Pet Clothes and People Watching

Week 2 is complete. For some reason hitting this milestone really feels like an accomplishment. I feel as though I have officially crossed a line from a “long work trip” to something more. To this something that I am doing here. And I feel pretty good about it emotionally. Physically not as much due to the lack of working out and excessive gelato eating, but I’m a constant work-in-progress.

As I mentioned in my last post, on Monday I took my second trip to the grocery store, and I’m gonna go ahead and say that I conquered it ::brushes shoulder off::. At least for the most part. I mean, I forgot to weigh the bananas, but otherwise got through the event smoothly with the added benefit of hearing the store play the Friends theme song on the overhead speaker. Who woulda thunk??

Tuesday was laundry day. APPARENTLY there is a washer and dryer in my building. Obviously this location would have been incredibly convenient, but I was told by other Jacobs folks that not only do you have to get a key from the front desk to use them, but the dryer takes up to 7 hours to actually dry your clothes…….::continue blank stare::..... Seriously? So, I took the recommendation of a guy who had been Laundromat hopping and walked 15 minutes to a self-serve place. Yes. I walked 15 minutes, almost 1 mile, with a bag full of dirty laundry down the streets of Milan while continually pulling up my phone to look at a map. Can you picture it? Don’t I just fit right in?

I get there and of course am not alone… that would be far too easy...and there are only 3 seats, each of which is already occupied. The signs luckily have english translations underneath them so I was fairly easily able to throw my clothes in a washer and get it started. And then I stood and awkwardly scrolled through facebook for about 20 minutes until one of the other fine patrons left. Once I was sitting down, I start looking around and reading signs (my new pastime to try and improve my Italian) I finally look straight ahead and see these gems.

Can anyone tell me what “Pet clothes” are referring to? For real?

Anyway, the wash finishes and on the dryers I have to select a temperature… not just a “low” or “delicates” or something indicative of what type of items would require such a temperature… but a quantitative temperature. So I guessed 40C...I truly have no idea how hot a normal dryer gets on different settings so… I’m gonna say close enough. Everything got dry and nothing shrunk… dramatically. Success!

Wednesday was.. Normal? Regular? Lacking entertaining story-telling value? I came home, I made this dinner (that I must say was quite tasty)

talked to Matt before he caught a flight, wrote for a bit, planned my weekend, and went to bed. Standard but… comfortable.

Thursday night was all about connecting back to my home country for the exciting events of March Madness :-) Yes, I sat in my apartment in Milan and streamed college basketball on my computer. All. Night.

Unfortunately I had to see NC State lose in their first round. I don’t want to talk about it.

I did also, however, have my super American moment for the week yesterday. When I got home I found the Amazon package I had ordered (yep, Amazon rules the world) on my table. I had ordered a few more adapters because at the present time I have been moving my single USA to European plug adapter from phone charger to computer charger to work etc on an as-needed basis. I open the package annnddddd…. Bought the wrong ones. Apparently Germany has the same LOOKING plug but with slightly thicker prongs (insert inappropriate joke). So. Sending them back and trying again.

There is a saying in Italian culture (though I have yet to be told this in person by an actual Italian.. I’ll keep you posted if this is ever validated)- “Il dolce far niente.” If you plug it into Google translate it says it means “Being Lazy,” but if you have seen Eat, Pray, Love or have read the internet, you will know that this translates (generally… the grammar is a little off) to “the sweetness of doing nothing.” I have decided I am going to steal the idea but change it to become more applicable to my life... “Il dolce far errori”... “the sweetness of making mistakes” (Coined, Leslie Vanderkolk, 2018).

Sidenote.. I once saw a video on facebook where a woman was talking about how her parents raised her to normalize and encourage failure with the perspective that failure meant you were trying and you should never stop trying (I am assuming they also celebrated successes, but I don’t remember that part of the video). They achieved this by asking the kids every week at the dinner table, “What is something you failed at this week?” and then they would high five over it. I loved it immediately and think of it often. I have in the past mostly thought of it in a “If I ever have kids, I want to do this with them,” kind of way. But until literally just this moment while writing the above paragraph, I had never thought to apply it to myself. Why should I not CELEBRATE these little mishaps and failures and embarrassment? Why should I save that for someone else when I can give myself that encouragement and support? Hm.....

I’ll have to think more on that one :-)

So anyway, at work this week I still did not have a specific project, so I helped my boss with a proposal. It wasn’t a lot of work, but it kept me busy for a chunk of time. The most fun part of it for me was that on Wednesday I sat in a meeting with my boss, the project controls manager, and 2 business development folks for at least 3 hours in which they spoke Italian 90% of the time. I didn’t have much input into the items they were discussing and the decisions they were making, so it wasn’t important that I could understand EVERYTHING they said, BUT… through knowing a few words (mostly numbers), watching the screen they were looking at, and paying attention to their tone of voice and body language, I could probably follow about 75% of the conversation! It’s really quite fun to interpret the expressive italian language without knowing more than a few vocabulary words ha. That said, I am definitely looking into signing up for a true Italian language class.

I also met with the Jacobs Futures chapter here, which is our global young professional organization. Our office has a chapter as well, but they are adopting me into this one while I am in Milan. We had a lunch social on Thursday which was DELICIOUS, and where, I kid you not, 5 or 6 of the folks had a digestif before heading back to work. Translation for those unfamiliar with the concept or term, they all had a shot of some type of liqueur before heading back to the office. I love it.

Today I sat in on an actual meeting for the Futures group over lunch. This meeting was held 100% in Italian outside of going around the room with introductions, and I only understood about 20% of what was going on. It was still absolutely fascinating, though, to people watch- watching the body language and group dynamic. It is amazing how within groups of people you can find some of the same personalities- the loud talker, the interrupter, the quietly passionate, the wise guy, the frustratedly passionate, the quietly apathetic, the problem solver, the mediators. Even without understanding the language it is possible to begin to read people and see how they all fit together as a group. It was an absolutely lovely and entertaining way to experience Italy for an hour. I actually feel more confidence in my company, too now knowing that our Milan equivalents are going through similar struggles. While talking about it with a colleague afterwards, I taught him the english phrase, “Growing pains.”

Tonight I head to Bologna for my first weekend trip! I kept this first trip to a nearby city so that I can use it as practice for future trips. If anything happens, I am only a 1-2 hour train ride from my apartment. It is supposed to rain all weekend...again… but I am still very, very excited! I cannot wait to look like a stupid American in another new city and enjoy il dolce far errori ;-)

See you soon!