Of Toilets and Teaching and Other Odd Things

I’ve always prided myself on being pretty adaptable to anything on the edge of my comfort zone. I’m not saying I don’t like a nice hotel, but I don’t need one. The dorm is located in an enormous palazzo, with tile floors and marble steps and 13 foot ceilings. It is dirty, unkempt, and cold. that’s OK. I have a passing acquaintance with dirty and unkempt, but the cold! The last two days have been very cold. In fact there was quite a bit of snow on Mt. Vesuvius last night, a fact that Suor Clementina relayed with wonder when she greeted us this morning. And the interior and exterior temperatures are remarkably similar. After all, heating a building like this is very expensive here. So I pull on the thick socks I knitted myself over two other pairs of socks and the thick sweater that I also knitted some 20 years ago, and I’m just fine.

The lack of toilet seats only bothers me in that I can’t for the life of me figure out what the advantage of a seatless toilet is, but everyone could use a little firming of the squatting muscles, so again, all good.

Oh and in case you thought it was to save money, that’s a no, because I found a stack of discarded ones under the sink. Ancora, devo dire, “Non capisco!”

Well, as long as we’re on the subject, it is a little bit odd that at our school, not only do the toilets lack seats, they lack toilet paper, not because they have run out and failed to resupply, but by design. Ponder that for a second. No toilet paper in any stall, in any bathroom, on any floor of Scuola Smaldone, on purpose. Ok, I get it, I can bring my own (I’ve already pilfered a roll from the dorm). Oh, and no soap either. None.

So today, when Ahinsa did not show up for school, and I was invited to spend the hour in the fifth grade class, I noticed a roll of toilet paper sitting on top of a filing cabinet. And then I remembered, that the day before, my first grader Serena asked for a tissue, and the teacher reached for a roll of toilet paper, also propped atop a filing cabinet, and tore off a piece for her. So I got to wondering. How does this work? Is there a bathroom break, and each kid is allotted five sheets? Or do they have to request sheets, or do they earn them with good behavior? Does every student have a roll tucked into his or her backpack along with the pencil box and gym shoes ? Did some naughty ragazzo steal all the toilet paper in order to TP the chapel, and so now we all must suffer for his sin? I’m not going to describe in excruciating detail how I came upon these questions, but let’s just say, I did it the hard way…retroactively. When my vocabulary around all things bathroomy improves, I’m going to ask, because the question is occupying too much of my time.

Here at the dorm, we go on a website every night and order our meals for the next day- lunch and dinner. When I imagined myself here, I imagined eating in a mensa with various tables set with plates and silverware, perhaps a napkin. The meals, I thought, would be family style, like they were in the convent in Rome, where Toby’s and my college program was housed. But it isn’t like that. Meals are cooked off sight and brought in (“catered” Ivan says). But Toby and I were both a little surprised when the meals arrived like this.

Everyday, a load of plastic boxes with our names on them are dumped on the dining table in the small kitchen. Most of the kids (a lot of the volunteers are still teenagers) just open them up and grab a fork and eat out of the plastic containers. I have joined them. One less dish to wash. Toby takes the high road and dumps his on a plate. I have to admit it does look more civilized. This isn’t the most appetizing way to consume your meals, but we adjust. There is no alcohol allowed in the dorm, so it’s tea or coffee. That was a bigger adjustment for one of us than the other. I’ll leave it at that. Still, no biggie.

Italian children are loud. But here’s a surprise…Italian teachers are louder. They yell at the kids, I mean really, really yell. The kids are unfazed. The teachers sound pretty much like their parents. They call the kids cattivo sometimes. That’s hard to get used to, but different culture, must accept.

But here’s the kicker. And I really don’t imagine I will ever stop shaking my head over this one. The English teachers don’t speak English. It’s not that they are not native speakers, that they aren’t fluent, they barely speak it at all. Toby and I are lucky because Antonio does speak English, even if it is a little rough in pronunciation…well, and grammar, and syntax. Still, he is open and willing to learn. He is very accepting of our help.

But there is a lovely young woman here who volunteers in a middle school. The teacher puts her in a chair in the front of the room and occasionally hands her a book so that she can read a passage aloud. Otherwise, they never talk to her, because they can’t. They never take advantage of her knowledge, or ask her to do anything else. So she sits and sits and feels quite useless.

This, is one thing I don’t think I’m going to get used to. It’s not always. But it’s not unusual.