It's a wonderful movie. Touching. Questioning my parents relationship. Why can't we give love, one more chance? One last dance? I'm grateful we're not yet at our last dance. Still being able to carelessly live together.
And I'm also grateful for all the beautiful shared flats I've had. Tutti i coinquilini, i momenti passati insiemi. I'm too awkward to speak about it. Yet. But I'll learn that, and I'll do that. I want lovely people to know how much I appreciate being with them <3.
Stasera ho preso due magic box di To Goo To go. Il primo dal una Geleteria, e il secondo da Alice (una Pizzeria). Era gia scuso, un pioggia debole con le luce di strada. In tutto un ambiente calma, perfetto per camminare. Tra le due magic box ho avuto trenta minuti. Ho camminato lentalmente per le strade, con le case grande e molti albori. Anche ho trovato il "Vialetto dei ciliegie". Con miei scarpe basso ho sentito la terra. E alla fine del vialetto era un casa con un bello ingresso. Nel questo ingresso era un gatto, con bianco, arancia, bruno e rosso pelo. Bellissimo. E ho guardato lo e lo ha guardato me. Siamo stato cosi per dei minuti. E poi una ragazza a età mia arriva, con le cuffie sulla testa, ascoltando la musica. Calma ha visto il gatto e me, e dopo un momento ha preso il gatto gentile con le mani e ha dato lo vicino la porta. Qui ho dato mio mano sulla altra lato dalla porta e il gatto ha toccato lo, con la porta vetro a vetri dentri noi. Ho mosso il mano un poco e il gatto ha seguito. Era un momento molto tranquillo. Io ricordo tocco.
My Erasmus year finally started. Adesso sono uno studente a Milano. Adesso sono uno straniero?
Since I've arrived here, I've met new people every day. Pupils with whom I've played games in the train, my landlord, an old but very active lady, someone from couchsurfing who showed me around the city, german Erasmus students who shared TooGoodToGo with me, and lots of fellow Erasmus students who also started from zero hero (this includes the brazilian group of 5-10 students which formed in maybe 30 minutes. But that's maybe another story).
But here I want to focus on one particular encounter. It was my third day in Milano and I wanted to just walk around the city and maybe in a park hangout with other juggling people. When I arrived at Parco Sempione and saw a group of three people playing guitar and singing to it (Another Love, Zitti e buoni, and more). I wanted to meet up with them, but of course, shyness kicked. Maybe 15 minutes and one toilet detour later, I went there and asked if they could show me some guitar chords. They did :) So we spent a few hours together and they even invited me on a Panino Kepab!
While eating the Kepab, at some point I've said "Io sono straniero". To my surprise they were a bit off. "In Italy we think of the world as one, so there are no stranieros. Except for racism". In the moment I didn't think too much about it, but afterwards it really helped me shifting my perspective from being a foreigner to being a Milano citizen now (with some language problems maybe). Quindi, non sono starniero!
I've changed myself this week. Literally.
A week ago, on the way home, I found an earring lying on the street. I took it with me. When I was at home, I've looked at it more closely and started to wonder how it would look on my ears. It is a golden, thin ring, with two sticks hanging down. This was the moment, where imagining myself with earrings was added to my self-perception repetoire. Now I could imagine myself wearing an earring. And I liked it.
A few days later, this Thursday, I had a new hole in my ear and a (sterile) ear stud in it. Now it is a part of me. The hole, the look, the earring choice, the cleaning process, the blood, the earring shopping. All of this is now a part of me. And I will embrace it with all its facets.
And by the way, it turned out that the earring I found was my flatmates earring. Lucky coincidence for her, sad life for me -_-
In der Soziologie habe ich gelernt, dass, so paradox es klingen mag, der soziale Wandel eine der Konstanten in der Gesellschaft ist. Die Art, wie Menschen miteinander interagieren verändert sich. Gewohnheiten verändern sich. Gehen wir auf die Uni gemeinsam in einen Hörsaal und stellen den Professor:innen Fragen, oder sitzen wir zuhause mit einem Teller Spaghetti und streamen die Vorlesung? Ist es uns wichtig einen gutbezahlten Job zu finden, oder trachten wir nach einer 4-Tage Arbeitswoche? Suchen wir in einem Lokal den rauchfreien Raum, oder werden Raucher:innen nach draußen verbannt? Wo auch immer man hinschaut, man findet eine Veränderung der sozialen Strukturen.
Aber auch ich bin im ständigen Wandel. Mein heutiges ich ist anders als das gestrige. Andere Ziele, andere Vorstellungen. Andere Identität und andere Wahrnehmung. Tatsächlich fühlt es sich oft falsch an, wenn ich bei einer Aktivität hängenbleibe, ohne mich davon berühren zu lassen. Ohne mich dabei verändern zu lassen. Einen Film zu schauen, der nichts in mir bewegt, mich nicht in jeglicher Weise verändert, der ist vergeudete Zeit? Das heißt nicht, dass ich möglichst effizient Filme raussuchen muss, Filme die mich meinem Leben weiterbringen. Aber es gefällt mir wenn mich etwas woanders hinbringt. Wenn ich nachher in einem anderen Gemütszustand bin, eine neue Perspektive habe, oder sich sogar meine Wahrnehmung der Realität verändert. This makes me feel alive. I want this to be a constant in my life.
So..., today I've tried to book my apartment for my Erasmus stay. Registration started at 12pm. At uni we always had the first-come principle, so I'm used to such registrations. However, the server didn't work at that time, so I refreshed every other minute. Finally, about half an hour later I managed to login, go to the bookings page, and...
...that's what I see. The numbers represent my hope to find any left room at the dormitories from my uni (Polimi).
As some of you may know, I'm currently making an IT security internship. So I work 8h every day, only having a little bit of free time in the evening. Taking this exhaustion + a housing drawback = Stress.
Mental overload: activated. Searching for housing: deactivated. Wanna go to sleep at 8pm? Oh hell yeah! 💤
But luckily I'm more experienced now in handling situations where I feel stuck and helpless. In other words: I've realized I probably don't need to go through this alone and I've texted some of my friends which helped me already. Now it feels less petrifying and more doable, thanks to them <3