"Ciao, Bella!"

Saying that I hear this popular phrase (called out to young women by usually older men) all the time is a serious understatement. Who knew that being called beautiful could be so annoying?

I know what you're thinking - that I should take this as a compliment, to feel good about myself. But if you walked out your front door in the morning to a creepy man looking you up and down, yelling "Ciao, Bella!", you'd be seriously sick of it too. And it's not like they discriminate either. Every girl hears this all day, every day.

Sometime they change it up a little; "Hey, babyyy!", "Come here, sweetie!", simply "Ciao!" or "Bella!" (most of the time whispered creepily in your ear), and once a man popped up from behind a cart and said, "You are sooo..........(long pause)............CUTE!" (he had forgotten the word for cute). Sometimes they don't say anything at all...they just grab my butt instead, met with a slap to move their hand and a shrill, "SCUSA!", from me.

Clearly these alternative catcalls are no better than the good old, "Ciao, Bella!"

The other day, though, one particular man took the cake for his very original come-on. I was walking down the street right by my house with a group of people and this particular man, probably in his 40s, walked right across my path. He proceeded to look me up and down with a flirty look, and then...

...HE POKED ME IN THE BELLY!

This is easily the strangest out of all the pick up attempts I've received in three months. He didn't even say anything. Now I've thought about this a lot and I still have no idea what he meant by this poke. He didn't even poke me in the pudgy part, instead it was in the upper abs. Was I supposed to find this attractive? To think he was funny? Was he saying that I'm fat? Or maybe that I just have a rather nice tummy?

I still have no idea. You're guess is as good as mine.

What did I do, you may ask? Well, other than stop dead in my tracks with a look of utter shock on my face, my only reaction was to sputter out a very surprised, "Noooooooo!"

As weird as this interaction was, it's actually one of my favorite and silliest stories from Florence this whole semester.

In fact, last night I was out with my friend Amanda and we were approached by two 20-something Italian men. They were making valiant attempts at conversation and so we decided to practice our Italian language skillz. I brought up the subject of the common phrase, "Ciao, Bella!", trying my hardest to explain that "Non mi piache, 'Ciao, Bella!'" I even told them about this bizarre poking incident, met with confused faces. However, my message clearly did not reach these two fine fellas; we knew it was time to go when they begun asking us if we slept in the same bed together and started stroking my leg. These equally as annoying actions were received with our own common catch phrase, often uttered to these kind of men:

"Dobbiamo andare!" ("We have to go!")