CHE PAZZESCO!

CLASSES. My program involves 3 classes at the Middlebury school in Florence (the “Sede” which means, basically, “place”. I really feel like they could’ve done better with the name) and 1 class at the Università di Firenze. We’ve all been kinda nervous about starting our university class, but they weren’t scheduled to start until October 14. No sweat! Granted, there wasn’t even a course list yet, but whatever! There was plenty of time! Suddenly, last week, Rosa (our direttrice) held an emergency summit with all of the students. The course list had been posted! The schedule was available! CLASS STARTS MONDAY! Needless to say…we were all a bit freaked out. Here are some contributing factors to the insanity:
1. According to some Italian references, it was entirely possible that our class WOULDN’T start and we could show up to an empty classroom, that is, if we could find the classroom, because
2. We had NO idea where any classrooms were. The Università is spread throughout the whole city and your class could, potentially, be anywhere. On the orario it would say like, “aula B” which means “classroom B” and we’d be like what! What room! What building! What!
3. There were only certain courses we could take for the Sede. There are these “modulo” things that the courses have. What is a modulo, you may ask? I don’t know, either, but I had to take at least 2.
4. Not all the classes that appeared on the course list appeared on the schedule for the classes. So this could mean that they either decided not to offer it, it was listed under some other name for reasons that remain unclear, or they just didn’t put it on the orario. Who knows? Not us.
5. The UniFi gives class on either Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday or Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So even if you FOUND a class you liked, and it was one that was ok with Midd, and you knew where the classroom was, and you found it on the schedule, you STILL might not take it because there would be Saturday classes, and that is just not right.
So, needless to say, we were slightly confused. My roommates and I decided to just go to the Piazza Brunelleschi to try to scope things out. Why? Because everyone kept talking about the Piazza Brunelleschi but we didn’t really know why. So when we got there, we saw another Middlebury student who had actually been to a class (very impressive, I must say) and told us to go “inside the school” and “find the course listing.” Right. So we wander around for awhile, aimlessly getting in lines of students, basically joining in the fray with no real sense of purpose. Finally, we saw another Midd student who told us where the posting was. OH! There was a POSTING of when each course starts. Of course! Because they can’t all start on the same date! That makes far too much sense! So we go into this room and there are just students are far as the eye can see, all pushing each other out of the way, trying to get up to these signs posted in like, size 8 font. So in order to actually READ the sign you need to go back to your house and get a magnifying glass. No, not really, but it was bad. So I approach the board. This is me: I have no real sense of what class I want to take. I have like 10 options. Some of them are ok times, some of them are approved, some are not, I have a vague sense of when some of them meet, I have no idea where any of them meet. So I walk up to the board and start looking at classes. History of the Church? Oh, starts next week. Modern Italian lit? Oh, it’s happening…crap, right now. Here’s another course…but I don’t even know if I can take that…ok, starts next week. I don’t even know what this word MEANS. And all these Italian students are flocking around, pushing, smoking, drinking espresso, talking loudly, and they all have insane hair (this is my first reflection of Italian university students: the men really need to get their hair under control. Seriously. And just a brief comment on smoking in Italy: I saw someone smoking in a museum. And it was a museum employee.)

Well, out of the mayhem emerged some sense of reality, and I think I might actually be able to take a class or something. Of course, it might not start until, oh, December.

