经典美文：情迷锡耶纳

以下是小编整理的情感类英语美文欣赏：情迷锡耶纳， 希望对你有所感触。

情迷锡耶纳

Ciao, Bella

After four trains and a wrong turn in Florence, I wasin Siena, Italy, carrying too much luggage andstruggling for words I didn't know. It was November,and I was going by myself to a city with tones sounusually rich, a color is named for it.

The family I was to stay with, a relatively elderlymother and her twice-my-age son, didn't speak aword of English and weren't expected to. I was theone who was supposed to learn a language; I was to go to Italian class three hours a day forthe next month. But the day I got there, all I knew was "Non parlo italiano," and I said it all thetime.

The family was short with me at first, and I understood enough to figure out the words for"that's the thing with Americans, they don't know how to speak." But it would be they whowould teach me most of the Italian I learned there—and a few added lessons along the way.

I went to Siena for a few good reasons. I left Chicago for a million more. I had just quit a job togo to graduate school, and the people there resented me for it. I had just quit a boyfriend. AndI had quit an apartment where the landlord was a little too friendly. I was tired of quittingthings; I was ready for big, shining starts.

I picked Italy for its art, and Siena was full of it. It was just so old. The town hall was built in the12th century, and all the other buildings weren't much younger. A thick high wall circled thetown as if the whole thing had been thrown like a discus into the Tuscan hills. The Duomo wasmade of ancient striped marble, and St. Catherine's skull was in a church named for her, whereit's been for 600 years. Everything was medieval and preserved, and nothing was like where Icame from.

The first morning of class, my host-mother, Signora Franci, escorted me on the bus so Iwouldn't get lost. She was about 4-foot-11 to my 5-9 and she talked continually to me inItalian, though she knew I was still oblivious. She left me at the Dante Aleghieri languageschool with a tip-toed kiss and a "Ciao, bella." I could love a country where absolutely everyonecalled you beautiful.

My class was a stray collection of 21-year-old Australian girls. I took them on as my friends;we'd circle through the city after class every day, then sit in the town square, dodging pigeonsand eating gelato.

But I suddenly wasn't good at having friends.Something from the month before had made me shy.I wasn't very happy about people in general and itshowed with these women. I questioned when theywere nice to me and bristled when they whisperedabout anything. I was sure I was just weird to them,some older, freaked-out American who trusted noone.

And my boyfriend had been tricky. Yes, we broke upbefore I left, but the actual night before I got on theplane, he gave me presents and talked aboutmissing me. So now I missed him.

I went to Rome to look at the Sistine Chapel, and I called him from a pay phone in front of St.Peter's to describe every detail. He screamed things back to me: "What are you doing therewithout me?" "When are you coming home?" And it rained the whole time and some guygrabbed my butt right there in Vatican City, but I didn't care. I felt filled up with Michelangeloand a boy and bringing worlds together.

But all that rain wasn't good for me. Back in Siena, I woke up the next morning and I couldn'tstand up. Being sick is the one thing that can make you feel completely alone; and that was afeeling I didn't need reinforced. When I wasn't up for school, Signora Franci came into my dark,blue room. "Io sento malo," I told her. I felt bad. She immediately started rushing around,yelling at her son to call the doctor. I understood that much, but events were out of my hands.I lay in bed and she brought things to me: a hot water bottle, tea, soup.

I wondered how she could be so concerned, not knowing me, not even knowing my words.But I was so far away from home, I never needed taking care of so badly. I stared at thatceiling, and thought about every friend, every boyfriend, I ever lost too soon. I could see allthe people I missed now. The people who hurt me, the people I didn't understand, just driftedaway.

Hours later, Signora Franci came in again, this time with green velvet slippers she had boughtbecause I always walked around in socks. She said something I equated as: Of course you'regoing to get sick if you have cold feet all the time—warm them. "Mille grazie," I said. But a daylater, when I was feeling better much sooner than I thought I would, I wanted to thank hermore.

It was three weeks into the trip, and she had made me realize why I came to Italy. It wasn't justto see art—though I saw it, and it made me feel creative and part of history and enriched. Andit wasn't just to get away. What I needed, and what I never got from sweet Australians or kindteachers, was the returned belief in basic human kindness. Signora Franci didn't take care ofme because of anything else but basic human concern: Someone is sick, she's away from herhome, make her better. I was 25 years old, I had just started seeing more bad in people thangood—and I needed to see that kindness in action.

In my last week in Siena, I just took in the medieval walls, the green narrow hills and the wet,wet air. My Italian class performed a terrible spoken version of "Don Giovanni" for the wholeschool. I rode to other hill towns on huge buses with my Aussie friends, and the last night wedrank wine and wandered through the streets yelling phrase-book expressions at each other.

Days before I went home, I knew I'd be ready for it. There were people to get back to, and Iknew who they were. People, in general, could be terrible and wonderful. Sad that I had to go toItaly to realize that. Amazing that I could.