It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right, I hope you have the time of your life...

It is currently 24 degrees here. Just thought you should know that.

I've become facebook friends with some of the italian students in my university class, and ALL of them have photo albums titled "NEVE!!!" (SNOW!!!) or "La neve è arrivata a Firenze!" (Snow has arrived in Florence!) or [my favorite] "La neve a Pontasieve" (la NEH-veh ah pohnt-ah-see-EH-veh. The snow in Pontasieve).  I've heard from multiple people that this is the first time it has snowed (or at least, snowed significantly) in Florence for something like 18 years.  When I was out for a walk to take pictures yesterday morning, I passed one of my favorite little old Italian ladies (there are several I chat with at the bus stop on a reasonably regular basis--I keep forgetting to ask their names) creeping along the icy sidewalk one careful step at time, who told me (quite cheerfully, and with a broad grin) that one had to watch one's footing, or else one would wind up on the ground.*  I would have offered her an arm, except that she seemed to be doing just fine on her own, and I didn't want to offend her by suggesting otherwise.  Actually, she seemed so very self-sufficient that it didn't even occur to me to offer her an arm until after we had already exchanged greetings and gone on in opposite directions.

For the most part, this seems to be the general reaction of most Florentines; ie, everyone points out that the snow and ice cause not insignificant inconveniences in a city that isn't used to them, but at the same time no one seems to mind, because it's beautiful.  Everything essentially stopped yesterday: school, work, the buses, the Florence-Milan soccer game.  Cars did drive on the streets, but veeeeery slowly (I think it's the first time EVER I've seen a car take the narrow turn coming up to our house at anything less than break-neck speed).  Parents took their kids out to play in the snow.  Teenagers wrote things like "Ciao merda" (Hey ****) in the snow-covered windows of cars.  Most bus routes were running again by mid-day, but completely off schedule and at loooong intervals (think 40 minutes or so) and the 10 was still turning around several stops before our house, but I didn't hear a single complaint from anyone about having to walk 20 minutes to a different bus stop and then having to wait half an hour for a bus.  And believe me, Florentines are not shy about voicing grievances.

This morning I passed what may have at some point been a snowman (today it was just a smallish mound of snow) with a label that said "Alfredo", which made me laugh.  Alfredo is a man's name in Italian.  However, "al freddo", although I've never heard the expression used, would translate as "cold", as in a dish which is served unheated, or possibly uncooked (the expression might actually be "a freddo", but close enough...).  So I think this was an Italian version of those awful "What do you call a..." jokes (example: What do you call a man with no arms and no legs?")  (Matt)  (I told you they were awful).  If I'm right, it will have been the first Italian joke that I understood without having to ask for an explanation, which is a not insignificant accomplishment.  Italian crossword puzzles, however are still hopeless.  I'm still working on knowing ONE word for an object or concept, let alone all the obscure or clever ways of saying the same thing.

I'll post my pictures as soon as I can.  In the meantime, you can watch this (when you get tired of watching shaky shots of snow falling at night, skip to minute 2, where the still shots start).

The title of this post, for anyone who doesn't recognize it, is a line from the chorus of a Green Day song.  It's one of those over-played songs that I wind up discovering years after everyone else has already gotten sick of it (that's what I get for having been out of the pop-culture loop as a teenager), but it has been running through my head since I woke up to snow yesterday morning after the whole airport fiasco.



*Italian uses the passive a lot more than English does, and in a very flexible way.  For example, you can say "si gira a sinistra al supermercato" (one turns left at the supermarket) in the same way we would say "you turn left at the supermarket" (although Italians also use the "you" form of verbs for the same purpose, just like we do), but I've also heard "fra 5 minuti si mangia", which literally means "in five minutes one eats" but actually means "dinner's ready in five minutes" or "Bambini, si scende qui" (Children, one gets off [the bus] here), which really means "we're getting off here, hurry up!".  What I'm getting at is that, in English, you only use the "one does this" construction in written English, or (rarely) in spoken English when trying to be funny.   Spoken Italian (both formal and informal), on the other hand, uses it all the time.

Location: not London.

My vacation was supposed to start with a weekend in London.  Four other Smithies and I had plane tickets and a hostel all booked, and lists of things we wanted to do, including Kew Gardens, the changing of the guard, the Rosetta Stone, Christmas markets, the Globe theater, mulled cider and mince pies, tea and scones, etc, etc...  On Friday morning we took a train to central Pisa, another train from there to the Pisa airport, and then sat around for several hours waiting for check in to start (we gave ourselves a little TOO much extra time--but better way early than late), excited not just because we were going to London but also because we’d heard there was snow in London.  In fact, there was a snow storm in London.  And we found out while waiting in line to check in that the airport we were supposed to be flying into had just closed.  So our flight was cancelled.  Not delayed, just outright cancelled.

Needless to say, things got complicated.  It’s all turning out all right, though.  I’m back in Florence, staying with my host mother’s mother (who herself is a host mother to some of the other Smithies who have already left.  Her name is Maria Teresa) until Mom and Ellie arrive on Tuesday (I could have tried to get a spot on another flight the next day or the day after, but they were predicting snow in London Saturday too, and if I went Sunday I’d just be turning around and flying back to Florence Monday morning).  Actually, technically I’m staying with my host mother’s uncle, Bruno, in Maria Teresa’s house, because she left this morning for Tunisia with Emilia, Francesa and Eleonora (Emilia’s twin daughters), but not before giving me a key, and explaining how to get to the house, and where the closest grocery store was, and which room I should use, and that I should make myself at home in the kitchen.

I lucked out, because even though I'm disappointed not to go to London this weekend, I can always go another time, and at least didn’t HAVE to go to London--for the other four with me, their travel plans depend on being in London to catch flights elsewhere later in the week.  Also, the London hostel cancelled my reservation without charging me for it, it looks like EasyJet will at least reimburse me for the flight TO London, and, best of all, had I gone to London, I would have missed out on the SNOW in Florence!!!

Except for up in the hills, Florence almost never gets snow.  And even when there is snow, it’s only flurries that don’t stick.  Yesterday evening it started snowing, and kept going all night, so that we woke up to at least an inch or two.  It’s gorgeous.  I took lots of pictures, but I didn’t bring my camera cord with me when I moved houses, so you’ll have to wait about a week to see them.  Did I mention that Florence only has one snowplow? Luckily, the snow on most streets melted fairly quickly (after going through a nasty icy stage that was pretty but perilous).  The buses were still completely out of whack, however, and I wound up walking about 20 minutes, loaded down with my backpack, my duffle, and a shoulder bag to a different bus stop, because when the 10 bus can’t get all the way up to Settignano, they don’t even bother going as far as our house, because there’s nowhere to turn around at that point.  And then I waited about half an hour, maybe 40 minutes before the other bus turned up.  But I got here eventually, and later Camilla (another Smithie) and I went up to San Miniato al Monte to see the spectacular view of snowy Florence, drink hot chocolate, and listen to the monks chant vespers.  It was cold (the streets up near San Miniato are still iced over, and it was definitely colder up there), but beautiful, and full of Florentines (and some stray tourists) marveling and taking lots of pictures and throwing snow balls.  Emilia told me it snows like this maybe once in 20 years.

