Day in the Park

I woke up at 5am and in a blogging frame of mind. For some reason the bathroom is currently singing "Happy Birthday" which is appropriate given I just realised I've recently been telling everyone I'm 22 when in fact I've been 23 for over a week now. Clearly I'm having difficulty adjusting- soon I'll be like one of the Oscar Wilde women for whom “35 is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.”

I was letting my lovely last Sunday in Rome waste away with only a sketchy plan to visit the Pantheon and perhaps catch the flea market. In the event I did neither unless you count seeing the Pantheon as the result of this conversation in the car or maybe bus: *someone points to a shiny dome in the distance* "what building is that?" "St Peter's Basilica right?" *much laughter* "No! How long have you been in Rome? A year?" "Actually maybe it is St Peter's..." etc until eventually, long after passing it by, we concluded it was probably the Pantheon and I checked it off my to-do list :)

None of the quotes were me I think- they were Vale(ria who speaks perfect english but goes into despairing teacher mode when I take advantage and stop making any effort to talk Italian) and Fede, her flatmate, plus assorted members of Fede's clan- brother sister boyfriend and dog. I took the wise step of calling to see what Vale was up to having packed my knitting and Teaching Tenses I thought I'd probably just sit in a sunny park- which some might view as a criminal waste of precious Rome time, but it's whatever makes you happy right?

My luck was in Vale & co were already lounging in the beautiful Villa Borghese park. They were playing a kind of vollyball circle game which brought painful memories of playing with the athletic giant Bosnians and my noodle-armed efforts to join in the fun, when really I should have followed Nemo's example and just sat looking pretty - a respectably idle female rather than a pathetically weak one. Happily these folk were more about fun than sport and at first we only lasted passing the ball around twice before retiring to the picnic blanket to recruit our strength with extortionately priced crisps and popcorn. Speaking of popcorn, according to young Fatima it's strange that we eat sweet popcorn in England. I told her that we know salty popcorn exists.

Our conversation prospered wonderfully because although Vale was the only bilingual speaker in the whole group she managed to unflaggingly provide simultaneous translations as well as encourage and facilitate our fledgling efforts to construct sentences in Italian/ English. Of course whenever she left the situation would deteriorate dramatically but at least friendly relations were well established so we were able to weather her absence with cordial smiles. At one point Fede(rica) asked if I remembered her name- of course I disgraced myself by clearly not having a clue and furiously trying to rewind back to the memory of our introductions while they laughed reproachfully. I did remember them all without prompting eventually.

They were all curious about various things about Muslim culture for example the widespread dog phobia. Fede's dog was a little golden scottish terrier and very good, not at all scary, but at least until I prayed Asr I couldn't touch her. Afterwards when we played ball she would fetch the ball whenever it rolled down the hill (frequently) and proceed to chew out chunks of sponge until someone rescued it. Which left the ball somewhat spitty but it was post-Asr so what the heck. V says she has plenty of questions cause she's teaching mostly muslim guys all the time, but it's awkward or inapproprate to ask the students. I'm not one to filter what I say when I like a person so if she asks me something I try to answer although it generally peters away to ".. I don't know"

We sat in the park idling away in this manner until the sun dimmed and we were too cold to continue sitting forever. We decided to get some food, which naturally involved taking a car, bus and walking for an hour to get out of the pricey tourist area and find some pizza.
All in all a lovely day. This is my last day in Rome - I don't guarantee blogs from Bosnia but we'll see how it goes.

*edit to add* I completely forget about the drama on the bus home last night. There was suddenly a whole lot of Italian cursing and damning of the Spanish and it emerged that a pickpocket woman who looked around forty had been discovered with her hand in a Spanish woman's purse. The Spaniard was like "what the hell are you doing?" in her manner, but either too genteel or too inarticulate in the Italian tongue to defend herself against the torrent of abuse the pickpocket directed at her. Then some guy in the back jumped in and fired back a fluent comprehensive takedown while the rest of the bus cheered and clapped and the pickpocket jumped off the bus hollering as she went.
I learned a lot of new words.