My Italian...

I give credit to my classmates, my teachers, Elisa and Martina, and to those that tried to have a conversation with me in Italian....

- Cavoli means "surprise" but I was pronoucing it incorrectly so I was saying "broccoli or cabbage". I said it for a few days in a row thinking I was saying..."What a nice surprise!" but little did I know I was saying..."What nice broccoli/cabbage". Finally a taxi driver told me that I was confused. We laughed and laughed and laughed.

- I could never pronounce che, chi, ca, gli or anything else correctly. I had the hardest time and it would take me about 5 minutes to get one word out. I was even saying words in English incorrectly...instead of pigeon, I said pigun....

- "Mi scusi" means excuse me but I said "Schifo" which means "how disgusting"...so instead of walking past someone and saying "excuse me", I was saying "how disgusting". I'm surprised that no one said anything rude to me in Italian when I said "how disgusting". On 2nd thought...they could have said something rude but I wouldn't have known.

- "Piano" in Italian means....level or floor but when I arrived, I did not know that. I took the stairs to my room on the 3rd floor and noticed that on each floor it said "Piano"....I thought there was a piano player on each floor. I was thinking..."Wow, it's going to be a loud hotel." I then realized that "piano" meant floor.

- "Oh dio"...means "Oh gosh/god"...I said that a lot but at first I thought people were saying "Oh dear" (just like in English) and yes, I did say "Oh dear" a few times before someone corrected me.

Random Things...
- My dizionairio came with me everywhere. It never left my side. I used it all the time. I actually left it at breakfast one morning in my hotel and they knew it was mine...I was the only American in my hotel.

- I think I stood out as an American all the time! Before I even opened my mouth to talk to a store vendor or a server at a restaurant, they would try to speak to me in English. I guess I can't pass for being Italian at all.

- While running in the morning (mattina) no one would say good morning back to me. I even said it in Italian. Finally, the 2nd week, people would say good morning back to me. Maybe the town of Grado got together and decided to be nice to the crazy (potsi) American that runs every morning.