Bread bowls and apple pie

This week it has been raining a lot.  On Wednesday I though I had soup and bread left at the Sede, only to discover (when I went to go eat it) that I didn't.  And it was pouring.  Although at least I had an umbrella and a raincoat, which was a step up from the day before, when I ran to the fornaio (bakery) in the pouring rain with neither, and gave in and bought an umbrella on the way back.  So I wandered out into the rain with vague thoughts of going to the Greek place someone discovered last week, only I couldn't remember exactly where it was.  Before I found it, though, I passed a tiny little place (all the lunch places in florence are tiny) advertising stew and a sandwich for a reasonable price.  I love stew.  Especially when it's raining.  So I ducked inside, added my umbrella to the pile at the door, and ordered.  I was very happily surprised to discover that they were using the word panino, which can mean either sandwich or the roll you make a sandwich with, to mean BREAD BOWL!!!  The only thing I adore more than stew is stew in a bread bowl.  So I was very happy.  Also, there was no surcharge to perch on a stool at the little counter by the front window, so I did, and wound up chatting (in Italian!) with a woman who was sitting next to me who, it turned out, lives near Vallombrosa, which is a beautiful wooded area with an abbey in the mountains that I've been wanting to visit.  We talked about Florence, and about the U.S. health system and how Obama's trying to change it, and how the Italian health system works.  Part-way through she asked me what I really liked about Florence, and I meant to tell her the bells--you can hear church bells ringing from almost anywhere in Tuscany, whether you're in the center of the city or up on top of a mountain where you can't hear anything but the wind--and bells.  Except that I told her I liked i campanelli--the doorbells.  The word I was looking for is campanili, which means bell towers.  That was entertaining...  She also asked me what I really, really disliked about Florence--and that was surprisingly difficult.  I mean, I know there are (must be?) things I don't like about Florence, but in the moment I couldn't come up with anything except that the University is completely disorganized, which, at least for the moment is mildly frustrating and entertaining, but not something I really strongly dislike.  All in all it turned into a lovely lunch on a rainy day.  And she left me her number, so that if I wind up going to Vallombrosa, I can call her, and she'll show me around.

Tonight Emilia isn't home, so Caitlin and Sofi and I invited (with Emilia's permission--actually, it was her idea) some of the other smithies over to watch Love Actually and eat apple pie.  The latter is currently in the oven

In fact, the timer just rang.  Hang on.

So, after I got the pie out of the oven, I remembered that I'd completely forgotten about my tea in the microwave (the reason it was in the microwave in the first place was that I forgot about it after I put the tea bag in and it got cold)--and that was more alarming that you might think.  See, this microwave is unique in that none of the buttons work.  When you shut the door, it's on.  And when you open the door, it's off.  So if you forget to take something out, it just keeps on heating indefinitely.  It also means you have to remember not to shut the door when you're done.  And 21 years of shutting the door after you take something out of the microwave, as Caitlin put it, is a hard habit to break.

Anyway.  After getting the pie out of the oven and my tea out of the microwave, it was time to start getting dinner ready.  Tonight that just meant reheating chicken, potatoes, and various side dishes.  Since the oven was still hot, we put the potatoes and sides in the oven, and the chicken in the microwave.  About ten minutes later, the potatoes were only mildly warm, so Caitlin turned the oven back on.  Except there are two knobs (like most ovens--one with temperature and one for "on"), and she  didn't realize I'd turned the temperature back down to zero after I took the pie out, and the oven, unlike the microwave, does not turn on automatically when you shut the door.  So ten minutes later, the potatoes were still only luke warm, at which point we caught on to the temperature issue, and turned it back up.  By then, though, the chicken had been sitting on the table for twenty minutes and was cold.  So it went back in the microwave.  By the time we got everything reasonably hot at the same time, it was quarter of nine (the goal was to eat at 8).  Clearly we fail at reheating dinner.

Il giorno di ringraziamento!

Some of you know that my cousin Sarah is also here in Florence for the semester, doing an art history/photography program (and taking fabulous pictures!).  We've been able to hang out occasionally, which is great, and last week her dad (my Uncle Bill) was here to visit for thanksgiving!  I went over to Sarah's apartment, and had Thanksgiving Dinner with them and Sarah's roommates and some of their family members.  There were about14 of us all together, and everyone made a dish or two.  Yes, that's right: all 14 people (well, nearly all) made at least one or two dishes.  At the same time.  In the apartment's kitchen.  Now, granted, it is not a tiny kitchen, but it's not huge either.  Add to this wine and snacks and the fact that Elizabeth (Sarah's sister, another cousin of mine) called on skype part-way through dinner prep, and the only place we could get both internet and electricity for Sarah's laptop was in the kitchen doorway.

Needless to say, there was some chaos involved.  But it was reasonably organized and cheerful chaos, and the dinner was delicious and HUGE: two chickens (I think we weren't sure a turkey would fit in the oven), mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, two kinds of stuffing, a spinach-queche sort of a thing, gravy, sweet potatoes (with butter and eggs and cinnamon!), scalloped potatoes, german bread, copious amounts of wine, pumpkin pie, chocolate cream pie, brownies, sugar cookies, ice cream, truffles, and a "digestive" liqueur for anyone who could stand it.  It was so awesome to be able have a real thanksgiving complete with family (in Florence!).

Non c'ho più banane (I don't have any more bananas)

The above is my new favorite expression.  I learned it from Emilia yesterday.  It means that you're completely exhausted, that it's been a long week/day/whatever and you just can't focus anymore.  Why bananas?  Well, apparently when you don't have anything else to eat, you eat fruit.  Thus, when there's fruit, there's still something, if not much, but once the fruit is gone, there's nothing left at all.  Alternately, the internet says that it's related to the fact that people used to end dinner with fruit (possibly this is what Emilia was saying and I misunderstood).  In fact, there's another expression "essere alla frutta" (to be at the fruit) that means to be running out of  or at the end of something (patience, energy, attention span, possibilities for resolving a problem, etc).  Apparently there was a fad a few years ago involving t-shirts that said "siamo alla frutta" with a picture of a piece(s) of fruit.

Thursday I didn't have any more bananas.  We had a test and two midterms last week, and I didn't plan ahead quite well enough and was up late repeatedly, and also had to get up early four days in a row.  But then I got some sleep, so I'm feeling much better now.  Today I intended to go to the straw-hat-and-other-straw-objects museum for my history of costume and fashion class, but I went to the wrong train station (or rather, went to the train station I meant to go to, but discovered that the train I wanted left from the other one, and at that point there was no way I was going to be able to take a train to get to the other station in time to catch the train to get to the museum more than half an hour before it closed at 12:30) and decided to bag it and go walk along Via dei Mille instead, which has an open air market on Saturdays and lots of little shops nearby.  The weather was gorgeous and the trees have all turned colors:

The sky was actually bluer than  it looks in the picture.  I found myself a mug to use at the Sede (I don't have to make tea in a bowl anymore, hurrah!), a lovely charcoal-grey long-sweater-layer sort of thing (it's sort of the shape of a closely-fitting dress with elbow length sleeves--I could easily wear it with leggings underneath instead of jeans) and some manderini (like miniature clementines, tiny and sweet and SO GOOD.  The smallest are the size of a golf-ball, and the largest about the size of an apricot.  They don't keep, though, so you have to buy a few at a time and eat them that day or at most within the next 24 hours) to have for lunch with the sandwich I packed for the museum trip that didn't happen.  I actually got two pomegranates first, and asked for a few manderini too as an afterthought (I asked for five, he gave me twice that many and then some and didn't charge me any extra--which was great, but now I have to eat 12 manderini in the next 24 hours.  I don't think this will be a problem, as I'm already down to 6) which was lucky, because I realized later that it is physically impossible to open a pomegranate unless you have something sharp and/or pointy, and the only thing remotely sharp or pointy that I had with me was a pen.  Or my house keys.  The keys weren't sharp enough, and I didn't really want to jab a pen into something I was going to eat.

