Ssa' fa' dde'

Today I woke up really not feeling well again - Vasto and my body are just not getting along. I have constant headaches and my throat has been killing me :( But fortunately I didn't have to be in class until 11 so I could sleep in a little. Class today was the 3rd theater workshop with Sergio; 2 hours of prep for our performance of Masaniello in a couple weeks. Since I missed the last class because I was sick and wasn't about to volunteer to be a ballerina today, I currently have no lines of my own, but hopefully that will change as the acts continue to be added! :)

After theater we came back, ate, and went to the beach for the afternoon. It was my first time going to Vasto Marina, which is less than 10 minutes away as opposed to the 25+ to get to Punta Penna. Vasto Marina is different because most of it is private beaches, so you have to rent an umbrella/chair and can't just lay out on a towel. There were 9 of us so the man gave us a little discount, and all in all it was worth $5.50 to be able to lay out on a chair and not have to deal with your entire body being covered in sand :P The water was nice and perfectly blue and clear as I've come to expect here, buuut I'm still partial to Punta Penna because I just like the nice, small, public (read: free) feel and it's just more aesthetically pleasing without all the ombrellone and beach chairs! But the Marina is soo much more convenient for when we only have 3-4 hours between classes so I'm sure I'll grow to love it!

I had a meeting with my professor at 6, so I wanted to catch the 4:40 bus back so I'd have enough time to shower and review what we were going to talk about beforehand. I got to the bus stop at 4:24 but the bus never came :( So I hopped on another line that seemed to be headed in the right direction at like 5:15ish, and the driver gave me a really hard time about my little bus card that the program gave us so we can take the public transportation for free. It clearly says on the card that it's valid from 7 luglio (July) to 6 agosto (August), but he was adamant about the fact that these cards are ONLY issued in monthly allowances, so if it says August on it, it can ONLY be used in August. (I pointed out that it also said July on it, but he wasn't very pleased with that idea!) In the end since I was already on the bus and really wanted to get back to the hotel, I coughed up the 1 euro for the ticket. Still. I object! :P

My meeting went really well; we got to talk about the book I read a little, as well as some translations I'd been working on and some basic theories of translation and dialects based on the books she gave us yesterday, so that was cool. My roommate Rachel and I are both super interested in the regional dialects of Italy so we went to this theater production IN the Abruzzese dialect tonight! Our professor was there too, with her husband, who is from Abruzzo, so he probably understood more than I did... okay, a LOT more, since I understood pretty much nothing. (To give you an idea, the title of the play was Ssa' fa' dde' (the title of this post) ... yeah. Not so easy.) It was so fascinating to see the audience's reactions and interactions to/with the dialect though - there were mostly elderly people in attendance (which made me and Rachel scared that it was a sign that dialects are 'dying' - SAD!), and many of them shouted out lines before the actors or sang along or shouted out commentary. I heard a man in front of me ask the couple sitting next to me, "But the dialects of Vasto and Vasto Marina are different, no?" and they responded that they are. Isn't that crazy - Vasto is a tiny town and they speak their own LANGUAGE! Can you imagine if like, Rhode Island spoke a totally different language than Massachusetts? So crazy!

Anyway, at 11:00 it seemed like it was all coming to a close; the main character was carried out, having just won a large sum of money, the curtains were drawn, and people in the bleachers began to talk and move about a bit. But no one in the seated section where we were was moving so we waited... and waited... and waited. Then came the announcement: "if during this change of scenery, you'd like to ...) Yup, it wasn't over. (This is probably partially due to the fact that it takes Italians 23947 minutes to stop greeting/kissing/talking to each other as they arrive, so the play had to start later than scheduled, but I won't dare mention that.) We sneaked out anyway though, because it was getting late and we were really tired plus we didn't exactly know what the heck was going on in the play to begin with!

We did decide to do our own type of dialect project though. Using the books from our professor plus the internet and our observations, we're each going to study two dialects a little bit over the next two weeks and teach each other the patterns we've learned; then we'll both look at Sicilian together because it's (I think?) the most interesting to both of us - Sicily is a fascinating region because, being in the center of the Mediterranean, SO many societies/countries/languages/cultures have passed through it and influenced the dialect's development. French, Spanish, North African, Arabic, Greek, Italian, etc. etc. etc. ALL have impacted the Sicilian dialect. SO COOL!


Now I'm off to sleep because I have a headache and it's raining and we're taking our professors to our fruttivendolo in the morning (yes, OUR fruttivendolo, hehe!) and because I'm just plain TIRED, which is reason enough sometimes!


Baci,
Michelina