Finally, the long-waited phone call from Italy happened almost an hour ago. I jumped from my chair when the phone rang. When I picked it up, someone was talking in Italian, like a music to my ear, reminding me of an intro (by Syria, I think she’s an Italian singer or radio announcer) of a song ‘La Segreteria’ from my fave Italian band Neri per Caso. But the one talking on the phone now was not a ‘segreteria’ or a stranger, but it was Cristina Derossi, my sweet ‘coccola’ Italian pal from Trieste.
Too bad, the connection was so bad, and my Italian was even worse. I was often at lost, didn’t know what to say cos I didn’t even understand what she was talking about, even when she (PATIENTLY) said her sentences slowly word by word, and even tried her best to translate some of it into English, or made some sound effects to make it easier for me to understand her (like tuut..tuutt…for il treno, or the train). And when I asked her about her harp, she even played it a bit for me. I could hear the wonderful sound of it amidst all other noises that interrupted almost all of our conversation. With my broken Italian, I asked her to hang up and try to call back after a minute, with a hope that the connection would get better by then. I was praying hard for it, really. It is really stressful when you only have a bit of knowledge about a particular language and the connection is not on your side at all because of the great distance. I felt like a dummy, and I was hoping for a miracle not to suddenly become so fluent in Italian, but at least for a clear connection so Cristina and I could communicate, and she wouldn’t end up wasting her phone bills trying to teach an Italian lesson to such a moron like me.
Three times the phone rang afterwards, and I couldn’t even hear a voice, but at the 4th attempt, finally we could talk again. This time, I could hear her voice much better. Still, it took me ten seconds to remember how to say ‘better’ in Italian (MEGLIO MEGLIO MEGLIO!), and instead of saying 1500 like I planned, I said 150 (arghhh, number always confuses me anyway!). She promised me to send a CD of the pictures from her trip around Europe, and I was mortified because I haven’t written a reply to her letter I received long time ago, due to my busyness. I have been listening the OPI interviews (through the phone) for our research at work (it’s an interview with an expert to determine your ability in a particular language, with the scale 0-5). If tonight were also an OPI interview, I think I would get 0+, really. I had been nervous about it. I had even written things I might want to say to Cristina and rehearsed it twice, and I brought the paper with me, also a big Italian dictionary on my lap when we were talking, but those didn’t really help. I need to start learning Italian again!
Anyway, I don’t regret this evening at all. I am so glad to hear Cristina’s voice before meeting her someday (or like she said, un giorno), either in Trieste, or Giacarta. And I really loved to hear her laugh… (mi e’ piaciuto quando ti ho sentito ridere!)
Cristina, spero che quando leggi questa posta, saprei che sono stata molto CONTENTA di sentire la tua dolce voce e mi sento benedetta di avere una amica cosi coccola come te! Grazie di nuovo per avermi telefonato, cara!
No comments:
Post a Comment