And then on the way home I stopped at the book swap table across from our house, because someone left a massive stack of poetry magazines there this morning.  And I've now tidied my room and gotten some homework done.  I even remembered to stop to get some decent dental floss from the grocery store, because the 99-cent-store dental floss gets stuck in my teeth, which is kind of counter-productive.  Not that you really needed to know that.

But it's been a good day.

I have a library card!

Why, some of you may ask, did it take Emily two months to scope out the nearest library and acquire a card?  That’s a good question.  I was asking myself that on Saturday, when I stumbled on the Biblioteca delle Oblate, thought oh, I think that’s one of the libraries our packet recommends, and wandered in to look around.

I knew, in theory, that libraries exist in Firenze, but I was intimidated by the bits and pieces I’d heard about how the system is different here (ie, often you can’t check out books, you need to pay an entrance fee, you have to show a million forms of id, you need a special letter of recommendation from Smith, etc, etc.) and I was just generally busy with other things.  But when I wandered into the Oblate two days ago, no one stopped me to ask for ID, and I discovered that it’s a very reassuringly library-esque library, with reading rooms, and a kids sections, and music/dvds and a section with popular fiction (as well as non-fiction, local history, some exhibits, what have you).   Except that it’s in Florence, so it also has a courtyard in the middle with wraparound (can you call them wrap-around if they’re interior?) terraces on every floor with tables and chairs, terracotta-tiled roofs, a large tree, AND A VIEW OF THE DUOMO.  Also free wi-fi.

Here is a picture of the view from where I’m currently sitting:

So you will understand why I had to put off studying for art history for a few minutes to write to you all about how I am now the proud owner of a Florence library card (all I had to do was show them my passport, fill out several forms, and wait while the very nice man behind the desk tried to figure out how to work the scanner) and a password for the internet.

P.S. The list of rules includes the usual: be respectful of the books you check out, put your phone on silent, the library is not responsible for belongings left unattended, please park your bikes in the area provided, etc, etc, but it also includes this rule (my favorite):

“I cani sono ben accolti, se con la museruola o tenuti in braccio dal proprietario.”

(Dogs are quite welcome, provided they are on a leash or held in the arms of the owner)

And yes, they mean IN the library, not just on the terrace (although not, as the rule politely goes on to clarify, in the children’s section or the periodicals room) (why the periodicals room?  Are they worried the dogs will attempt to carry off rolled newspapers?).  There is currently a mid-sized, friendly-looking, wiggly sort of brown and white dog next to me on the terrace, playing with a small plushy toy of brown and white dog.

My hands smell like leeks...

It's kind of distracting.  Here I am, trying to review the catholic counter-reform as it applies to baroque literature in the 1600s, and I keep thinking mmm.... dinner must be almost ready, it smells like leeks!  and then realizing that it's just my hands, which are under my nose because I'm taking notes.  *sigh*

The reason for this is that I spent several hours this afternoon digging up leeks at La Talea (the organic farm where I work a few hours a week).  I also met Charlie (technically I met Charlie last week, but today we got to hang out for several hours digging up leeks, which is entirely different than being introduced in passing), who works there several times a week.  He's from Peru, and has been in Italy for the past two years working; our Italian is at about the same level, and we had lots of fun comparing new-language/new-culture stories.  We also talked about siblings, the leaning tower of Pisa, and transgender chickens.  He swears that male chickens, when they get old enough, sometimes lay (infertile) eggs.  I'm dubious. (has anyone else heard of this phenomenon?).  Also, it has been decided that I will teach him English and he will teach me Spanish and/or one or two local dialects of Peru.

And then I collected some carrots and leeks to take home with me, tromped up through the olive orchard, scrambled up and over the wall (this is not as easy as it sounds--some day I will take a picture of the wall for you), and walked my muddy (I remain incapable of staying clean when working in, on, or near dirt/mud), cheerful self back home, admiring the sun setting over the fields.  La Talea is rapidly becoming the highlight of my week.  I had a long morning (I spent most of it either in class or on a bus.  It is in theory possible to make it from my university class to my Wednesday morning smith class and be on time, but there's a very limited window of bus schedule that will make that happen, and one of the crucial buses was late by five minutes, which meant I had to take a later bus from the station, and that later bus never showed up, which meant I took an even later bus, and I was late to class), and was feeling overwhelmed by midterms and tired of buses, but after the farm I felt much better.

I took a shower when I got home, but my hands still smell like leeks.  Don't get me wrong: I like the smell of leeks.  But it makes it difficult to concentrate, particularly since it's nearly dinner time and I'm hungry!

More Sheep. And the pros and cons of studying near the Uffizi.

In my paper for History of Costume and Design, I think I may have written "Sui diti [Eleonora di Toledo] ha portato molti agnelli, uno un simbolo del matrimonio." 

I meant to say that she wore lots of rings on her fingers, one of which was a symbol of  marriage.  However, the word for ring in Italian is anello.  The word I used, agnello, means a lamb (yes, as in a baby sheep. Why do all my lingual mishaps have to do with sheep?).  This occurred to me AFTER I turned in the paper.  And that's not all.  I found out over dinner last night that the proper phrasing is ai diti.  Sui diti means literally on top of her fingers.  So here's poor Eleonora di Toledo walking around all day long trying to balance her symbolic marriage lamb (not to mention several other purely decorative lambs) on her fingers...

In other news, I had an hour between classes the other day, and it was rainy and grey, so I went over to the Uffizi for a bit (I still can't get over the fact that I can do that...).  I meandered through the gothic period, the late gothic, and the early Renaissance, and then realized I had about 15 minutes to get to class.  No big deal--the Uffizi are across the piazza from the Sede.  Not a problem, right?  Wrong.  Turns out you cannot go out the door you came in.  So I had to speed-walk through at least five centuries of art, three staircases, and seven (I mean that quite literally.  I counted.) gift shops in order to get to the exit.  I also passed about ten emergency exits on the way, but I figured being late to history would not go over well as an emergency with the security guards.  In all it took me a good ten minutes to get out (and that was without stopping to look at anything on the way--although I did get held up in the 18th century in a narrow hallway when the group in front of me stopped to look at something), and the exit is at the back of the museum, so it took another three minutes to get around and then across Piazza Signoria, and then a minute to run up the stairs, and I was very nearly late to class ("sorry I'm late, professor, I was looking at 600-year-old art and forgot to check the time..."  too bad it wasn't my art history class!), but wasn't actually late, so that was all right.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is not really a big thing here, although it is starting to catch on.  Mostly in discoteche and shop window displays.  Emilia got us a pumpkin, though, and Caitlin and I carved it this evening!

