Several people have
asked me why I haven't written a blog in a while and have encouraged me to
write one because I have two weekends of games worth of updates. There are two
main reasons why I haven't written one in a couple of weeks.
1. I haven't traveled to
any major Italian cities like Florence which would definitely be exciting to
write about.
2. My team got our first
losses against Bussolengo two Saturdays ago.
I didn't think that
writing a blog about how we lost and how I've been spending a lot of my time in
Forli (which is not a very "stereotypical" Italian city) would be too
interesting for anybody to read about. But the team we lost to is one of the
best teams in the league and the girls call them the "Super Star
Team" because they are a new team this year and I guess they tried to
recruit all the star players from every team and put them on this team. Besides
that, we won both games we played this past Saturday and our record is now 6-2.
We are the second best team in our division, with Bussolengo being
undefeated.
So here is the quick
recap from the games we won against Unione Fermana on Saturday:
We run-ruled them the
first game in 4 innings... the score was 21-2! Although it may seem like
this game was an easy win… it didn't start out that way. There are two
Americans on Unione Fermana. A pitcher named Monica Perry (played at Illinois
and Florida State), and a shortstop/middle infielder named Alicia Herron
(played at Ohio State). I remember Alicia Herron from playing against her at
Ohio University because we always had to be careful when we pitched to her. She
makes me feel small (not that she is fat or anything... just a 6 foot tall body
of muscle.) Anyway, in the first inning, Alicia hit a shot clearly over
the left field fence and made the score 2-0. In the third inning is where my
team took control. I hit my first homerun here and made the score 3-2!
Throughout both games, 3 more girls hit homeruns (including one grand slam) and
even against the American pitcher, my team kept hitting really well and we were
able to win.
So, let me tell you a
little more about my first homerun. I wish I could tell you it was like Alicia
Herron’s where I knew it was a homerun as soon as it hit the bat. Nope. It was
one of those homeruns that lefty slappers at OU would always get jealous of… The
one that was a pop up, but because I have power, it made its way over the
fence. Whenever this would happen to me (games or practice) at OU, the girls
would make comments like, “Wow I wish I could hit a pop up and get a homerun
out of it. When I hit a popup it doesn’t even leave the infield.” Anyway, that
was my first homerun here in Italy.
My stats for both games
were:
6 for 8: 1 homerun, 2
doubles, 7 RBIs, 5 runs scored
Here is the link to the
stats for the ISL (Italian Softball League). My team is Fiorini Forli and we
are in Girone B. This link has the stats for each team, as well as individual
and team leaders in different categories.
This next paragraph is
for the Ohio Softball girls who remember playing Mafia during campfires, rain
delays, or any other time we had nothing else to do. Mafia is a game where each
person gets a card that determines what character they are in the game. There
are a few Mafia members who try to kill everyone, a Doctor who can save a
person from being killed, a few other characters, and the rest are the innocent
Villagers. After each round, everybody talks with one another and tries to
figure out who the Mafia members are. Then, as a group, they vote to “kill”
somebody because they think they are a Mafia member. The goal for the Mafia
members is to trick everyone and have them vote/kill off their own villagers so
they win the game. The goal for the Villagers is to actually figure out who the
Mafia members are and vote/kill them off so they win. This explanation will
probably make no sense unless you know the game, but the reason I am writing
about this is because I played this game with my Italian team on the bus home
from our games on Saturday. Except instead of it being called Mafia, it was
called something that translated to Wolves on the Table. So instead of Mafia
members, there were Wolves trying to kill the Villagers, and even though there
were a few extra characters, the game was the same. It was hard for me to
figure out who was lying and whatnot because I don’t know the girls as well so
they could read each other better. Also, the conversation was always in Italian
so it was hard to keep track of why people were voting off so-and-so or if what
they were saying was suspicious or not. But it was still a lot of fun!
