Speechless

Sometimes you can speak Italian without ever saying a word of it.

That's the plan anyways.

The language barrier.  This is going to be interesting.  I'm okay in Spanish.  Not fluent by any means, but I can manage the basics, even more than that on a good day.  But this Italian thing (or eye-talian if you're from the Midwest) is getting the better of me.  My nonna, bless her heart, is trying to teach me.  Whenever I talk to her she slips in a few new vocab words, though she usually just explains the difference between the Tuscan dialect that is considered to be "standard" eye-talian and the Piedmontese dialect she grew up speaking.

[Interesting side note.  Dante, of Divine Comedy fame, is the singular man we can attribute the modern Italian language to.  Because he wrote in the "dirty" vernacular language of Tuscan and not the "high" language of Latin (one reason that the Divine Comedy is NOT considered to be a work of epic poetry...Wikipedia page I'm glaring at you here), he not only gave the people of Florence a poem they could all understand, he also, perhaps unknowingly, became the linguistic father of a nation (though I do like to think he had enough hubris to know he was doing something more than simply writing a poem that could save).  When Italy was unified in the 19th century and it came time for the newly formed nation to streamline the new official language, officials turned to Dante.  Basically, Dante owns.  But if you're reading this you've probably talked to me for more than five minute and thus are keenly aware of my general Dante advocacy.]

The more important idea here is that I'm going to live in a country for the next five months and all I can really say is "Why is that not possible for you?", "I'm sorry.", and "I want to buy everything."  All important phrases (the last on in particular), but perhaps not enough to get me from point A to point B.  My other problem is that when I think in Italian it comes out in Spanish.  Or, if on the rare occasion that I manage to actually say something in Italian, it's weighed down with a Spanish accent.

The plan, then, comes down to me simply dressing the part.  This is going to be 24/7 Glamour - Italian Edition.  I've reading my Italian Vogue (for fashion and language help), working on walking on cobblestone is heels and blasting Italian pop music.

How many days left in the states?  14.  How many things do I still need to do? 45,989,086,535.