The biggest lesson so far......

Patience is a Virtue……

The confusing maps....

What can I say about school. Its’s a little complicated to say the least. The bureaucratic red tape one must get through is much more challenging than what you experience at home in the United States.

If  you have ever waited in a line in Italy, perhaps taken a number or been told to wait a moment at a business, in school, or at the bank, I cannot imagine you would complain much after you returned home. The culture certainly is different. Very different! Waiting in Italy and waiting at home can be two extremely different experiences.

Having lived in Rome, I have learned patience and how to live in the moment without judgment or anger. Once you resolve yourself to the differences everything is much easier to deal with. This is not what one expects “La Dolce Vita” to be.  But in all things, it is best to just be patient.

To begin classes at the University, one is first required to check into one office where they then send you to another office, then you must go to yet another office just to get registered (even after pre-registering before I left for Perugia).

In between your office visits, you must take your placement entrance exam. The exam comprises written and oral tests. When you take the written test you must then wait several hours before you can take the oral exam, then again you must return for the results before pushing on to the next building for the next set of hoops. Then there was the three day chase from one building to another across town in which I lost my first five pounds (while eating plenty of pizza, pasta, and gelato) - and that was just to get my wifi code that doesn’t even work. It is all very confusing and trust me when I say even the most patient people find themselves grinding their teeth and taking many deep breaths.

Having jumped through what I thought were all the hoops, I found myself registered in the 2^nd level intermediate courses. I felt pretty comfortable in my class, and in true Ian fashion, I became quite popular within two days. My big personality is one that the younger students find fascinating. Still I had problems getting to classroom on my first full day of courses because I had mistakenly taken four lamictal pills instead of my normal two….WOW, what an incredibly strange experience that was.

Most of you know I study maps and know where I am most all of the time and rarely get lost. In a small town with a business district no larger than my own West Seattle neighborhood, it seems odd I would be so lost for so long but the pills made me as medically drunk as I could have imagined. I was seeing two and three of everything. After two hours of wandering the streets of Perugia I somehow managed to find the building and tried to concentrate for the remaining few hours of class time.


So here's the humorous irony. Because I was so drunk on meds when I left class that day, I forgot to pay attention to where I had been and could not find my classes the next day, but was lost for only an hour. I know not to make that mistake again.

With all that behind me I settled into my classes for the next week.

As this second week came to a close, I was called into the main office which is located on the other side of town. I worked my way up hill. then down hill, to get from one building to the other. When I arrived and found the right office (another story too long to tell), I found out I had yet to get some paperwork filed (REALLY?).

I was in need of my "Codice Fiscale." This is a necessary paper for my Borsa or scholarship that proves I am in the country - and here legally. I was a bit surprised to find out how far it was to the next office and was given another one of the same terrible unreadable maps from the office. Thankfully I could use my googlemaps phone app or I would have again wandered for hours.

Well, the office I was expected to go to was at the bottom of the valley. That may not sound like much but I was at the top of the city and now needed to go to the bottom. I walked down for 45 minutes… much of it stairs. I was lucky I made it in time as I was the last person taken for the day.

I got my paperwork done and then began my climb back up hill. It was the hottest part of the day; 95 degrees and the most humidity I had felt since I arrived. I began a conversation with God…..”Hey Lord….Really?”  “Lord I am confused as to why I seem to be running into more problems than the other students…what is that all about”?

In typical God fashion, He said to me clearly, deep in my spirit: “Ian….you are not here to learn Italian, you are here to learn patience”! I laughed out loud and the woman walking next to me just gave me an incredibly intense glance of disapproval. It was at that moment I began looking at everything that was good . I was in Italy, I had made great friends, I was eating good food everyday, I was learning about new cultures of my classmates, I was connecting with the school staff because of how many problems I had, I was in warm weather that was far from the grey of Seattle, and I was getting a workout that meant I could eat plenty of pizza and gelato without consequences. I was truly grateful in that moment, even though I was sweating, panting, and ready to physically die.

I arrived back at the main office from where I had started an hour before the cutoff time for turning in my paperwork. When I entered the office they were all gone to lunch. Again, I laughed took a deep breath and walked uphill to my apartment to quickly to take a cold shower before returning to drop off my paper work.

The entire ordeal took six hours in total. Though hot and tired, I felt very relaxed and happy. I realized my reward was not getting upset; my reward was not letting it get to me. I was still happy for the gift of being here and felt incredibly blessed I had not let it all get to me.  

I have a few more paperwork red tape issues that will come up in a few days, and I have no idea if that will go as planned or become another adventure. Yet I am ready for the challenge and understand that my reward is in LivingLifesBest when everything seems to be going so wrong. Like God told me, I was not here to learn the language, that is just secondary to learning patience. This is a lesson I will cherish more than any second language I could learn.