Dove Vai

 As is very well-documented, I'm dreadful at learning new languages. The only bit of slack that I'll allow myself in this particular situation is that we need to learn Italian for when/if Janet gets her citizenship (or even more when/if I get my citizenship), but we're living in Sicily where folks speak Sicilian. It's tough, because we want to more fully immerse ourselves into the local community, but we have to put our effort into Italian at the beginning because the citizenship test will not be given in Sicilian. Our hope is that someday we'll come to Sicilian by way of Italian (it's two separate languages, obviously, but I still think that Sicilian will naturally make more sense coming by way of Italian than by way of English). It's frustrating, but it's not the Sicilians fault. Some day, inshallah. I do have my little victories, although they come by way of my brutish Italian and not any Sicilian so far. I had a small one the other day. I was leaving the apartment for my morning walk, and just as I reached the end of Via Giuseppe Verdi I saw two women pushing a baby carriage. I opened with "Buongiorno," which more people are greeting me with as we're here longer and it's becoming clear to them that we're not just quickly passing through. They didn't respond, but then I didn't really expect them to (why would anyone willingly respond to the strange, lurking old man with the cane?). Anyway, a couple blocks up the road they were looking at their phone, and clearly were a little turned around. One of the women backtracked and started talking to me, but I couldn't only respond, "So un po' di Italiano." Essentially, I was apologizing by saying that I only know a little Italian. The woman said, "Spanish?", and I could only respond, "English." I held my hand up as a plea to wait, and then, after pausing to think, said, "Dove vai? Supermercato?" It was close enough to "Where are you going? The supermarket?" She replied, "Cafe." "Ah," I said with a smile, "vamos." I figured she'd appreciate the Spanish. We walked up a block and I directed them to walk towards the Deco and then veer right. We were all reasonably happy, and the day was already proving to be a success.