It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right, I hope you have the time of your life...

It is currently 24 degrees here. Just thought you should know that.

I've become facebook friends with some of the italian students in my university class, and ALL of them have photo albums titled "NEVE!!!" (SNOW!!!) or "La neve è arrivata a Firenze!" (Snow has arrived in Florence!) or [my favorite] "La neve a Pontasieve" (la NEH-veh ah pohnt-ah-see-EH-veh. The snow in Pontasieve).  I've heard from multiple people that this is the first time it has snowed (or at least, snowed significantly) in Florence for something like 18 years.  When I was out for a walk to take pictures yesterday morning, I passed one of my favorite little old Italian ladies (there are several I chat with at the bus stop on a reasonably regular basis--I keep forgetting to ask their names) creeping along the icy sidewalk one careful step at time, who told me (quite cheerfully, and with a broad grin) that one had to watch one's footing, or else one would wind up on the ground.*  I would have offered her an arm, except that she seemed to be doing just fine on her own, and I didn't want to offend her by suggesting otherwise.  Actually, she seemed so very self-sufficient that it didn't even occur to me to offer her an arm until after we had already exchanged greetings and gone on in opposite directions.

For the most part, this seems to be the general reaction of most Florentines; ie, everyone points out that the snow and ice cause not insignificant inconveniences in a city that isn't used to them, but at the same time no one seems to mind, because it's beautiful.  Everything essentially stopped yesterday: school, work, the buses, the Florence-Milan soccer game.  Cars did drive on the streets, but veeeeery slowly (I think it's the first time EVER I've seen a car take the narrow turn coming up to our house at anything less than break-neck speed).  Parents took their kids out to play in the snow.  Teenagers wrote things like "Ciao merda" (Hey ****) in the snow-covered windows of cars.  Most bus routes were running again by mid-day, but completely off schedule and at loooong intervals (think 40 minutes or so) and the 10 was still turning around several stops before our house, but I didn't hear a single complaint from anyone about having to walk 20 minutes to a different bus stop and then having to wait half an hour for a bus.  And believe me, Florentines are not shy about voicing grievances.

This morning I passed what may have at some point been a snowman (today it was just a smallish mound of snow) with a label that said "Alfredo", which made me laugh.  Alfredo is a man's name in Italian.  However, "al freddo", although I've never heard the expression used, would translate as "cold", as in a dish which is served unheated, or possibly uncooked (the expression might actually be "a freddo", but close enough...).  So I think this was an Italian version of those awful "What do you call a..." jokes (example: What do you call a man with no arms and no legs?")  (Matt)  (I told you they were awful).  If I'm right, it will have been the first Italian joke that I understood without having to ask for an explanation, which is a not insignificant accomplishment.  Italian crossword puzzles, however are still hopeless.  I'm still working on knowing ONE word for an object or concept, let alone all the obscure or clever ways of saying the same thing.

I'll post my pictures as soon as I can.  In the meantime, you can watch this (when you get tired of watching shaky shots of snow falling at night, skip to minute 2, where the still shots start).

The title of this post, for anyone who doesn't recognize it, is a line from the chorus of a Green Day song.  It's one of those over-played songs that I wind up discovering years after everyone else has already gotten sick of it (that's what I get for having been out of the pop-culture loop as a teenager), but it has been running through my head since I woke up to snow yesterday morning after the whole airport fiasco.



*Italian uses the passive a lot more than English does, and in a very flexible way.  For example, you can say "si gira a sinistra al supermercato" (one turns left at the supermarket) in the same way we would say "you turn left at the supermarket" (although Italians also use the "you" form of verbs for the same purpose, just like we do), but I've also heard "fra 5 minuti si mangia", which literally means "in five minutes one eats" but actually means "dinner's ready in five minutes" or "Bambini, si scende qui" (Children, one gets off [the bus] here), which really means "we're getting off here, hurry up!".  What I'm getting at is that, in English, you only use the "one does this" construction in written English, or (rarely) in spoken English when trying to be funny.   Spoken Italian (both formal and informal), on the other hand, uses it all the time.