It's a Funny

Alan and I love those At&t commercials with the kids.  One of them that we saw had a kid who told a knock knock joke, and after he tried to describe it to another kid (who didn’t get the joke) he said, “I make a funny.”  Well, Alan and I have made lots of “funnies.” 

So, I guess it’s finally time to share our “funnies” that have occurred since we moved to Italy. As one would expect, we’ve made lots of “funnies” or errors when it comes to the language. So…we can start there.  For those of you who have ever tried to speak or learn a different language, you will know that most errors that you make in another language are highly inappropriate, which I guess makes them all the funnier. 

So here’s the list:

Alan told one of his students shortly after we arrived in Florence, that we would be staying here for two anuses (the word for year and anus is really close….ani and anni)

I told one of my students in Florence that, “I bought a person yesterday” instead of, “I met a person.”
 

Can’t forget the time that I told a whole car full of people that there are a lot of sinners in Yorkshire, England. After they all looked at each other confused, I realized I mixed up the words for sheep and sinners again (that’s like the third time already).

There was also that time not too long ago, when Alan and I both talked for about five minutes about his car accident that he had when he was younger. Only we weren’t saying the word accident….we were saying the d-word (although, I just recently learned that even though this word translates as a vulgar word in English, and is used in pretty much the same way in Italian, it’s not considered vulgar in Italian – so confusing).

Once, Alan went to buy 15 fried rice balls (a type of special desert in Florence that I can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called).  He came home with 50….good thing we lived with a lot of people then.  

My worst one, I actually caught before I did it, but it would have been awful if I hadn’t.  Alan and I prepared a list of ideas to share with the elders at the church in Catania. I wrote this entire list in Italian, and then checked it on google translate for any major errors. Well, it’s a good thing I did. Because one of our ideas was about trying to either find a place that feeds the homeless so that we can help, or maybe start a program at the church where we provide a meal for the homeless there. In Italian, homeless literally translates as “a person without a roof.” So as I was reading my idea in English in google translate, I suddenly came across the sentence, “We’d like to find a place where they give food without the boob.” Little did I know that roof (tetto) and boob (tetta) only had one letter difference.  One letter and it changed the whole sentence from “We’d like to find a place where they give food to the homeless,” to what I previously mentioned.  I am so glad I caught that before I read that to the elders….Needless to say, now, every time I have to say the word roof in Italian, I get super nervous that I’m going to say the wrong word. And, oh, you better believe I’ve had to say the word “roof” an unnatural amount of times. 

My favorite one was done by Alan, and it was done in front of, oh say about 80 people. ;) One day at the end of services, He gave an announcement that we were starting the English class for the kids.  In this announcement he mentioned that there was a sign-up sheet on the bulletin board.  Too bad in his nervousness, instead of saying bacheca (bulletin board) he said caca (poop).  

Since we live in a country where they speak another language, we always have to listen intently to everything everyone says. It’s not like English, where you can easily understand what someone else is saying across the room while you’re talking to someone else. So, there was the one time that I was talking to Alan during church (whoops), and next thing we knew we heard Alan’s name being called out. We didn’t hear anything else. So we looked up and around like lost kids until someone whispered and explained that they asked him to come up and help with the communion. 

There was also the time that we stayed in someone’s house, and they had five cats (Alan is really allergic to cats)…ended up leaving there with a rash all over his body. So, now, we know to state all of Alan’s allergies before we sleep at or eat at someone’s house.

There was the time that I invited people over for lunch, and I totally butchered the vegetables (really, how hard can vegetables be), and then I ruined the brownies. In my defense, this was the first time I attempted brownies over here. But, I figured out that you can’t refrigerate the batter, even for an hour; and that you’d better learn your oven settings before you have company because apparently I had put it on broiler. What happens when you do these two things….well while the top layer of the brownies was burnt to a crisp, the rest of them were as liquidy as when I mixed up the batter. So I had to announce to everyone that there wouldn’t be brownies because I’d ruined them. 

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head for now. 

Alan and I are learning a lesson from all of this – it’s okay to look stupid, be kind to foreigners in your own country (just because they can’t speak English doesn’t mean they are dumb), and just let go of all that pride. Really, life is so much easier if you just realize that you know nothing and that you will never be the smartest.  I think it’s been one of the hardest things here for us – learning to laugh at ourselves, to accept embarrassing situations with grace, and to swallow our pride when we look really dumb. And sometimes, we feel really really dumb. But what’s awesome about all of this is, we are learning so many lessons about life, and God is still using use here even though we probably sound completely ignorant in Italian.  

The most important lesson I’ve learned from all of this, is that pride will get you nowhere. It really won’t. You have to be able to laugh at and humble yourself in order to take chances and risks. Otherwise, we sit around too afraid to try things that we think we’ll fail at because it will injure our pride. And pride just gets in the way of building relationships. 

In all these humbling situations, I’m just reminded that I am nothing. I am not any more important than the next person.  We put so much self-importance on ourselves, but really we are nothing without the saving grace of Jesus. 

Philippians 2:3-11 “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.