Boboli and Sheep

So, here I am in Florence.  Sometimes I still can't quite believe it.  Things are going well so far.  I am settling in with my host mother, whose name is Emilia (for anyone I talked to before hand, yes, this is the family I thought I was going to get!).  She lives a little ways outside the city, towards Fiesole.  It takes us (Sophie, Caitlin, and I--we're are all Smithies living with Emilia) about 20 minutes by bus to get to the Duomo, and from there it's a two-minute (longer if the tourists are particularly dense (in numbers, not in intelligence, I mean)) walk to la Piazza della Signoria, where la Sede (the Smith center) is.  La Sede has a few classrooms, an office for each of the two directors (Giovanna and Monica), hang out space and a fridge for us, computers, printers, maps, etc, and a great view of the piazza from above!  Also Giovanna's two tiny dogs (miniature poodles?), Cocolina (Coco) and Sparky, who are so cute, and always happy to fall asleep on your lap to cheer you up.

Classes haven't started yet, we've just had some orientation meetings and that kind of thing.  We've all been doing a lot of exploring on our own; yesterday, after the whole group met with some young Italians who are (hopefully) going to be our conversation partners, Sophie and Caitlin and I walked over to see the Boboli garden on the other side of the Arno.  It's HUGE, and we only had an hour before it closed, but we have these wonderful cards that get us free passes to a bunch of the museums and gardens in Florence, including Boboli, so we went anyway, and climbed up to the top to look out over Florence as the sun was starting to set...  and we couldn't quite believe that THIS (Florence, not the Boboli gardens) is where we're going to live for a year.

Speaking Italian is both easier than I expected and harder.  The simple phrases that I use all the time are easy--in fact, when I switch to English for emails, I often have to stop myself from using the Italian phrases for simple things.  I think this is a good sign.  On the other hand, I keep running into basic (or not so basic) vocabulary I don't know; that will just take time and maybe a dictionary, I'm sure.

A couple of entertaining lingual mishaps so far: The other night at dinner, I told Sophie she had a mosquito net on her elbow (Zanzara=mosquito, zanzariera=mosquito net/screen.  All the windows are open to the outdoors here--no screens or anything, so it's lucky there isn't an infestation of mosquitos at the moment.  Enough to be annoying, but not that bad).  Also: Emilia has a gas stove.  There is also a very small pot for making coffee on the stove, and a hot mit shaped like a sheep for lifting the coffee pot or tea pot off the stove (incidentally, none of us knew the word for sheep, so we've being calling it "il baaah", just among ourselves.  We did finally look it up earlier today.).  Anyway.  This morning, Sophie was making coffee, and was using the hot mitt to get the pot off the stove.  However, she hadn't turned off the stove first, and the hot mitt was dangling down near the burner.  I saw this, and wanted to warn her that the hot mitt was going to catch fire if she wasn't carefull.  Only I got my vocabulary mixed up, and said: "Sophie, look out, the sheep is in the flowers!".  She looked puzzled.  "The SHEEP," I said, "it's in the FLOWERS."  At which point Caitlin looked up and suggested that perhaps I meant "fuoco" (fire), not "fiori" (flowers).  Luckily nothing caught fire.  So that was all right.

And now I need to go catch a bus home.  I know I haven't answered the many emails yet that you all have sent--I do appreciate them very much, and will write back, but have limited internet access for now, just until the wireless at Emilia's is fixed.

Ciao,
Emily