Lago di Como e Milano

This weekend my roommates and I headed up north, to Lago di Como (Lake Como, very close to where I was with my family 2 years ago, at Lake Garda). We had a bit of an adventure at the train station in Firenze – but when isn’t traveling an adventure? – and ended up paying for first class tickets because second class was sold out. We didn’t get into the city of Como until pretty late, and it was another hour bus ride (with a CRAAAAZY bus driver) to Menaggio, where our hostel was. The hostel was pretty nice, as far as hostels go, lakeside, so it’s hard to complain about that. We went out for dinner and gelato once we dropped our stuff off (around 9:45) and apparently everything in Menaggio closes at like 9 because it was impossible to find a place to eat (Marcello says everything closes early because everyone at the lake is really rich. I’m not really sure this is a reason.) but we figured something out and then got gelato and walked along the lake for awhile. Menaggio is really beautiful, a tiny little lakeside town, and walking along the lake we kept seeing lights reeeeally high up in the sky…well, these were little houses, lit up, waaay up on the mountainsides but it was so dark we couldn’t see the mountains. It was really beautiful, like the house were just hovering in the darkness. The first night at the hostel was rather uneventful, if you don’t count the crazy old British ladies who shared our room and came in at like 1AM DRUNK (they were at LEAST 50 years old) and one of them barfed in the bathroom for awhile and another snored really loudly. Anyway. We had “breakfast” at the hostel in the morning (umm bread and cappuccino) and then set out to find a beach and relax. We went to the tourist office, and she pointed us to this realllly sketchy rocky beach which just disappointed us, so we went to what was apparently a “really incredibly beautiful” beach in the next town (on the bus again) which was also rather disappointing, BUT at this beach there were random beach chairs, so we camped out on the beach for several hours, reading and napping. The scene was really lovely. We got lunch (pizza for the 3rd meal in a row) and went back to the beach for awhile. While we were waiting for the bus again, these carabinieri (policemen) showed up and apparently were on a manhunt, Italian style. What I mean by Italian style is that they were all wandering around aimlessly with cigarettes in their hands. Occasionally they would break into a jog, or someone would come cruising by on a motorino. It was really hard not to laugh. They’d keep talking on their cell phones, smoking, and like checking under bridges and behind trees. They asked us if we’d seen the guys they were looking for but we hadn’t. They even had a cop undercover!!! Cause this random dude in a visor showed up and was conferring with them pretty seriously. Anyway. Thrills and chills. We showered back at the hostel, then took a ferry across the lake to Varenna, very beautiful, cobblestone streets. On the ferry ride I was serenaded by a ferry worker, who sang to me in Italian about red hair and told a really dumb joke (“So what do the cars do in the street when they see you? THEY STOP!!!! HA! Get it? Red!”) but he was cute…and then! In Varenna! I got a phone call from my wonderful cousin NATALIE!!!! How fortunate can a girl get! It was so great to get to talk to her…clearly I miss my IN minutes. We went back to Menaggio on the ferry and got some dinner (very good) and some gelato (well, I got hot chocolate, it was kinda chilly). That night, one old British lady was wearing a very slinky nightgown that I found a bit inappropriate in mixed company =). The next morning, we had “breakfast” again and took off for the train station. Kat wasn’t feeling well, so she headed straight back to Firenze, but Piya and I went to Milano for a few hours. We hopped on the subway as soon as we got there and went straight to the Duomo. The duomo in Milano is one of my favorite sites in Italy. The façade was still covered, as it was 2 years ago when I was there (can the Italians PLEASE get it together?) but it didn’t even matter…we went up to the roof to check out all the statues and buttresses and whatnot. It is really breathtaking, and Piya commented that it was amazing that it’s not considered one of the 7 wonders of the world, it’s that amazing (she compared it to the Taj Mahal). I can never really get enough of that duomo. We got lunch quickly (at Burger King. I know, I know.) and then subwayed (is that a verb?) back to the train station. Back to Firenze! It was kinda nice and refreshing to be back in my little room in Antella. I appreciate my personal time so I enjoyed unpacking and just being alone for awhile. Dinner was, of course, amazing, as usual, then it was back to the grind on Monday….

