Yesterday, while I was waiting for busses that never came, carrying a metric ton of baggage up Mt. Dormitory, panicking over my lack of readiness for the recorder workshop, and dealing with broken suitcases and Skype connections, it never occurred to me that I was being given an opportunity to practice most of the things I’d like to be better at: patience, fortitude, that Buddhist ability to stay centered when things are going south all around you. All on the same day.
All in all, I didn’t do badly. I didn’t collapse into a quivering pile of protoplasm, even when I wanted to. I didn’t catch the first bus back to Rome. I felt panicky, but I didn’t actually panic. On the other hand, I wasn’t exactly wearing an expression of Zen tranquility by the time I dragged my broken luggage into my dorm room. Fortunately, this test isn’t being graded.
I went to bed thinking that things would go better in the morning and, in fact, they did. The teacher turned out to be a nice man in bright red pants.The students are friendly. Although I’m not the only foreigner, I’m the only one who doesn’t speak at least some Italian, so I spent a lot of class staring around wondering what was going on, but I managed to figure most things out. I didn’t play brilliantly, but I played well enough. And when I walk into town every morning for the next ten days, I will see Urbino, like this:
