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THE RESTLESS NATIVE:On the hunt for parental approval

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For most of the week I’ve been dealing with two things: the possibility of meeting Renato’s parents and recovering from a monster cold that has left me winded.

Renato mentioned two weeks ago that he felt it was time for me to meet his family and, in anticipation of this eventual meeting, I began my search for an outfit that would send the right kind of message. The message I’m shooting for: Don’t worry, I’m a good girl and I’m good for your son even if I have relatively small birthing hips. I found a modest, yet feminine brown skirt. My next task was to find a top Unfortunately, Naples is pretty much divided into two main shopping districts. One is moderate to expensive, but it caters to more individual and sophisticated tastes. The other is cheaper and when I say cheaper, I mean Julia Roberts in the first half hour of “Pretty Woman” cheaper. Not all of the stores are that bad but a lot of windows display nearly identical clothes with price tags as low as 5 euros. I searched every shop in both districts for nearly a week before finding a top that matched my skirt yet didn’t make me cringe. It’s not too showy, which is perfect for my good-girl image, but it’s not so conservative that I feel plucked from an episode of “Little House on the Prairie.” I don’t want Renato to look at me and wonder where his girlfriend went.

As tough as finding the top was, finding suitable shoes was almost as difficult. There are lots of shoe stores and market shoe-sellers in Naples. Unfortunately, most of them are very flashy, and have heels that are far too high for me to walk in comfortably. All of this made finding the right pair of shoes an odyssey in itself, until, I at last found the perfect pair at (what I thought was) the eleventh hour.

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In fact, the eleventh hour has come and gone several times. I expected to meet Renato’s family last weekend, but I caught a cold the Friday before and couldn’t go. It is hotter and more humid here than it has been all summer (of course I’ve been keeping up with the news on the heat wave in California, so maybe I shouldn’t complain) and I couldn’t tell if I was sweating from my cold or from the heat. The next meeting also fell through.

I didn’t venture far from the hostel during my time off, due to my cold. In fact, the highlight of my free day was the viewing of an Italian film at a cinema just outside of Naples. Renato and I watched the Italian-made “La Notte Prima Gli Esami” (The Night Before the Exams), a teen flick, which was perfect for me since there were no subtitles and the content was easy to follow. On a few occasions, Renato would whisper a translation to me, but generally I got the gist of the boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy is under the pressure of an exam plot. (It seems some things don’t change from culture to culture.) One of the best parts of watching this film was basking in the air-conditioned bliss of a cinema when the rest of the world was sweltering outside.

With a possible meeting with the parents looming, I’m sure I’ll remain slightly on edge until the ax falls. With any luck, I will soon be healthy, happy (in knowing that I am parent-approved) and staying cool.

Of course I’ll keep my readers updated on my progress, but until then, ciao raggazzi!

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