Pictures!

il weekendhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Friday was a laid-back day – classes all morning. My lit professore is really interesting, he’s kinda old but is a very passionate speaker. We’re reading about piece about the rebellions in Sicily during the unification of Italy. The south of Italy has typically been very impoverished and has only caught up economically to the north in very recent decades. Along with the poverty went very stringent social classes and this piece, called La verita’ by Verga, describes in very intimate detail one uprising. The professore emphasized that this is NOT an exaggeration, this is very true to the actual events of uprisings in the south (and Sicilia in particular, apparently Sicily has had a strong history of rebellion and this partially explains why Garibaldi used Sicily as his home base when unifying Italy…I guess so he could keep an eye on them!) Anyway…interesting. My grammer class, second, was pretty average. The professoressa is interesting and nice but how exciting can grammar be? The one nice thing is that she is preparing us for our universita’ exams (oral…I’m petrified) so that’s handy. I jetted off to another wireless zone and talked with my folks for awhile (the iSight didn’t work…boo. I’m going to try again though) and then found a nice (read: cheap and good) restaurant on the via Cavour. I chatted with the guy behind the counter and ended up ordering way too much food but I wrapped some up for a snack later…SCORE. I met up with Kat and we went back to Antella; I went for a run and almost got killed by a dog but other than that, it was beautiful Toscana and me. Dinner was amazing, of course, we had this typical Florentian dish (whose name fails me now) but it’s made with all bread and has the consistency of a thick stew. Very very veryy good. Kat, Piya, and I ventured into the city for the night and saw African dance theatre in the piazza (instead of opera) and a live band on the Ponte Vecchio. Then we got gelato (of course) and headed back to Antella for the night. Saturday, I got up early (it was painful, too) and zipped into Florence to catch a bus to Lucca. The bus ride was only a bit over an hour and Lucca was beautiful – I walked on the intact city walls (3km around the city center) and cliiiiimed up the Torre delle Ore (Tower of the Hours) for a lovely view of the town. Well, the bells rang when I was up at the top but luckily for my eardrums it was only one o’clock! Checked out the two major churches in the city, had a “frete” which is apparently a typical Luccese pastry (though I may have been had there, the place looked pretty cheap but it was only a euro and was basically Italian donut…the best part was it TASTED Italian, it was cool, I can’t explain it…maybe there was citrus in it or something), and beat a quick retreat out of the city. I was impressed with how quickly you get to see things when you are doing it on your own!!! Took the bus to Pisa, more out obligation than anything (I just felt like I should see the tower. That’s all.) but ended up LOVING it. On the bus, I glanced up and it was just THERE, towering over me and looking like it had just lost its balance for a minute. I was the only one on the bus and wanted to go to the stazione to check out train times, but the driver drove PAST it without stopping so I had to ask him to stop. Had a bit of an adventure there…walked to the Campo dei Miracoli and just LOVED the tower. I fully expected to be able to have some kind of worldly nonchalance about such a touristy site, but I can’t explain it. There is just something so funny about this beautiful building…just LEANING. It’s just ridiculous looking. And even better were all the people there who were taking the typical “look-I’m-holding-up-the-tower” picture. I took a picture of the PEOPLE taking that picture. It was hilarious. I wandered around the duomo and the baptistery in the campo, both very beautiful, and lingered even as it started to rain because I just couldn’t stop LOOKING at the leaning tower. Even as I walked away, I kept glancing back, because man, it was just funny.

When I arrived in Firenze, I scouted out the same place I'd gone to for lunch the day before (walking in the rain for no apparent reason except I knew I liked that place) and the guy remembered me! He recommended some food, I enjoyed it, and as I left he said, "See you tomorrow!" So it was kinda cute. Relaxed with Marcello and Giuliana when I got home, and Sunday was a day of homework and relaxation...perfect.

Enjoy the pictures of the weekend!

molti giorni fa!