Pictures of the pumpkin, and miscellaneous Florence

You know you're in Italy when...

So, this week we had to start trying out courses at the University of Florence, and pick one to audit for the rest of the semester.

It has been an Experience.

First, you have to find out what courses exist. The university is divided into Faccoltà (agriculture, medicine, literature & philosophy, biology, etc), each of which is further divided into departimenti, which either contain or are equivalent to (I still haven’t figured out which) corsi di laurea (courses of study): specific degree programs like “forest and environmental science”, “science and technology of agriculture”, or “science and stewardship/husbandry of animal and environmental resources” (can you tell I’ve been spending a lot of time digging around in the Faccoltà Agraria?). Each Faccoltà has its own schedule for when classes start, ranging from early September to late October and beyond. Italian students apply for a specific degree program, and everyone in that program takes the same set schedule of courses. Thus there is no such thing as a course catalog, online or otherwise. The university does have a website, but it is VERY disorganized, haphazard, and difficult to navigate. We finally figured out that you can almost always find a list of courses (but no descriptions) included in a particular degree program, and then by googling the course name, you can usually find the schedule it’s part of, which will tell you when and where it takes place, and who teaches it.

The next step is to locate the building and get there. The university buildings are scattered all over Florence (and beyond--one Faccoltà is 2 hours away by bus), and more often then not aren’t clearly marked. I should also tell you that the Florentine address system uses two different numbering systems--one in red for businesses, one in black for residences--that are completely independent of each other, so that on one street the numbers might go 2b, 4b, 6b, 32r, 8b, 30r, 28r, 10b and so on.

So.

Monday afternoon I had no Sede classes, and decided to go try out two university courses. They were both in the same building, one right after the other, so I figured it would be convenient.

1) Archeologio Medievale (Medieval archeology)

Walking over to the building for this class, I was absolutely terrified. I had no idea what the building or the room would look like, how many people there would be in the class, whether I would need to explain why I was there, whether I would remember any Italian whatsoever if I did need to explain, etc… I had to just make myself walk and try not to think about it.

I successfully found the street, found the building, found the room, and arrived about 10 minutes before it was supposed to start. The schedule in the entrance of the building reassuringly listed that course in that room at that time, as did the schedule on the door of the room.

There was no one there.

The door was closed and locked, and the hallway was pretty much deserted. All right, I thought, we’re on Italian time, so 5 actually means 5:15… 5:20… ish… It gets to be 5:10, there’s still no one there. Finally, one other girl arrived for the same class, and since neither of us knew what was going on, she called a friend to ask. Turns out the professor went to Germany for three weeks. Theoretically, there would be assistants to teach the class, but there was no sign of them. She went to go ask in an office somewhere, and when she didn’t reappear, I gave up and walked the 15 minutes back to the Sede (rather than hanging around in the hallway for an hour and a half), and stopped for a gelato on the way.

2) Topografia e Cartografia (Topography and Maps)

I left the Sede again (less terrified this time but still nervous) and walked the 15 minutes back to the same building--except I got overconfident (since I'd walked there and back once already), didn’t pull out the map I’d drawn, and took a right instead of a left at one of the crucial corners. Luckily I only got about three blocks before I realized I’d gone wrong, and was able to turn around and go back and still be on time. I’d scoped out the signage earlier, so I knew more or less where the room was, and found it without much trouble.

There was no one there.

And this time, the schedule on the door didn’t list the course I was looking for. At that point, it was late, I had already walked back and forth three times (four if you count walking from the bus stop in the morning), it was getting dark, and I was tired, so I left and headed home. At this point I should mention that last Sunday, they made the Piazza del Duomo pedestrian-only, which is nice, but meant they had to permanently re-route at least half the bus lines--so getting home meant figuring out where they’d moved my bus stop to. I knew which piazza it was either in or near, but there are about 4 new bus stop locations in that piazza, not to mention the two or three that already existed, and the ones nearby on side streets, and each bus only goes to a few of them, and the piazza was full of other confused commuters wandering around trying to find the right bus.

Once I got home, I checked online, and realized that what I thought was a typo was actually correct: this class doesn’t start until the second week of November.

3) Botanica Generale (general botany)

I had planned to try this course on Wednesday morning. However, it’s in a building very far away, and starts at 8:30 am. With the new bus routes, it now takes two buses to get from my house to the central station, and from there I’d have to take a third bus to get to the building--so we’re talking about an hour and a half on the bus, and leaving the house just after 7 in the morning, which might have been doable, except that I needed to be back at the Sede (two buses or else a bus and a long walk) in time for another class, and that was just not going to happen unless I got very lucky. So I opted to sleep in instead.

4) Selvicoltura (The care/growing of forests/trees--forestry?)

This one was also early and far away, but located in such a way that I could leave around 7:30 and get there with just two buses (and an easy transfer in between). Getting off at the right piazza was easy. Then I had to find the building. It was NOT where google maps said it ought to be. I asked several people, who kept directing me further and further away. I wound up in the Technical School of Agriculture rather than the University Faccoltà Argraria, was redirected to the latter, and from there was redirected BACK in the direction I’d come from, because that particular building was elsewhere. I did finally find it, but by then was about 15 minutes late (and this class, miraculously, had started on time), and the class turned out to be a small one (about 20 people), rather than a large lecture, so I couldn’t even sneak in unobtrusively. About five minutes after I sat down, the professor stopped his lecture to find out who I was and why I’d turned up nearly a month into the course. But he turned out to be very friendly, and I really like both the subject and his teaching style, which is much more interactive and than I’d expected (from what I’ve heard, this is not typical of Italian courses). A bunch of the other students came over to introduce themselves at the break; they’re all intensely curious about what I’m doing here, and where I learned Italian (my favorite question was “But--do you take notes in Italian too?” (yes, I do. It’s too difficult to listen in one language and write in another, especially when you’re in a hurry)). Throughout the lesson, the professor kept stopping every once in a while to make sure I’d understood a particular word or concept, and every time there was an example that had to do with the US, he’d make a reference to “our American student” or ask me if I’d heard of the book/movie/chestnut-tree-blight/whatever the example was. It wasn't just me--throughout the whole lecture, he asked the class as a whole for answers to questions, opinions, thoughts, etc.

Also, it turns out that the course is split into two parts--the first part is Forest Ecology, which ends in a little over a week, and then the second part is Selviculture. The Friday lesson is a long one, so we spent a chunk of time in the middle talking about woods and psychology--a rambling (planned, accompanied by power point) detour through history, literature, and art that is decidedly NOT typical for an Italian course, but made everyone very happy. The professor has also written a children’s book about ecology, and at some point we’re going to take a similar detour to read it.

And there’s a random (live, large, green) parrot in the hallway just outside the door of the classroom! And two full, lifesize (real?) cow skeletons in the classroom. And because it’s the building for the animal sciences, the building is surrounded by enclosures with various birds, deer, sheep, etc.

