but she gave me a dictation of Italian phrases which I’d learnt and luckily I got many of them right.  Perhaps I did have some talents on pronunciation of language though I still couldn’t pronounce some Italian and Russian lingual due to my structure of mouth especially my tongue.

During the break time, I asked Irene and Maria to teach me some new words.  Suddenly dozens of students came to me for a Chinese translation of their names, therefore I wrote down some characters including simplified and traditional Chinese characters for almost each student which enlighten and delight them.  But then we had another class called history.  I continued working on my things.  Maria did teach me millions of words, but it may be because there were too many that I couldn’t remember any.  Anyway I needed to do some revision.  And there was one more thing which was that I broke my own “Guinness Record” of the day before: I have picked out the 4th girl who had been to Brighton!  I started admiring myself afterwards.

When classes finished, Irene and I went back home by bus.  I was pretty sorry that today Ana was terribly ill and the medicine didn’t work, so Joseph cooked lunch for us.  The shrimps, fried fish, pickled fish and spaghetti with seafood cooked by him unambiguously impressed me.  How come both men and women are good at cooking?  I felt a bit stressed and I reckoned that I might have to catch up with the brilliant men in Italy. 

And in the afternoon, we were led by the girls to explore more about Ischitella. I had a cup of tasty hot chocolate in Simona’s bar and then the gals took us for a tour around the alleyways of the country.  Brian played a martial act in front of us and if anyone would like to review it, please ask Olesya for the videos!  It couldn’t be more “ridiculous”.  We wanted to buy some gifts, nevertheless, thanks to the great globalization, almost everything except postcards can be found in the supermarkets in the UK.  So what the hell could we buy?  Cities, towns and countries seem to start losing their own identities as globalization keeps making products pop up overseas.

The girls told us that Ischitella would be much busier in summer which is a special season that based on tourism.  We were planning to come back to Italy for a further visit in summer before the Schengen Visa expires.  We really wanted to promise the gals that we would come back to visit them, but we just couldn’t guarantee.  The pizza dinner doubtlessly demonstrated that we are heading for the end of the journey.  We were aware that we would be leaving on the next day without any excuses.  I lost, and I completely lost myself deeply into the sea of bitterness that I couldn’t find a buoy which would support me, and the light towers vanished in the smoggy darkness.  “快乐不知时日过”，时光总在不经意间悄然溜走，连个招呼都不打，甚至不发出丝毫声响，留给我们的只是一抹淡淡的忧伤，在我们心中划下一排排挥之不去的深深的脚印。

“举手长劳劳，二情同依依！”离别，也许是为了怀念

离别之时，众女无意而吾独悲，欲泣，然恐悲疾传染，惹房东诸女神伤。若吾受虐于其室，吾将欣然离去而无憾矣。而今事与愿违，不舍之情，更与何人说？古人云；“犯贱者”，此之谓也！
分离的一刹那，那种伤感涕零的场面，不由得使我的心也潸然泪下，那天早上我变得多少有点沉默寡言，大伙儿都很想尝试去冲淡一下离情别绪，而我，为了给意大利留下一丝回忆，在纸上写了几个中文大字，后来被一位女生珍藏了起来，结果又引发了新一轮的中文热，女生们争先恐后地伸出小臂，要我们在上面给她们签写她们的名字。其实，世界如此之大，相见真的来之不易，这份缘份，不得不令我珍惜。虽然彼此之间相处的时间不长，建立的感情却天地可鉴。也许你会说：“正因为相聚的短暂，才显现出这份感情的宝贵。”求之而不得，固然令人神往，可是我更渴盼相聚的时刻，不管是不是“人因误会而相识，因了解而分开。”一份难能可贵的友情，也许会像陈年的老酒一般，越是经历岁月的沧桑而越显得醇厚，而不是因了解而分开。在意大利的这段短暂时光，我尽了我最大的努力去珍视并过好大家在一起的每一天，旅游，主要不是拍些网上到处都能下载的风景照，而是去体会当地的风土人情，去身临其境地让当地的人们用热情感染我们，我想，我们已经做到了。

“这，是一个旅途，一个叫做生命的旅途，我们偶然相遇，然后离去，在这条不归之路。”

身在国外，会经常碰到不少国际朋友，不管是友情还是爱情，每一段感情都来得很快，去得也许更快，我们说这是“迅雷速度”。很难想象，到底什么时候，我们会分道扬镳，分到世界的每个角落，也许从此也不会再见面了。有人总喜欢抱怨世界太小，给人一种“老是见到你”的冤家路窄的感觉，于是他们说：“相见不如怀念”。而有些人则更欣赏一种小小世界，因为他们担心有些东西一旦离开自己，就很难再找回来了。正如Brian君所言，人与人之间的短颈之交稍纵即逝，就像要找回被海水卷走的贝壳，又谈何容易？令人难以释怀。

在意大利交流的几天里，与当地纯朴的姐妹们建立了不简单的友谊。由于那间学校里女生太多，而意大利名字都挺长，要记住几个人和其名并不算太难，而要在短时间里记住每一个人，则是“蜀道难，难于上青天！” Maria，一个令我难忘的名字，开始在我记忆深处扎下根来。记得交流的第三天，Maria主动向我做了自我介绍，她的英文不怎么好，我的英文也只是马马虎虎，而意大利语就更加così e così了，一场所谓的交流也许只是在对牛弹琴。可是我非常佩服她对我的勇气、耐心以及热情，直到后来变得难以割舍。随着时间的流逝，我们只要通过彼此间会心一笑，就能传达一份友好和真情。我想，我们没有共同的语言，却终究找到了共同的语言。

直到分离的那一刻，当我们被女生们紧紧相拥，当我们被亲得死去活来，我们还没有学会如何自拔。在那种情景之下，如果我们没有痛下决心，我想我们一辈子都会不了英国了。

岁月犹如齿轮一般永不停息地转动，而我们，只是在齿轮之间小心翼翼地穿行，也许会牵着某人的手，也许不会。可是谁也不知道何时，我们会因为一不小心，而使自己和记忆被齿轮压得粉碎，或者留下印痕。有时候齿轮压断了连在我们之间的绳子，于是我们被迫分开。我们希望可以给同行的人一个承诺，说我们要永远在一起，但是很多时候，谁又能保证自己永远都能顺利地避开齿轮的齿？我们努力地保护自己和牵着自己手的人，即使碰到齿轮也相濡以沫、互相扶持而不感到悲伤。倘若记忆不留疤，生命将失去纪念品；如果青春不留痕，日后终究会有悔恨。

I think, I have become addicted to my time in Italy.  I like the people maybe because I’ve got integrated and I’ve almost become one of them.  These days I have been producing and editing an album for the trip.  Now the process is about to finish.  On the last page: 明知要分离，却依然选择相遇，也许，正是命运的安排；既然注定要离别，又何必回首？如果不希望被记起，当初为何要对她们这么好？也许，要让自己被人遗忘的最好办法就是不要对一个人太好……

要期待，要坚信。有缘定能再相见。Looking forward to seeing you again in this May!

Grazie vi amo amici miei!  Mi mancate molto Irene, Anna, Maria, Veriana, Simona, Valentina, Jennifer and all our friends! 谨以此文献给最可爱的意大利朋友们。