I’ve had a couple more classes – I went to an EU class (which I decided not to take), an art history class (which a professore MOLTO buffo), and an Italian lit course. They are all really interesting/hard because on top of taking the course for the content, we are trying to absorb everything in Italian. I’ve luckily done this before with my Renaissance lit course, but the other kids have no experience with content courses in Italiano. Afew nights ago, Giovanni came out to Antella to visit Piya, Kat, I for a “sotto le stelle,” literally, under the stars – the whollllle town was out for a party in the piazza. There was free food, biscotti, cheese, etc, and free wine (!!!) and all the shops were open until midnight (unheard of for Antella!). Giovanni came up and hung out at the house for awhile. The whole night was fun, it was nice to have someone out here with us and Marcello bought us all gelato at the sotto le stelle. I was surprised by how many people were out, there were only like 2 signs up (and really wussy signs up too, we only saw it cause we were bored at the bus stop) in the whole town. Yesterday, Piya, Kat and I missed the bus for the first time (boo) so we were late for our meeting with the school psychiatrist (informing us about culture shock, kinda interesting actually) and then Giovanni, Rita, and I went and got lunch at this cute café near our school – named the “Cardillac” café. I kinda wonder if they misspelled it. Anyway, the waiter was hot and the food was good and cheap. I grabbed un caffe at the local bar (finally found my place – 2 seconds from school and reeeeally good) and then chilled out before the lit class. The professore is old and a little crazy, but he seems nice and it turns out there are only going to be 3 of us in that class. 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There was a school party at the Uffizi last night (woo) and we all stuffed ourselves on hors douvers, thinking that was the meal, and then they busted out the pasta dish – so basically we were STUFFED by the time we got out. The kids were in from Ferrara (also part of the program, in a different town) so we wanted to show them a good time. We went to a little Irish pub close to Santa Croce and then went to the Piazza SS Annunziata…this was really cool…they had tables set up out in the piazza and there were vendors selling drinks and women singing opera. It was really really a beautiful night and it was just so amazing sitting outside l’Ospedale degli Innocenti (basically an orphanage, but really beautiful) in this beautiful piazza, listening to live opera, and…drinking really, really cheap shots that a cute Italian man served us (and actually assisted us in doing because it was in two different cups and you had to drink them stacked, it was HARD and I was the only one who managed to do it without spilling. Yeah!) Kat, Piya, Liz, Maura, and I checked out this live music place which has Beatles night every Tuesday (yeah!!! We’re totally going back) and then got gelato before heading back to Antella. It was such a fun night, from the Uffizi to gelato…perfect. Today was pretty low-key, we had our art history class again and the professore was really fun and actually, it was really interesting. No surprise, there was a lot of religious discussion, about theology etc, so the nerd Mary Ellen was totally engaged. We went to dinner at a friend’s apartment (mmm tortellini) and Kat and I had an adventure with the bus system trying to get home (but got to see the Piazza Michelangelo juuuuuust at the end of sunset, basically breathtaking, and walked along the Arno for awhile). She and I did homework for almost 2 hours!!!! Just doing this realllly short piece for Lit but it takes forever because the Italian is really antiquated. Blech!

classes, etc.

Yesterday was the first day of class…we had a brief reunione with the dirittrice (Rosa) to talk about our classes, then we had a lunch break (I swear, the school may be American but it functions like Italians…there is a 3 hour break for ever hour we’re doing something). My first class was required for all the undergrads, so we were all in it together – GRAMMAR. Woohoooo. We’re all reeeeally stoked…or not. But the professoressa seems really nice and so it should probably just be helpful and not annoying. Piya, Kat, Liz, and I went to the Museo Archeologico after class. It was a really tiny museum but we saw some mummies and stuff, so that was cool. There were these REALLY RANDOM paintings on the wall in this exhibit on food. They were really modern and out of place and when Piya asked about them, the woman said that it was just because there was an art musem nearby. What?????? They were so weird and kinda creepy, all interspersed with these cool kraters and pots and statues…bizarre. The girls and I did some Pilates when we got back and dinner was gallina, apparently like a chicken but different and ONLY exists in Italia. Who knew?

molti giorni...

Ciao! It has been an eventful few days. On Friday, I went to Ferrara with school. Ferrara is a small city about a half hour outside of Bologna. There is another Middlebury program running out of there. Anyway, we went with school and had a guided tour and stuff (though to be honest the tour was basically boring, I got more of a kick out of the tour technology – we each had a little speaker for our ear and the tour guide had a microphone, so anywhere we were in any building or wherever we could hear her…cool!!!) The afternoon was free time, so we wandered the streets for a bit and then I browsed around in a bookstore.

