We headed for Rome after 2 months of learning the Italian language in Persia. I had to take the entrance exams at the Santa cecilia conservatory. It was the first exam abroad but I didn't tremble and I had no anxiety. When a school junior said, "What are you going to do if you fail?" and I had said, "Hey, who do you think I am?" If I didn't have the ability to pass the entrance exams, I wouldn't have come abroad. I sang Puchini's "Tell them that I've become a free man" to the Professors who were like glittering bright stars. When I had finished my song, the Dean had clapped and said, "Bracisimo!(Very excellent)". And I'd passed as second.
Just as I'd expected, 3 months after I had entered school, we ran out of money. After we got a room, some household utilities, and paid school expenses, that was the end of our money. There was one way. My wife or I must step into the frontline of part-time jobs. When I think about it now, my stubbornness was extraordinary. I had declared to my wife. "I'm here in Italy to study music, not do part-time jobs like a tourist-guide. I also can't have you be the one to feed me." Concludingly, it was saying, let's starve to death together.
My wife probably couldn't stay still and she secretly started to work as a shop clerk at a crystal store. Furthermore she couldn't come to church 'cause she had to go to work on Sundays. I'm not sure about anything else but I couldn't bear not keeping the Lord's day. Immediately I went to the store and fought with the manager and brought my wife out. "If we keep the Lord's day, He will make sure we have something to eat and help us live." I told her but inside, I was thinking of going back to Korea.
There was no hope, and no way out. Right then, a junior said something that caught my attention. "There's a place called Osimo Academy and there's no school expenses. Osimo's population is only about 5000 people and the house rent is really cheap." Wanting to grab anything, my wife and I went to investigate. When we got here, we found out that he was right. International masters, Pavarotti's teacher Camboliani and Peruchio Talavini who was famous for the movie 'Forget me not' etc. were teachers at this school. And the house rent was really cheap. This was the school that the heavens have chosen for me. We took care of the home in Rome, instantly. After we got our guaranty money and the money we got for the supplies we sold, we had 150million won in our hands. With that money we headed for Osimo.
Italy is famous for its difficulty in getting rooms. If your identity is not certain, they didn't easily give out their rooms. The most familiar sentence in the Italian language to me was, "Io sto cercando un appartamento per mensile?" It was what I said the most and in Korean it was "Do you have a room on rent?". At Osimo, we first went to a vegetable store. When we asked the owner who the nicest person to foreigners were, he introduced us to a local cop named Fernando. We headed for his house with 10 pineapples.
That is how we met the benefactor who helped us immensely during my years abroad in Osimo. Thanks to this person we got a home and I got ready for the entrance exam. I didn't worry about failing this time, as well. As I expected, I easily entered the Osimo Academy's Class of Opera. The luck to have great masters who glitter like bright stars as teachers had rolled in to my life.