A silly story to share

Friday morning, Tyler and I had to go to the police station to turn in some paperwork associated with me getting my visa. People that work for his team have been putting everything together for us since we obviously can't speak the language or know all of the rules that go along with this process. They have been very helpful and on top of things and they met up with us at the police station to help things run quickly and smoothly.

We found out prior to meeting at the police station that I needed to bring pictures with me (just like the picture in your passport). I just got passport pictures taken in September to update my passport with my new last name, so I wish I would have known that I was going to need to do this because I have extras at home that I could have brought with me. Plus, I now knew that this was going to be quite the experience going into an Italian photo store to get my picture taken. 

We walked into this tiny shop in the center where this cute, petite middle aged woman stood. The first thing that ran through my mind was "I guarantee she is not going to speak English". Honestly, Tyler and I typically have found that people can speak English at stores or restaurants and have no problems communicating, but this obviously is not the case 100% of the time and the older the person is, the more unlikely they are to speak English. I also am very shy and bashful when it comes to speaking to someone in English. I typically cower behind Tyler and make him do all the talking. This is something that Tyler is trying to break me of and I know that I should be more confident, but I just freeze up and get extremely nervous when I need to speak to someone! This was one of those times where I stayed one step behind Tyler and hid behind his arm like a little child and made him do the talking.

"Do you speak English?" Tyler asks.  The lady laughs like Tyler has told her the funniest joke she has ever heard and says "No". Tyler says "Ok. Passport. Photo. Quattro" and points at me. The lady understands that I need 4 passport pictures and says "Ah! Si! Si! Ok!" And motions for me to follow her. She is speaking to me in Italian but I see that she is showing me where I can put my jacket and that there is a mirror for me to check myself over before taking the picture. I decide that I just want to keep my jacket on and look in the mirror for one second and take a seat on the bench because I just want to get this over with as quickly as possible. The lady looks at me sitting on the bench and points again at the mirror like I obviously need to recheck how I look. Oh boy.  She clearly must think I don't look nice. I get up and go to the mirror to check my appearance. I fluff my hair and press my lips together to even out my lip gloss. Hopefully she approves now and I take my seat again. 

She gets the camera out and is speaking to me like I understand her and is giggling like I am her old friend that she is catching up with. I sit there and my eyes dart at Tyler and he is laughing and smiling at me because he knows how uncomfortable this is making me. She looks and me and motions for me to turn my body at an angle and have my face forward. She is also motioning for me to get a strand of hair out of my eyes so I fix it quickly and sit still so she can snap the picture. She is looking at me as if she is still not satisfied and walks over and fixes my hair as she thinks it needs to be. Bless her heart, she obviously just wanted me to look nice! Finally, she must think I look ok and stands back and takes my picture. She looks at the screen and says "Ok ok" and starts speaking to me again like I will respond right back. She holds up the camera again and I begin to laugh because I have no idea what she is saying. She then obviously begins to scold me for smiling because you can't smile in passport photos so she shows me that I need to be serious which makes me giggle even more! I try to hold it together so I can just get this over with and she snaps another picture. She looks at it and says "Ah, Bene!" (Good) I begin to thank God that this is now over but in a true womanly fashion, she says "uno altra" and takes another picture for good measure. 

She then brings the camera to me so I can review the pictures she has taken of me and pick out which one I want copies of. "Uno, Due, Tre". She shows me each of the three pictures. They all honestly look the same and I really don't care which one I use because no one is really ever going to see this picture. "Uno" I say, indicating that I want the first picture. "Uno????"  She is questioning my choice and by the tone of her voice, I pick up that she thinks this is a bad picture of me. She shows me uno again and goes to the second picture and says "Due!!!" (Pronounced doo-ay) She is stating that she thinks due is a better picture of me but I don't think so, so I say "No, uno" and hold up one finger. " Uno?? Ok......." She says this in clear disappointment that I picked uno over due. I probably should have just agreed with picture number two since she thought picture number one wasn't attractive. 

Finally after my mini photo shoot and her disapproving my every move, we had the pictures that I needed and thanked the little lady. We walked out of the store laughing just because of the situations we sometimes encounter with the language barrier. And it was also funny how critical and serious she was in taking these pictures. These little, funny situations happen all the time to Ty and I and I'm sure I will be sharing more silly stories in the future!