The Aforementioned Weight Tally

This blog will not actually be a weight tally. There are several good and a few bad reasons for this:

1. I have no idea how to convert kilograms to pounds, and while I could find out, it seems like a lot of trouble.

2. I can't find a scale anywhere, and I imagine if Rome doesn't believe in drying machines, there's little hope for scales.

3. Everybody in Italy is as thin or thinner than me, so it would be very depressing to try and measure how much I'm failing at life in comparison to them.

4. It might make me want to eat less.

5. I really like eating.


The problem is that I'm more or less living in a weird dream where they've made everything around me smaller: the cars, the people, the living quarters, etc. In this nightmare, it's not difficult to imagine yourself walking around the city like a gargantuan beast whom the native Romans are worried about being devoured by. Every time I pull out a camera or struggle to speak in broken Italian in any of the shops, a nervous twinkle enters the eye of the natives and they immediately become less eager to spend any more time near me, fearing for their safety.

However, I can rely to some extent on the others (Americans), who have been heard pronouncing such gems of wisdom as:

1. (in response to the question, "Can you speak Italian?") "Yea, but just un poco."

(ed. -- 'un poco' is most decidedly a Spanish expression).

2. "If I put an Italian SIM card in my phone, is it gonna change my whole phone to Italian?"

3. "Is there shampoo in Italy?"

4. "If we, like, on a test, write an essay on a philosopher and we didn't understand what the philosopher was trying to say, are you going to take points off?"


A good strategy will probably be to stand near these people to illustrate the stark contrast between me, the ignorant, and they, the hopeless. The natives are sometimes easily fooled.