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!