099 la mia camera

Here is a picture of my room, taken last Saturday, when I decided to stay out of the heat and spent the whole day indoors, working in my sketchbook, learning Italian and reading. It was a really enjoyable day off. It's hard work being a tourist every day!

When I first got here, Lucia, an American despite her Italian name, warned me that Italians are a lot cleaner than Americans. This was not good news for me, since even for an American, I am below-average on the cleanliness scale.

At Delfina's house, and at Diana's house, a woman comes once a week to clean my room, along with the rest of the condo. At work, people clean my office each night. And after 8 weeks of having my things hidden, thrown away, put in random containers, and moved, I can say with some authority that Italian house-cleaners are either vindictive, have a bizarre sense of humor, or are just plain crazy.

It started my very 1st week at Delfina's when I woke up in the middle of the night to find my umbrella under my pillow. Apparently, in Italy, umbrellas do not belong in closets but under pillows. More recently, my calculator was disassembled into two pieces: cover and calculator. I found one piece under a stack of envelopes on my desk, and the other tucked in a corner of my bookshelf. Perhaps the keypad was dirty. My shoes are always in a different location after cleaning day, although at least they are easy to find.

At work, I used to open the window during the day to get a breeze. The first 3 days I forgot to shut it and came in the next morning to find that someone had shut it after hours. The 4th day, I remembered to shut it at the end of the day, but was surprised to see the next morning that someone had re-opened it!

Also, I keep my work in piles of paper on my desk that have special meaning to me. However, about once a week, someone decides after hours that all my paper should be neatly stacked in one large pile together. AND I don't think my trash can has ever been in the same place twice.