…But I’m not a business major!

Our second week at the Istituto Filippin has been as crammed with business-related leadership seminars as it was last week. On Tuesday we had to sit through a “basic beliefs” seminar in which we determined what was most important to us–learning, love, spirituality, what have you–and how that tied into the decisions we’ve made in our lives. It encouraged us to use our core values to solve tough problems. One question the lecturer fired at us: would you rather be a hangman, someone who electrocutes convicts on death row, or a member of a firing squad? My answer: no.

The most painful seminar, though, was Wednesday’s lecture on strengths. We were told we’d be more successful in business if, instead of focusing our energy on improving weaknesses, we put most of our efforts into honing our strengths. It was all going well until the lecturer split us into groups, gave us a tricky business scenario, and asked us to figure out how we would handle it based on our greatest strengths. When one of the groups went to the front of the class and gave their presentation, the lecturer paused and said, in the most condescending way possible, “Sorry, my bullsh** detector’s going off.” We all looked at each other, horrified.

Luckily the day got better from there. The entire American population turned up for the CIMBA vs. Istituto (us vs. the Italian high schoolers) soccer game on what we call the Jesus field. Needless to say, we got stomped; the ending score was something like 9-0. The fans in the stands, however, stayed enthusiastic to the end.

That night, I also experienced my first Italian language-barrier problem since arriving. We were at a cafe, and I thought I’d order a “sorbetto”, a lemon drink I remembered one of my teachers recommending to the class. I went up to the woman at the bar and asked, in my best accent, for the drink. She threw her head back and laughed, and I was confused. She explained to me, first in Italian and then in English when I began to look confused, that “sorbetto” wasn’t considered a cocktail drink; it was a palette cleanser that Italians drank between meals. Oops!

I got another chance at Italian on an impromptu afternoon walk to nearby Crespano del Grappa. After we saw some of the sights in the tiny town, we stopped by a gelateria to finally get some Italian gelato–and I totally blanked on all the Italian words I knew that related to ice cream. After I ashamedly ordered two scoops of Nutella and Wafer-flavored goodness in English, I realized all the vocabulary I needed was written down on a menu two feet from the counter. D’oh!

Everyone’s looking forward to the weekend, when we can escape tiny Paderno and finally start to see the world beyond. Almost the entire student body is heading to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. We had initially thought of going there, but we didn’t want to get to the Trieste train station and find out the train ticket would cost us upwards of $100 each–and now we’re glad we didn’t go, because all the trains are full and the entire hostel will be flooded with crazy Americans! We’ll hold onto our B&B reservations in Padova, thanks very much!

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