I think I’ll still visit the maps/topography class when it starts, if only because it’s closer and would leave Friday mornings free, but I feel like I’m already part of this class, and I like the people in it, and the space it’s in, so I may wind up sticking with this one. We’ll see.

In other news (sorry, I know this is getting long!), I GET TO WORK ON AN ITALIAN ORGANIC FARM!!! It is close enough to my house to walk, and on Thursday morning I went to work there for the first time. I got to harvest radishes, arugula (ohhh, the smell of freshly cut arugula… amazing!), broccoli raab, and (if you can believe it) the last of the tomatoes. Aside from Antonio, who runs the farm, I met Susanna, the woman (she’s actually fairly close to my age. Italian has the wonderfully useful word ragazzo/a that refers to both teenagers and young adults--you can say “ragazza”, and it doesn’t sound condescending or diminutive the way “girl” sometimes does) who keeps bees on the farm. Best of all, in exchange for working for free, I get to take home free veggies!

The farm is called La Talea, and there’s a website: www.latalea.it
Look under “Galleria Foto” to see some pictures.

Festival di Cioccolato, UGUALE

Also (to catch you all up a bit, since I've been too busy to write):

Last weekend we went (by train) to an International Chocolate Festival in Perugia, a town on top of a hill (I might call it a mountain, but here, relatively speaking, it's a "hill").  Part of the historic center of Perugia is INSIDE the mountain (with cave/fortress-like architecture), which was very cool and involved about five or six (seven?) long escalators in a row, several of which were outside (I didn't know you could have escalators outside.  I wonder what happens when it rains?).  Needless to say, we ate lots of chocolate, and brought more home with us.  It was good.  It was also bitterly cold and windy, but there was also hot chocolate, so that was all right.

The weekend before that, there was a demonstration/march in Rome for LGBTQ rights and against violence driven by homophobia (this was the same weekend as the gay rights march in Washington D.C.).  One of the LGBTQ organizations here in Florence was organizing a bus there and back, so a group of us decided to go.  It was a long ride (I think next time we go to Rome we'll take the train instead!), but we met a lot of great people, and the demonstration was awesome.  Good music, beautiful weather, speeches (good practice for our Italian vocabularies!), and rainbow flags galore.  It was my first time in Rome, and I think I'll have to go back to do sight-seeing at some point.  There was a great moment where I glanced down a side street as we passed and had to do a double-take--woah, wait a minute--was that the Colosseum? (it was).

Afterwards, we (the group from Florence) were all supposed to meet back at the bus to head home.  Getting back to the bus involved taking the metro, and taking the metro meant finding a metro station--and we (the four of us from Smith--we couldn't find anyone from the Florence group nearby to tag along with) thought there ought to be a station closer to us than the station at the beginning of the march.  And there may have been, but we couldn't find it, and got turned around looking for it, and the third person we asked for directions told us the closest stop was the one where the march started in Piazza della Reppublica.  Meanwhile, we got a call from the organizer of the Florence group, checking in to find out where we were (it was very reassuring to know that someone was keeping track and calling anyone unaccounted for)--most of the rest of the group found each other at the end of the march, and were on a (local) bus to get to the (pullman) bus parking lot. So we power walked back to the piazza, and got to the metro station about five minutes before we were supposed to be at the bus (and there was still a 20 minute metro ride to the bus parking lot), dashed down the stairs and squeezed onto a metro train.  When we got off at the other end, we RAN to the restroom (the one on the bus wasn't working or something, and it would be awhile before a rest stop) and RAN back to get to the bus in the parking lot, thinking that we'd find everyone else on board and waiting for us so they could leave.

On the contrary, when we got there, we found the bus driver and two other people (out of about 40).  And felt very silly.  See, we'd forgotten that 7:30 Italian time means, oh, 7:45, 8, something like that.  And the rest of the group was still on the local bus and was even later than we were.  A valuable lesson...  :)

Foccacia and hot chocolate in the rain

Today is rainy and cold.  For the moment I don't have any classes or obligations on Fridays, which is nice, so I got to sleep in some and hang around in my pajamas all morning.  The bus drivers are on strike today (we were told that this happens periodically, but this is the first one since we got here)--which was mildly inconvenient, but not as bad as it might have been, since I didn't have anywhere I needed to go, and it's the kind of day where I'm perfectly content to stay home and read/catch up on email/etc. 

We did need to get lunch at some point, though.  Our house is too far from the center of Florence to walk in the rain (on a nice day I might try it), but I checked online around 11:45 am, and discovered that the buses would be running on the normal schedule between noon and 3 (there had also been a brief window of time in the morning), so Sofi and I caught a bus into town (we double checked with the bus driver about when the strike would start up again, just to be sure we wouldn't have to walk home) to get lunch from a pizza/foccacia/bread place called Pugi's in Piazza San Marco, reccommended to us by a Smithie who was here last year (for the record: it is FABULOUS), and ducked under the loggia of one of the nearby buildings to eat it and watch the traffic (pedestrian and auto) in the piazza (I think the building is the seat of the Architecture department of the University of Florence?).  We then walked a few blocks to the Sede, stopped at a cafe for hot chocolate (for me) and ice cream (for Sophie), picked up some things at the Sede (all the while keeping an eye on the time), and then caught a bus back home in plenty of time.  I'm not sure what happens if you're on a bus at 3--do they just stop wherever they are, or do they finish the route?  Or do they just not start any route that won't be finished by 3?

So it was a nice day.  Tomorrow the whole group is taking a bus for a day trip to Pienza and San Gimignano, and Sunday we're going to a soccer match, which should be excellent (and also intense.  Emilia says Italian soccer fans are completely insane.  Soccer matches are also one of the rare occasions where large groups of Italians get drunk en masse, and getting into the stadium is like checking in for an international flight, complete with passport, multiple security checks, and the no-water-bottle or pointy objects rules.  It should be interesting...).

More pictures...

I'm still a week behind on pictures, so here are some from LAST weekend:
Il Giardino della Villa Medicea di Castello

"Pieno Rosso" ("full red")

We have been reading a book called La testa degli Italiani (The Head [as in brain/psychology] of the Italians—there’s an English translation called La Bella Figura) by Beppe Severgnini. It’s very entertaining, and often very accurate (although sometimes exaggerated). One of very accurate chapters is on Italian traffic and driving, and since he describes it so well, here’s a section for you to read:
----
excerpt from
“The Street, or The Psychiatry of the Traffic Light”
(loosely translated by Emily)

This is why, in Italy, the rules aren’t respected the way they are in other countries: we feel that accepting a general rule slights our intelligence. To obey is banal; we want to think it through ourselves. We want to decide if that rule applies to us in our particular situation. Right there, in that moment.

Take a look at this red light. It seems the same as any other traffic light in the world; actually, it is an Italian invention. It isn’t an order, as the naïve believe; it isn’t even a recommendation, as the superficial might say. Instead, it is a starting point for a thought process. It’s almost never about a petty debate. Useless, maybe. Petty, no.

