Tales from the Diplomatic Corps 9

Ciao ragazzi e ragazze!

Oggi, vorrei racontare la mia memoria della carinissima Fabrizia D'Ottavio, ambasciatrice d'Italia. Perché parlo l'Italiano ancora proprio male, I will continue writing in English. Fabrizia is one of the three Olympic medalists on the team, having won a silver medal in rhythmic gymnastiscs in the 2004 Games in Athens. The thing I remember with Fabrizia is a funny little language issue we had during the seminar.

On our first night at the convention center, we went for a little evening walk to have a cup of coffee. On our way, Fabrizia introduced herself and told me she was the Young Ambassador of Italy. Being given the fact that my sister has been living in Italy for over two years now and that I am in general a huge fan of Italy, I tried talking Italian to her. First, I asked her where in Italy she came from ("Di dove sei"?). She replied, in English, that she was from Chieti, a small town in the Abruzzi. Being a little insecure because she had answered in English, I continued, telling her about my personal bounding with Italy ("Mia sorella habita a Roma, ci sta lavorando.") Again, Fabrizia replied, in English, that she knew Rome quite well and that it was a beautiful city.

Of course, my spirit was broken by then and for the rest of the week, we'd speak English to each other, having a lot of fun with the rest of the gang. Time went by and the week was over way to soon. On Thursday evening, I was waiting with Mediha and Sofia for our airport shuttle, since we all departed at the same time. Fabrizia took a later flight and came down to tell us goodbye. So we were standing in the lobby, saying goodbye to each other and everybody was quite sad to leave.

At this point you must know that one of my bad habits is that I swear quite a lot. Not to upset anybody, I usually try to swear in a language nobody in the room speaks or understands. Somehow the fact that Fabrizia was standing right next to me must have slipped my mind, because I was exclaiming a grumpy:

"Che palle!!!"

which is a rather direct way of saying "This sucks" in Italian. Fabrizia was looking at me and started laughing and, to my great surprise, sent a wave of Italian words my way. Alas, the first time I succeeded talking Italian to her was approximately five minutes before I left for the airport. Better late than never I guess.

So the conclusion I drew for myself was that next time I want to talk to somebody in his/her native language, I'll just throw in some curse words to break the ice. I just hope they will take it was humorously and relaxed as Fabrizia did.

PS: I can't even begin to imagine the pain Fabrizia's funny move at the end of her video would cause me...