Arriverderci

by a stroke of fate, i sat next to a man named giovanni on the ride back to the city from the film shoot last monday. he grew up and went to school in florence, lived in rome for quite some time, and moved to nyc last september to work in costume and set designing. we grabbed a beer after we got into the city, and it was just really nice to talk to someone who is so open to sharing his life's stories - in a funny, sweet, very italian kind of way. we stumbled across the subject of learning foreign languages, and he said that he had been meaning to learn chinese for quite some time; he had learned some very basic cantonese from someone in chinatown, but was interested in learning mandarin. long story short, we arranged to meet yesterday so that i can teach him some beginner chinese and he will, in turn, teach me some beginner italian.

we spent about two hours learning and teaching at a coffee shop. it was the first time i taught chinese to someone whose native language is not english, and bottom line - it was just a ball of fun! giovanni's ear for pronunciation was surprisingly really good, and very quickly was able to pick up on various patterns and combination of words and phrases . then, it was my turn to learn italian, and i just LOVED the pronunciation and accents in the language. at first, i was a little embarrassed and nervous about accenting in italian because i didn't want to sound like i was stereotyping the italian accent (come on, we've all done it at italian restaurants at some point in time). but giovanni's encouraging and jovial nature put me at ease very quickly, and i guess there's a reason why the stereotypical italian accent exists ;)

we gave each other simple homework and review tasks, and hopefully we'll be meeting up at least once a week for the next month. i titled this entry "arriverderci" because giovanni explained that italians say arriverderci to mean good-bye, but the word breaks down to mean "to see us again" - just like what "zaijian" means in mandarin! it's just so exciting to learn a new language and culture :)