I've become a "Ciao" person. Oh Lord.

Immediate European style via "Ciao" - certainly not via this hat! :)

I never understood it before... people would walk around, flipping their hair, smiling with a glint in their teeth, saying stuff like, "Oh sure, we'll see each other tonight! I am looking forward to it! Ciao!" - usually into their mobile phones... even worse!

What is so bad, you asked?

You might not have noticed it, but that is how easily it slips into conversation. "The Ciao." For years, I have been adverse to it. Let me explain...

I could not stand how the words slipped into people's vocabulary, allowing them to masquerade around as suave, international, and elegant almost immediately, but at the same time making them sound endlessly fake and shallow. It was always the people that had never traveled overseas it seemed, not just those that perhaps spent a summer abroad in France or Italy or who knows where in Europe. And I always imagined that they were one step away from adding "Baby" or "Darling" or God knows what to the end and then I might just have to slap them.

But... without even realizing it... it has happened.

Oh if the world could just swallow me up now - it would do us all a favor.

I have become a "Ciao" person.
Am I not instantly more sophisticated?

I don't use it all the time. Oh God, no, I don't think I would be able to look at myself. But slowly it has crept into my daily German repertoire (not that it is German, I am sure!).

Lots of German speaking Swiss seem to use a lot of French and international words. I mean, who can blame them being a quad-lingual country. So I could handle the "Merci's" that get splashed around at the supermarket. Every once in awhile, I would remember to say "merci" instead of "danke" and feel pretty clever. But I avoided recognizing the "Ciao's." They were just not my style.

Yes, I know they are correct here. They are the equivalent of goodbye. It isn't like I am using foreign words out of place... I am using them correctly. But it is just becoming too much.

The "Ciaos" have crept in over time. I blame it on the fact that I am on the phone a lot at work, and everyone always says "Ciao" at the end of the call. And what would you know, now I initiate the Ciao. Man I am such a freak! And sometimes, in a really low moment, I use it more than once in a row.

"Ok, that sounds great... Thank you! Ciao.. Bis dann.. Ciao Ciao."

Who am I? What has this whole immersion stuff done to me?!?

I am going to go and wash my mouth out with soap now even after just typing it. I feel so dirty... I've become a "Ciao" person. Oh Lord.

(Photos by Nate on top of the mountain in Lugano.)