Many of us [Italians] look at a traffic light, and the brain doesn’t sense a prohibition (Red! Stop. You mustn’t pass). It senses, instead, a stimulus. Okay: what type of red is this? A crosswalk red? But it’s seven in the morning, at this hour there aren’t any pedestrians. That red, therefore, is a debatable red, a red-that’s-not-really-red: thus, we go through it. Or is it a red that regulates an intersection? But what kind of intersection are we talking about? Here we can see very well who comes, and no one’s coming. Therefore this red is only sort-of-red, a relative red. What do we do? We think on it a little, then we go through it. And if instead it were a red that regulated a dangerous intersection (streets that cross each other, high speeds, impossible to see who’s coming)? What a question: we stop, and wait for the green. In Florence—we will go there—exists the expression “full red” [meaning a red light at which you actually stop and wait]. “Red” is a bureaucratic term. “Full” is a personal contribution.
---

And he’s right. This means that drivers in Florence appear “crazy” to foreign tourists, who expect cars to follow some form of the “accepted” rules of the road (example: red = stop)—but it you’re paying attention (to the cars, not to the traffic light), crossing the street is not actually as dangerous as it looks (although pedestrians do yield the right of way to cars and motorcycles out of sheer self-defense, and many of the Smithies feel that braving the Florentine streets on a bicycle is akin to bungee jumping—something you admire other people for doing, but that you can’t quite work up the courage to do yourself, because, no matter how many people do it on a regular basis and live, your gut still tells you that launching yourself off a bridge is a supremely bad idea). It took me less than a week to learn that when you want to cross the street, you simply wait for a break in the traffic and go, regardless of any walk/don’t walk signal; if necessary, you run.

Also, there is very little practical distinction between street and sidewalk. Nominal “sidewalks” do exist, but cars often drive on them—which is perhaps only fair, since pedestrians frequently walk in the road. This is especially in the narrow, cobbled-stoned streets in central Florence; once you get to the wider, paved streets a little farther out, the distinction is clearer.

Another section from the same chapter on traffic helps to explain something I mentioned in one of the photo captions: EVERYONE wears a helmet when riding a motorcycle (or moped), but no one* wears a helmet on a bicycle. I was baffled by this, because while motorcycles do go faster than bicycles, both ride in the same streets with the same cars and the same fluid interpretation of the traffic laws, and a bicyclist seems even more vulnerable than a someone on a motorcycle. But then I read a section where Severgnini points out that bicyclists in Florence are essentially considered pedestrians—and it occurred to me that pedestrians are just as vulnerable as bicyclists, and no pedestrian would ever wear a helmet. Also, it’s entirely possible that it’s easier to look cool wearing a motorcycle helmet than a bike helmet.

At some point I also want to talk about the bus system in Florence. It’s excellent, and has unbelievably helpful signage. For now, though, I’ll finish by saying that orientation classes have ended (we took the exams for them on Friday), and regular semester classes at the Sede start on Monday. I’ll be taking Art History, History of Florence, History of Costume and Design, and Survey (which is essentially History of Literature, so I’m getting a lot of history, all of it Florence-centric, this semester—which is not necessarily a bad thing, and should (hopefully) mean lots of interesting field trips (and for field trips Smith pays any entrance fees when our museum card doesn’t get us in for free—that alone would justify taking the classes!).


*almost no one. I saw two bicyclists with helmets last week, and one more a few days ago, but they were probably all study abroad students.

Pictures!

Links to the first few batches of photos:

Benvenuta a Firenze!

Boboli e San Lorenzo

San Miniato al Monte and Cooking Lessons

In giro per il nostro quartiere

From Fiesole to Ponte a Mensola... or not.

Caitlin has this really awesome book.  It’s called Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria, and has maps and directions for a whole bunch of day hikes, half-day hikes, multi-day hikes, along with suggestions for places to eat along the way, etc.  These are not walks that take you past the famous locations and describe the pieces of art you’ll see in particular churches; these are walks up and down mountains, through olive groves, along backwoods mountain roads, and around the Tuscan country side.  The instructions include statements like: when you get to the bus stop, go behind the sign and look for a large rock.  Turn left, and follow the red and white blazes through a cypress forest until you get to a small road; follow this road, admire the view, and then turn right at the blue recycling bins.  And so on…  It also comes with a website where the authors (and other people who have followed the directions in the book) leave updates and comments about the various routes.  For example: 2 hours?  Maybe if you run; this route took us about 3-4.  Or: There aren’t any horses near that olive grove any more—don’t try to use them as a landmark.

One of the routes in the book goes from Fiesole (a small town in the hills around Florence—it actually predates Florence, and has Etruscan ruins and that kind of thing) up to the top of Mont Ceceri, then down again through Tuscan farmland to Ponte a Mensola, which is not far from our house.  We decided to pack a lunch and make a day of it—it was supposed to take about 3.5-4 hours.  We took a series of buses to Fiesole (and met a very nice elderly man on the bus, who talked to us the whole way, and gave us his address, in case we want to come visit him and practice our Italian—he’s the only one left of his family, and likes having company,) walked around Fiesole (beautiful views!  And some nice parks/benches to admire them from) 

for about an hour, and then set off, following the instructions in the book.  They took us off to a little side street and down what appeared to be someone’s driveway, where we had to squeeze around the car and onto a narrow, rocky channel with a high stone wall on either side that looked like it might not actually go anywhere.  

 But it was hard to make the description in the book lead anywhere else, so we followed it.  And followed it.  And started to think that maybe we were supposed to have taken the left fork back in Fiesole and not the right, but we decided to keep going just a little further (through the spiky vines hanging down into the path, and up and down steep rocky slopes, passed what we thought was a dead end and turned out to be just a sharp left) and then finally got to the end of the stone shoot, climbed up what was essentially a vertical slope, and found ourselves on a paved walking path at the entrance to a sort of state park with hiking trails—and found the red and white blazes we were supposed to be following!

At this point the book told us to watch the park signage carefully, because the trail to the peak took a sharp left off of the main path.  We found a sharp left, but very little signage (what signage there was said nothing about a peak), but took the left turn anyway.  And we did wind up where we were supposed to be—at a picnic area on a peak where Leonardo da Vinci took his first flight in one of his flying contraptions—although we think we got there by a slightly different route than the one the book described.  More stunning views along the way (I can understand why da Vinci wanted to launch himself off the mountain and fly over the Tuscan countryside)—and it was very peaceful and quiet. 

 

When you stopped walking, there was almost complete, utter silence, except for the light breeze through the trees, and church bells.  Also, today is an almost unbelievably beautiful day.  Clear blue sky, just enough sun to feel nice, a light breeze to keep you from getting too warm, and it smells like the leaves are just about to start turning colors.

