Friends and Smiles

This week there are two things I've come across on the internet that have left me reflecting about our time in Italy.  So if you read on, be prepared to follow a link here and there to make sense of it all.

1.  Friends.
This video, by Hank Green, has made me appreciate two things about living abroad in a place where I don't speak the language.  First, it's incredibly difficult to make new friends if you simply can't have those chance encounters because you speak a different language (go watch the video if that doesn't make sense).  There is no way to strike up a casual conversation in the coffee shop, the grocery store, or over a beer, when every ounce of energy is spent trying to remember the vocabulary to ask for your check, pay with a credit card, or figure out where the heck you can get a beer.  So making new friends is nearly impossible.  That brings me to the second thing.  I am incredibly lucky to work in a school with other people who DO speak English.  Who invite us over for a cup of tea or wine.  To chat with about the weather while waiting for my photocopies.  Who we can (and do) ask for help all the time.   Without those new friends, we wouldn't still be here.  (I do miss my friends at home terribly, though!)

2.    Smiles.
This was a rough week, for many reasons.  Things have not been going well--job things, home things, paperwork things.  But reading this article reminds me that I have some control over how I handle it all.  And I'm doing it with a smile.  I don't get a ton of sleep, but I smile when I'm teaching my classes.  I try to laugh and make jokes with students and Tom.  Because things do seem better when you are smiling. My favorite form of therapy lately is 15 minutes with the 10-month-old baby next door.  I don't have a regular gym to visit here, but that time is my "smiling gym!"

Hopefully your week will be full of friends and smiles too!