italian.

Today I ventured to the library, something I haven’t done in apparently 2 years because my $10.50 fine was from 2008. My plan was to find a few good books to read to keep me occupied over the holidays. I’ve just finished re-reading twilight – lame and very ‘tween’ of me I know, but you can’t deny a love story where the two characters are so completely confident in their love and devotion to each other that they refer to themselves as the same entity. Anyway, I needed something new. My other reason for the library was because I also plan to learn Italian over my break. It’s been something I’ve always wanted to do. My mum is Italian, making me half Italian, not that you’d guess that by looking at me, and even though my extended family all grew up in Australia I’ve always wanted to be able to speak the language that is part of me. I wish I’d had the time or motivation to do it when I was younger, as maybe it would mean I could have more in depth conversations with my nonna, who’s still much more comfortable with Italian than English. I was offered French in high school, and while I think it’s safe to say I prefer France over Italy, the appeal of learning the language of my family is clearly stronger.

That’s where the name of this blog came from, by the way. I was named michelle mainly because it was my mum’s favourite name when she was a little girl, but my dad was keen on it too because of the Beatles song; “michelle, ma belle, these are words that go together well”. It’s a song that was sung to me often while growing up, but of course ‘ma belle’ is French for ‘my beautiful’. As I’ve always been interested in words and other people’s words, opinions and views on life, I guess I think blogs are a beautiful way of portraying that. And, sticking to my Italian background, ma belle became mia bella.

But back to the learning. I’m still not sure how I feel about learning from a tape. It’s not like the tape can tell where or if you’re going wrong with pronunciation and help you correct your fault, so I’m sceptical over how well this whole learning on my own thing will go. But I’m willing to give it a shot. I guess if I tell you my mum speaks Italian you’ll wonder why I don’t just get her to teach me. Well, my mum’s always been very caring and wanting to help me learn throughout school. She’s a teacher’s assistant, so she’s used to the classroom environment. But when it comes to me and her, student and teacher, it’s never really worked out between us, normally resulting in an argument. So I decided I would learn with the tape and practise with mum. I hope it goes well. I’m so excited to be able to speak fluently in another language. I love seeing people in the street or in the shops walking around talking to each other in another language. It’s so secretive – they could be talking about you and you’d have no idea.

My timing could have been a little better, I will admit. For example it would have been nice to know a little bit of the language when me and my best friend travelled through Europe in early 2009. Wow, almost 2 years ago. It doesn’t seem that long – the memories are still so clear. But at the same time, it seems like a lifetime. I’m excited to go back and know what food I’m ordering at a restaurant and not look like so much of a tourist. Though it’s kind of sad thinking about when/if/who I’ll go with again (I’m sure by this point my best friend and her partner couldn’t stand to be away from each for longer than week), and I don’t know how many other people I could find who want the same experience from travelling as we do. I don’t so much care about the histories and the ‘tourist’ attractions. I don’t want to go to see some statue just because everyone says it’s something to see (except the eiffel tower which is just amazing, especially at night). I want to walk down the street and find my own things to marvel at. I want to be immersed in the city. I want to sit on a rooftop balcony in Venice and people watch all day long, again.

I really hope I can succeed at learning Italian and cross something else off my ‘life to do list’ I created when I was about 15. Free time – you might not be the most boring and lonely thing after all :)

p.s. apparently I can’t keep these blogs short and sweet, so I guess you’ll just have to deal with reading a long rant each time!