We stopped for lunch (nice bread, cheese, oranges and plums, muesli (a sort of granola-type cereal), juice boxes, water, chocolate) at the peak, and then followed the book back down the mountain and into the Tuscan countryside.  The instructions took us through olive groves, 

over a bridge and into a woodsy area (always following the white and red blazes).  The book noted that we were always heading towards the castle with the tower that we could see in the distance.  If we got lost, we were to head for the tower.  All well and good.  Then we got to a road, with a gate (closed) that led to the tower.  Since we had come through the woods, we were on the inside of the gate, but half the fence next to the gate was missing, so we could hop over the low wall to the road.  Now, the problem was that we were supposed to take a right and head along a road or path to the castle.  There were three options to the right: a path into the woods (we tried that and decided it wasn’t going to the castle), the road on the inside of the closed gate, and the road on the outside of the closed gate, and the book’s instructions got a little fuzzy about which one we were supposed to take.  We took the one outside the gate, a sort of winding mountain road, figuring that a) the gate seemed to mean that the other road was closed to the public at the moment, and b) the red and white blazes led us over the wall to the outside of the gate.  We now think that was where we went wrong, because we never got to the castle.  We followed the red/white blazes until we got to a point where the road split (at this point we were completely off the book’s directions, since they hinged on getting to the castle.  We’d started off the edge of both the maps we had with up, too, so they weren’t any help), and a sign told us that Settignano lay in one direction, and another town in the other.  The blazes (very helpfully) went in BOTH directions.  Now, Settignano is another hill town around Florence, and the bus route that goes right by our house winds up there, so we went that way, figuring that at least we knew how to get home from there.

At this point, we’re hiking along the edge of a mountain road in Tuscany, heading for a town that we hoped wasn’t too far away, still admiring the panoramic views out over farmland.  I mean, really, if your going to wander around being lost, the Tuscan hills are not a bad place to do it.  

 And we weren’t really lost, because every once in a while we got to a road sign that told us Settignano was still THIS way.  And we had chocolate and water and each other for company, and most importantly, we have the language.  I was surprised at how confident and free knowing the language made me feel; we could read the signs, and talk to people, and most importantly, ask for directions.  Also, it was still only about 2 o’clock.  At one point, a guy in a truck stopped to ask us (in Italian) for directions to a particular castle—as it happened, we had passed a sign not long before, so we could help him.  Except that we think we sent him to the wrong castle.  There were two castles, the one we were looking for and another not too far away.  (What a bizarre statement that is: we think we sent him to the wrong castle by mistake.  You could NEVER say something like that anywhere in the US—oh, you know, there are so many castles in the area that it’s hard to keep them straight…).

Eventually we wound up at a fork in the road with a road sign giving the names of the two towns the fork led to—neither of which was Settignano.  Uh-oh.  We’d been following the signs, and had passed nothing that even remotely resembled a town (no “Welcome to Settengano, population: 500, or anything like that), so we picked a fork and cautiously followed it a little ways, and passed nothing except a bus stop for a line that went nowhere we recognized, and a sort of parking lot with steps leading down off of it.  So we backtracked to the parking lot, discovered that the steps lead to a street with houses, and called down to a man getting out of his car for directions.  He told us Settignano was about 2 kilometers farther down the road we were on.  We thank him and kept walking, debating how many kilometers there are to a mile, or vice-versa (none of us could remember).  Eventually we got to another fork in the road, this one with no signage whatsoever (but a great view) except for a poster about a lost cat, and stopped to sit on the wall and reconnoiter while eating some chocolate.  We flagged down the next car that went by, and asked which fork led to Settignano.  The couple in the car told us NEITHER fork, that in fact Settignano was back the way we’d come, but that it was too far to walk on foot, and that we ought to take the left fork, which led to Florence.  Right.  We debated a couple of things: A) How on EARTH did we manage to miss Settignano? There was NO WAY we’d walked anywhere near 2 km after stopping at the parking lot.  B) Florence was almost certainly too far away to walk to, given that we started a ways outside of Florence and then taken a bus about 20 minutes farther away, and had been walking along the mountains, not down out of them.  But we took the fork he said went to Florence anyway, since we at least knew it went in the right direction (down).

When we came around the curve, the view opened up, and we could see the Duomo in the distance.  It’s hard to feel lost when you can see the Duomo (it helped that it was still early afternoon on a beautiful day, and my feet weren’t tired yet), because then you know where Florence is, and so long as we kept going down, we were bound to get to a town with a bus stop eventually, and once you get close enough to Florence, all the bus lines go to the central bus station eventually, and we know how to get home from there.   And since you can SEE the Duomo, there’s a vague (if unrealistic, given the distances involved) sense that even if you didn’t find a bus stop, you could simply keep walking all the way into Florence, arrive at the Duomo, and take a left to our familiar bus stop and hop on the 10 and go home.  It didn’t come to that, though, because as we walked down, the road became more and more inhabited, until we seemed to be approaching the center of a small town.  We stopped to ask a woman if there was a bus nearby (I think she was actually American—her Italian was as accented as ours, and she seemed delighted to be asked directions in Italian, to have understood, and be able to answer in the same langugage), and there was one almost around the corner, and as we came around the corner, Sofi and Caitlin recognized the street, and where we were: Settignano.

Don’t ask me how we got there.  Either the man we asked directions from was wrong, or there are two ways to Settignano or else we hit a space warp somewhere along the way.  But we got there.  It wasn’t where we were supposed to end up had we followed the directions in the book, and it wasn’t where we expected to end up based on the guy’s directions, but we got there.  And got some gelato.  And took the bus five minutes down the road to our bus stop and home.

So that was today’s adventure.  I hope I haven’t rambled on too long.  The rest of the pictures will be posted on Facebook if you want to see them—I’ll post a link to them here once they’re up.

Sometimes it is hard to recognize irony in a foreign language

Let me tell you about le zanzare. Le zanzare are the mosquitoes. There are lots of them. Also, Italian windows don’t have screens—so when you open the window (and the windows are these magnificently tall, heavy, wood-and-glass affairs that swing open), it’s OPEN. This can be useful: after dinner is cleared off the table, we simply bundle up the tablecloth, stick it out the window, and shake it clean (there is a sort of cement streambed about 10 feet down on that side of the house, so we don’t even need to worry about dumping dinner crumbs on some poor pedstrian); you can also stick your head out and admire the stunning vistas of mountains in the distance (or the neighbors’ vegetable garden!). However, it also means that there are as many mosquitoes INSIDE the house as there are outside; in fact, there are probably MORE inside, because that’s where all the lights and people are. It’s worse in the evening, especially at dinner time, and everyone in our house, including Emilia, detests le zanzare. This leads us to develop ever more elaborate and creative ways of getting rid of them. First, there’s the good old hand smack—NEVER against the wall, mind you, because then you’ll have a squashed mosquito on the whitewash (che schifo!)—always between two hands. The one-handing mid-air grab is more difficult to pull off, but much admired. Dinner is full of sudden SMACKs, and no one blinks an eye, except to ask “Preso?” (“Taken?”, ie, “did you get it?”). Then there’s the coil of some sort of mosquito-poison-incense that apparently smells horrible (I, thankfully, had a cold that night and couldn’t smell a thing). There are various contraptions that plug into the wall and give off a vapor or force field or something.
And then Emilia came home with the newest contraption the other day—a sort of electrified tennis racket. You turn it on, sweep it through the air, and the mosquitoes make a very satisfying sizzle. Demonstrate this to someone who has been futilely slapping at mosquitoes all week and her (no guys in our house) eyes light up; she then stalks around the table hunting mosquitoes, cackling and saying “HA!”. I think the best moment was at dinner several nights ago, when Emilia wound up perched on one foot on the bench at the table, trying to sneak up on a mosquito that kept landing juuuust out of reach on the wall. Tonight we decided that what we really need is a bat (as in the animal. Emilia had seen a TV program about how about a bat eats upwards of a thousand mosquitoes a night).

