#24: Mambo Italiano
Buon anno!
We've officially started a new year in Italy, and I'm very excited about all that 2024 has in store for us.
Here's a very short list of things I want to achieve:
Speak Italian at a conversational level
Learn Italian style (I'm busily taking notes, but yet to execute on this at all yet...)
Finally, finally get our Italian passports
I'm sure you will be rolling your eyes at the second one, but I can't help that I spent my most formative years wearing thongs (flip flops for the non-Australians), rugby shorts and polo shirts along with all my Queensland compatriots. A style I appallingly continued well into my years in Melbourne.
The local version of Italians here in Lucca are very stylish in a classic way. There's none of the 'fashion' I remember from Milan, rather they spend their lives in beautiful leather boots, tailored skirts and trousers, and fur coats. The animal rights groups haven't had as much of an impact here it would seem...
As well as the clothing, which is incredibly well made and looks as if it will last decades, their hair is my other obsession. On both men and women. After some stealthy research, I can confidently say that Italians of all ages get their hair set once a week. Men at the barber, and women at the hairdresser.
Both can expect to pay about 15-20 euro for the service, which actually makes it seem quite a reasonable proposition. For the ladies, a professional wash and blowdry easily lasts the week looking quite fabulous. Obviously it doesn't get shoved into a helmet or sweaty from a long run, because how uncouth.
Not ever sweating is definitely the key. Which means that if I'm ever to have a chance, I need to start now in winter.
In other very exciting news, I am surprised and delighted to report that Raffy speaks Italian!
I've not ever had a good sense of how her language is progressing, because whenever she is around us she speaks English. Likewise, most of the other kids she plays with when we are also with her also speak English.
We've had a hire car this week and a couple of days ago David took the kids on an adventure outside the walls of Lucca to visit some of the surrounding towns. In one, they stopped at a local playground. Raffy made friends with a few other children also playing there, and David was astounded to hear her chatting away to them in Italian. One of the parents of the other children even remarked how nice it was that she was bilingual, and he hoped that his children would learn English.
So there you go, after six months at least one of us speaks Italian!
And finally, I want to share another phrase that I've learnt that I absolutely love. This one isn't technically even Italian, but I learnt it from one of my foreigner friends here. She is married to an Italian and has been living here for around four years.
She refers to anything confounding to an outsider as a 'Mambo Italiano' moment. Incomprehensible bureaucracy? Driving? The insistence that milk in a coffee after 11 will kill you, but kilograms of cheese at any hour of the day is totally fine? All examples of Mambo Italiano. It'll never quite make sense, but it is fun and you just have to go with it.
I can't tell you how often I've had the song playing in my head since!
Hope all is well and I'm counting down now until we will see you next.
