But where is the bathroom?
I’m somewhat suspicious of one of the phrasebooks I bought in preparation for the trip to Italy. It is chock full of very formal Italian phrases. It’s like they’re trying to teach me – what I’ll call – impractical Italian.

I need to know food, where to find the loo, maybe some rough directions, and then the ever popular “Do you speak English?” I’ll even take French. It is not practical to teach me something like, “May please present to you the esteemed and beloved blah-dy-blah.” That’s what one of these books focuses on. Also – I only know how to say I’m a 32-year-old teacher from New York. See, this book is teaching me to lie.

Lie!

My brain is automatically reacting to the Italian in a negative way – it is combating Italian with French. I listen to the CD, I hear the English phrase – I automatically translate to French. Then the Italian comes up and my brain goes “What? You don’t know that.”

So despite that one night I did dream in Italian, I’m not having a lot of luck. I mentioned this to a colleague who lived in Italian for a while. I asked him if he had a preferred phrase book. He suggested I try to learn to conjugate some words. I’m only there for four days. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I politely thanked him and ran to the nearest bookstore and bought three kinds of phrasebooks. I figure that way I’ll be covered. I’d hate to have to do the potty dance in Florence. That would just not be cool.