But it’s more or less a lost cause. There are always more of them. Or even if there’s only one, it buzzes right over your ear in the middle of the night. I’ve actually gotten rather good at pointedly ignoring my bug bites and not scratching them. But the fact remains that at night you have to choose between fresh air and the chance that leaving the windows shut might cut down on the mosquito population in your room.

All this so that you will understand why, when Emilia said something the other night at dinner about how if she opened her windows at night, i penguini would come into her room, I immediately assumed she was talking literally about some sort of small, annoying insect or animal. I knew the word for mosquito, and also squirrel, so I knew un penguino was neither of those (at this point, all of you have most likely thought of the obvious translation for the word penguino. So had I, but I discarded it as unlikely). I asked what un penguino was, and everyone else (faster on the uptake than I) tried to explain at once. You know, they said, those black and white birds (seagulls? I thought, trying to picture an invasion of seagulls through Emilia’s open window, in Florence? Surely not…) that can’t fly (but then how, I wondered, do they get in the window?). At this point I couldn’t think of any other bird that fit the description (short of ostrich, which was even more unlikely) besides the obvious, so I said, indignantly (in Italian) “But… penguins live at…” Yes, Emily, at the North Pole (or is it the South pole?), Emilia said, laughing, and Caitlin and Sophie (also giggling) chimed in to explain that this was a METAPHOR. Emilia meant that her room gets very cold (like the north pole) when she leaves the windows open at night.

I will now pause a moment to collect my poor, battered dignity.

. . .


But we all had a good laugh at my expense. And in my defense, it IS difficult to pick up on things like dry humor when you’ve has been concentrating all day on understanding even the literal meaning of all the words and phrases that aren’t yet in your (still limited) vocabulary.

And to all of you who are going to point out that I have been known to take things too literally on occasion even in English: Yes, yes, I know. But I mostly do that on purpose. Mostly.

Cooking classes, mosquito bites, and orange slippers

The bad news is that I am sick.  My sore throat and runny nose are just the latest in a string of illness among the Smithies here in Florence--Giovanna says this always happens in the first few weeks, due to all the new foreign germs we're coming into contact with.  The good news is that a) it's not that bad, I just feel kind of bleh (plus everyone is taking very good care of me, and I bought myself large quantities of kleenex on my way home), and, b) it means I have been all but ordered to stay home and rest this weekend.  So I have time to update all you lovely people on what I've been up to, without feeling guilty about not being out and about seeing Important Landmark X or Talking to Italians and Making the Most of My Year Abroad, and all that.

Orientation classes started Monday, and continue until mid October, at which point regular classes at the Sede and UNIFI (the Florentine University) begin.  For orientation, we have a daily Italian language lesson with Giovanna, as well as weekly or bi-weekly orientations to Florentine history, art (including field trips), and cooking!  We also have a class called "in giro per Firenze" with a fabulous woman named Costanza, who I love already, and who also teaches the history of Costume and Fashion class in the fall.  She is friendly and irreverant and enthusiastic and wears great outfits, and essentially we meander around Florence all evening, learning how to take the bus, where to go for the best ice cream, or good dancing, or cheap notebooks, where and how to get your train ticket validated, etc.  I really want to take her class in the fall. 

The cooking class is at Giovanna's house with a woman named Pam; essentially we cook lots of delicious food and then eat it.  Actually, Pam cooks lots of delicious food, and we help (mostly with things like grating chocolate, or mixing ingredients, tasks that aren't easily messed up).  This week the theme was a phrase I can't remember now, but translated roughly as "peasant food"--relatively simple dishes historically made by poorer families in the countryside.  Two of the dishes were recipies that called for stale bread: Pappa al Pomodoro, a sort of porridge that reminded me of couscous, with onions, tomatoes, olive oil, peppers, etc.; and Panzanella, a delicious, tomato-sauce-and-stale-bread based savory dish.  We also made Pollo in Fricassea, a dish that predates tomatoes in Italy, and hence has a sauce of nearly-raw egg, olive oil, minimal flour, salt, pepper, and parsely.  It sounds odd, but it was REALLY good.  And there was a white wine that went very well with it (yes, I am continuing to practice drinking alcohol with meals.  This one I actually enjoyed enough to realize it went well with the chicken, but not the dessert).  And the dessert was Tiramisù, which is technically not a peasant dish, but, I mean, really, how can you complain?  My host mother also cooks well, and I am quickly running out of ways to say "this is really good!".  I will have to work on my food vocabulary, since I've only been here a week, and it needs to last all year...

And the conversation (led by Pam) over this heavenly lunch (more accurately dinner in the middle of the day) of hers was as follows: vomit (and the details of how one of the students present can't eat much at the moment because it makes her do so), mosquito bites (of which we all have many), ticks, lyme disease, other types of bug bites, and (sorry) pus.  This is very, very Italian.  I am learning that for many Italians, the details of your (and everyone else's) health are considered public, and are perfectly valid dinner table conversation.  And, oddly enough, it feels perfectly normal.  It only occurred to me half way through lunch what, exactly, we'd been discussing so casually, at which point it was amusing rather than gross.

Finally, (and then enough, because this is getting long), some details about my host family, because I realized I got sidetracked in the last post.  Sophia, Caitlin, and I are living with a woman named Emilia, who has two twin 21-year-old daughters who live elsewhere, but come home frequently for dinner and a visit.  Francesca studies art (specifically sculpture) in Bolognia, while Leonora studies math (!) here in Florence.  All three of them are lovely people, friendly and welcoming and easy-going.  Emilia teaches karate to kids nearby, and the house (which is unusually large by Italian standards) is outside of Florence, towards Fiesole, about 20 minutes by bus.  At some point we're going to try walking it, but Emilia says it'll take at least an hour, if not longer, so we're saving it for a day when we're not in a hurry.  The area is not what I would call rural--we live on a somewhat busy street, with other houses and small businesses next to and across from us.  There's an elementary school down the street, a free book swap table on the way to the bus stop (I found an elementary school math work book, to help with learning vocabulary!), and a lovely path a few blocks away that winds up through fields to a villa.  And did I mention the view of the mountains from my window?

Each of us has our own room, and the three of share a bathroom.  Each of the bedrooms has a color theme (not that the entire room and everything in it is that color--just enough to be a nice theme without over doing it): mine is red/yellow/orange, with a massive bunk bed; Caitlin's is blue, and Sophie's is green.  Emilia got us each a pair of IKEA slippers that match our room colors.

I will send pictures of the house, of us, of various trips when I get a chance. At the moment they're all on my laptop, and I'm using Emilia's.  Let me know if you want to receive email updates whenever I post something to this blog--I can add you to a list, and Blogger will automatically email you each new post.

A dopo,
Emily

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

Sono arrivata!

Buongiorno!

I have arrived safely in Firenze; the flights were long but fine.  I'll be in this hotel (where I am writing from) tonight, and will meet my host family tomorrow night.  More later!

I hope I haven't forgotten anyone who wanted to be on this list.  If you know of anyone who would like to be, let me know and\or pass this along.

Ciao!
Emily