June 3, 2013 by Caroline Leland
Day Two, Part II
So many things made this day wonderful. When I went running around 8:30am, people were out hosing and sweeping the sidewalk in front of their shops. I think that’s really cute.
I met up with Léa and her host sister, Manuela, this afternoon. After buying our bus passes, we walked around Palermo for a couple hours, talking and sightseeing. Léa is from Geneva but originally French, and studies at Boston College. So she knows French and English but very little Spanish. Manuela knows Spanish and French but very little English. I know zero French and some Spanish, so the three of us were continually talking in a combination of all three languages. Sometimes I’d want to know how to say something in Spanish, so I’d ask Léa in English to ask Manuela in French, and Manuela would tell me in Spanish. It was really fun. We just walked around the neighborhood, saw some parks, and randomly came upon a horse race that we watched for a while.
Speaking of language, I just met another of the tenants in my house, a woman named Alba. She’s from Italy and her dad is Chinese. But in addition to Italian, Chinese, and Spanish, she also knows English and French, just for kicks. Makes my halting efforts at bilingualism look pathetic. But she was super nice too (I know I’ve used that word to describe everyone, but it’s just nice that people are nice, you know?). She invited me to join the other housemates for dinner Saturday night, yay! And Carolina (my landlady) just came in to invite me to eat with her in a few minutes, yay! It’s looking like I won’t be lonely all summer after all 🙂
la catarra de los cabellos |
Manuela y Léa |
una esquina de la calle cerca de mi casa |