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.