So I guess I learned something new today ....

While in Italy, I have been taking Italian language classes (we are all required to) in the vain hope that by the time we leave here, I'll be semi fluent. Well it's almost three months in, and I wonder if I'm any better at Italian than when I started. True, I can understand MOST Italians if they speak to me slow enough, and I guess I couldn't do that before. And I can carry on a small conversation consisting mainly of small talk - how are you, where are you from, things like that - so I can get myself around Italy well enough. But at this point I believe I'm becoming even more fluent in the art of hand language. You might think that this is a silly thing to have conquered, the art of hand language, but I see it as basically learning a second language while I'm here.
Basically, I mean that during my stay here Italy occasionally I have no idea how to say something or what I am trying to convey in Italian, so I have to relay on a mix of pointing, gesturing and basically making a fool out of myself before the people that I'm speaking to understand exactly what I'm trying to say. It is an interesting thing, because its universal. If you point at something or gesture as to the size of something, or even shake your head in a yes or no fashion, regardless of what language you actually speak, the gestures are the same. True, each culture has its own specific gestures that they use and they occasionally mean completely different things in different countries, but on the whole, the major ones that are needed to convey basic points, are the same. It's incredibly convenient too! Especially when traveling, like I have been doing so much of, to countries that speak various languages, hand gesturing and my quasi European hand language has come in immensely useful.
I love things like that that are so universal that they are unmistakable. It makes you remember that even though countries and cultures are very different, at the end of the day we're all human beings and we all possess the same sets of emotions and feelings. And even when you can't necessarily communicate well with words, sometimes all you need is a simple gesture (like a smile) to communicate what you want to. :)