Withdrawal symptoms ...

Greetings from the mother country! (The one that abandoned me and didn't want me back!!! Well, now I don't want YOU! I am moving to Italy, England. So there!!! You can jam my birth right!)

Or, I am just going back to Australia. Which is nowhere near Italy or England, and where I'd better be able to get good coffee or I will die! No, I think I really will - io sono soffro da crisi di astinenza!! My current withdrawal symptoms from 6 espressos/macchiatos per day, down to none (sorry England - you can jam your coffee also) include chest pains. Yep. I am officially an addict. And I need my fix of real Italian coffee NOW!!!

And I need to speak Italian, too. Cavoli! I keep having conversations with myself, and my friend's two year old son, so I won't forget passato prossimo. And sending emails to my sister in which I hope I've used pronomi correctly, cos otherwise google translate will make no sense - not that it would anyway. So now, my friend's 2 year old son probably thinks I'm insane, and in truth I probably am insane, because I'm having conversations with MYSELF in Italian!!! (And because I'm even attempting to use pronomi!)

It doesn't take long to adjust to new climates, unfortunately. Within five minutes of arriving in the UK, I was speaking with my English accent again - to the extent that I believe Immigration thought I was taking the piss - and I was clearly already using English idioms, like 'taking the piss'. I am just an international cameleon: when I am in Australia, I speak Aussie; when I'm in England, I am English. And when I am in Italy, I am ... still Australian, with massive delusions of grandeur!

That's unlucky. It's very unlucky; I think I am becoming less fluent as the hours go by (and yes, Italy, I am taking the piss!) For the first 12 hours after leaving, once I'd recovered enough strength to actually communicate in words of any language (Vodka has betrayed me), I was still full of enthusiastic Perche' and grazie and posso prendere per favores. Now I'm just asking for tea and cucumber sandwiches, with rounded Os and dropped Hs and not a Si in sight!

Oh my God!!!Non posso dimenticare!

So worried was I that I would forget to speak Italian after a day, I remembered that several weeks ago I bought an iTouch for the purpose of hearing Italian, and I decided to use it. So out of its box it came!! It's pretty and shiny and new, still! On my epic journey to Cornwall (needed a day trip!) I ran through the podcasts of Alcatraz, which I'd gone to the trouble of downloading and then never listened to because I couldn't understand Italian and it sounded stupid.

I can now understand it, and it IS stupid! But at least I understand it enough to know that. I have not forgotten. Thank God! Grazie mille il mio Dio!! lol. It was like shoving pebbles through a sieve getting Italian into this brain - I'm sure as hell not letting go of it that quickly!! What is even less amusing than Alcatraz podcasts is that I spent an obscene amount of euros on an electronic device that's been sitting in my bag for three weeks. Maybe four. And in the meantime, I broke my phone so I should have just held out for an iPhone, and left that sitting in a box for three weeks!

True story: on this trip, I have broken:
1 Brand new camera
1 brand new laptop
1 expensive phone
And soon, no doubt, one brand new iTouch. (which I already don't know how to use, anyway. It keeps switching to loudspeaker and I don't know why). I am dangerous electronic devices!

Anyway, I am now in Cornwall, trying to navigate my way around the English keyboard (I need that little e that has the accent - where are you? Is impossible to pretend to speak Italian without you!!) and chilling with my mates before I head back to London. (I can't believe it's been ten years since I've seen Laura!!!) I have to get back to the Northern Hemisphere more often! I just had a Cornish pasty, proving once again that food is the best thing I've done on this trip!!! I am also trying to remember how to spell in English. It would appear that while I was shoving Italian into my brain, the English language was falling out.

No, seriously. I keep forgetting how to talk. Now I'm a moron in two languages!!

Anyway, back to London I soon go, and then ... back to real life. After spending a million hours on a plane, of course. Maybe I will have my own tv, and I can watch a movie in Italian.

La Bella e' La Bestia!!!

Ciao Reggazzi!