Using this game for
example, there were times when I felt so confident in my Italian… and other
times where I had no idea what was going on. When the “narrator” of the game
was talking and saying to “close your eyes” or “it is day time”, I was very
proud of how well I am learning my Italian. But then when it was discussion
time, I felt like I haven’t learned anything! I picked up on some vocabulary
words but I couldn’t even understand what people were agreeing with each other
in the conversation. But again, this is because several people are talking at
once and there were a lot of side conversations.
However, the hardest and
most frustrating thing for me with my Italian is going to order food by myself.
Even just ordering a pizza can be difficult because there are so many different
toppings that I don’t know the names of yet. (I am starting to learn more each
time I order pizza. I guess I just need to keep eating pizza so I am able to
learn more words!) You probably are thinking what I am thinking: “How hard can
it be to order food? You look at the menu. Say what you want. You pay. You eat.”
No. It is WAY more complicated!
From what the girls have
told me, each city in Italy is famous for their own certain food. In Forli,
they are famous for something called a piadina. A piadina is like a sandwich
where you can get basically anything you want in it (meat, cheese, tomato
sauce, vegetables, etc.) These places also have a similar food called a
crescione. This is like a piadina but it is closed (like a calzone) and is
usually cooked and served warm. Now that you have the background information
about Forli’s famous food, here is my story to help you understand how hard it
is to order food in a different language. One of my teammates told me to go to
this piadina place nearby and get a piadina. I asked her what her favorite one
was and she told me it was a vegetable one. Last week after practice, I decided
to try this out. I felt confident I could order this vegetable piadina because
I know how to say vegetable in Italian--verdura. The place was easy to find…
but that’s about the only easy thing that came from this experience. I looked
at the menu and in about every section I saw “verdura” written down. But it
didn’t just say verdura… it said “verdura miste.” I didn’t know what that
meant, but I didn’t even let that scare me! (I later found out that it meant mixed
vegetables.) So I thought I did what I had to do… tell the lady I wanted a
verdura miste piadina. Instead of saying “ok” and telling me how much it would
cost like I expected, she started asking me all of these questions that I didn’t
understand. I told her I only spoke a little Italian and she tried to speak
slower and point to different things. Eventually I just said “okay” to whatever
she asked/pointed at and I ended up getting my piadina… which turned out to be
a crescione. Either way… it was delicious. Could I order that exact same thing
again? Probably not. When I told my teammate that I tried her favorite piadina
she asked me how I liked it. After describing it to her, she told me that I
didn’t in fact eat her favorite piadina. She went on to tell me how I had a
crescione not a piadina, that the lady was probably asking me if I wanted my
vegetables grilled or not, and a lot of other possible things she could have been
asking me.
Moral of the story: If
you want to try a random piadina and actually end up eating a delicious crescione…
try and order your teammate’s favorite piadina in a foreign language.
Luckily, later on that
same day, something else took place that helped build up my Italian confidence
once again. Elda’s boyfriend is on a baseball team in the IBL (Italian Baseball
League) and had a home game about 20 minutes away from Forli on Friday. While
Elda and I were sitting in the stands and wearing our Forli Softball jackets,
we had a nice little visitor. A young girl came up to us and, speaking Italian,
started talking to us and asked if we played softball. She was having the conversation
with Elda but I actually understood everything that was being said! Rosetta definitely
helped me with introductory conversational skills! The girl’s name is Georgia, she’s
12 years old, and plays baseball. Elda told her that I am a catcher from
America and then she proceeded to say how she wants to be a catcher and loves
America! She visited California when she was younger and went to LA, Palm
Springs, and… San Diego! She also showed me some baseball cards she had in her
wallet from players in the MLB. After she found out I was from America, she
tried speaking to me in English and I replied to her in Italian. We both
continually looked over at Elda while we were speaking for help on words or to
make sure that we were saying what we wanted to say correctly, but we were both
able to talk and understand each other! When Georgia left, Elda told me she was
very impressed with my Italian and that the girl looked at me like I was her
hero because I was a catcher from America.
Moral of the story: My
Italian language skills dramatically increase when speaking to a 12 year old
softball fan.
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GELATO
TRACKER
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