Saturday morning was another early wake up call to catch an 8:57 train out of Firenze to…the Cinque Terre! A whole bunch of kids from our program were going (at Marcello’s suggestion) and we hopped to Pisa then up to Riomaggiore, the first of the Cinque Terre cities. Piya, Kat, and I immediately changed for the beacccch (we headed down to Monterosso on the train to find a sandy beach, most of the beaches in the Cinque Terre are rocky). After some food, relaxation, and swimming, we headed back to Manarola (the second city, just after Riomaggiore), where we jumped onto the Via dell’Amore for a nice walk back to Riomaggiore. It’s a pretty easy walk and I was kinda bummed we didn’t get to do more hiking – but unfortunately a bunch of the trails were closed due to landslides (yikes – but the place is pretty mountainous). We swam AGAIN (the water was irrisistably blue…we couldn’t get enough of it…but it was also very, very salty) before hooking up with some other kids for dinner. We all went back across the Via dell’Amore to Manarola and found a nice trattoria with good wine and good food. We enjoyed the night in the marina in Riomaggiore and I got my first European groping (yesss) by some sketchy Portuguese guy. We had gotten an upgrade for our hotel room, from a dorm to our own apartment (awesome!) but last night there was a HUGE storm. Our apartment had a balcony overlooking the sea but it was incredibly windy and our shutters and doors were all banging around a lot. We didn’t get a lot of sleep – and got up early to check out. Grabbed a cappuccino and then lounged around/climbed on the rocks for several hours. I took another swim and checked out a cave on the coastline. I also dropped my Nalgene between the rocks and so Liz, Giovanni, and I had to go on an emergency rescue mission (I cut my toe and Marcello like wigged out when I got home. It was pretty funny that he was so concerned, but I’m not about to stop wearing flip flops like he told me to!). We basically just chilled the whole afternoon at a gelateria (they had tables outside and we were loving it). Everyone seemed to have had a great time and it was fun exploring the cities, all built into mountainsides with fun secret little streets. I found a tiny chapel today in one of the back alleys and lit a candle for the 9/11 anniversary. The trip back to Firenze was uneventful and we had a wonderful Giulianna meal when we got back – pasta with olive pesto and roast turkey and peppers. I showered (it was NECESSARY) then Marcello pulled out a bunch of first aid stuff to medicate my toe. Classes start Monday –woohoo!!!

Check out my photo site for pictures of my place in Italy and the Cinque Terre!!

un' altro giorno...

Yesterday was relaxing, my roommates and I stayed in Antella til like 1:30 before coming into the city. We had a brief and boring orientation meeting, then ran some errands around the city. Giovanni had found a great panini place (with a very hot Italian ragazzo working there) and we checked out the open air market. For dinner, we went to some friend's apartment (2 people in the program are living together alone) and we all brought something to eat, so it was fun! Then we ALL went out together, which was a rather big undertaking. Fun though! As always, there were sketchy Italian men aplenty. The girls and I went back to Antella around 12:30 and hit the sack. Today, Kat and I came into the city early and figured out our bus passes (FINALLY) and picked up our ticket for the Cinque Terre...then got panini at the place with the hot guy (woo!) We have a meeting this afternoon and then we're back to Antella to RELAX. This stuff is exhausting!

ciao ciao!

My first post from Italia! Yesterday evening I went out on the town with my roommates and a few other girls. We checked out an Irish pub (weird, right? they're all over the city) and then got hit on by some Italian ragazzi...good times! The city is so alive at night, literally so many people were out on the street doing all kinds of stuff. There were lots of street vendors too, so we just wandered around for awhile, enjoying the weather. It's a little annoying being so far outside of the city and I was tired on the bus ride home, but as we walked back to our casa we realized that it was worth it -- the country was sooo beautiful. Antella's tiny piazza was dimly lit and the air was perfect and we walked up the hill in almost total darkness, with only the stars to guide us...it was really really beautiful and I totally appreciated the beauty of living outside the city. So any hassle there will be will be worth it for the peace. My roommates and I are heading out to Ferrara with the program on Friday, then up to the Cinque Terre on Sabato to visit. There is some great hiking and beaches there -perfetto!