Kevin Spacey and Fabio

Day One of classes is officially over. I didn't have to be up until about 9 a.m. today since my first class (Elementary Italian One) doesn't begin until 10:45.

We made breakfast at home today and ate together since Erika and I are in the same Italian class and Bethany's Italian Two class is also at 10:45.

Fourth Lesson Learned: Shelf eggs are pretty tasty.

Remember a few posts back how I said they don't refrigerate their eggs in Italy? I bought a carton of brown eggs at the supermercado two or three days ago that I found sitting on a shelf between the bread and the cereal. If you want eggs in this country, that is the only way to buy them. All the dairy here is sketch.

So this morning I ate an egg that has been sitting out on the counter for several days and drank a glass of milk out of a carton that's been sitting in the pantry for a week. Freaky, right?

I was a little terrified to try the egg, since earlier this week two of the other girls from our class ate cured sausage and got sick because "cured" basically translates to "Here, eat this raw meat."

But I do love eggs and have been craving an omelet for the past week, so I decided today would be the day to be brave and go for it.

Since we have yet to find butter anywhere, and they certainly don't have PAM, I poured some olive oil in a skillet and cooked one egg into an omelet. I put the omelet on a piece of toast and made an egg sandwich that turned out to be surprisingly delicious and filling. I might even venture to say that my shelf egg was better than the eggs I eat in America (definitely far and beyond the liquid ladle eggs they serve at Eastway in Kent).

The taste was good enough to almost allow me to forget that I was drinking week-old, non-refrigerated milk and days old non-refrigerated eggs (and yogurt - which I'm becoming addicted to since I found really cheap, delicious yogurt here - but the yogurt they do refrigerate). It was a fantastic breakfast.

The three of us made our way to class and arrived ten minutes early for our respective Italian classes.

Erika and I had class with Gloria in the Giotto classroom. We learned the alfabeto and classroom phrases like, "Yes, I understand;" "No, I don't understand;" "I have a question;" and many other short, helpful phrases. We ended the class by practicing spelling our names in pairs.

Our second class was Intercultural Communication fifteen minutes later in the same classroom. Our professor for this one is Fabio. This was my first time meeting him, but I really like him so far (I haven't met anyone yet whom I don't like).

We spent most of the class introducing ourselves and asking Fabio questions about life in Italy.

"Culture shock is always positive," Fabio told us. We talked about how anytime you experience something new, you learn something good that can be taken away to make you a better person. It's a great way to look at an unfamiliar situation.

Fabio said he wants this class to help change our way of viewing the world and to mature and shape us to be world ambassadors.

... But he also told us Kevin Spacey would be visiting our class. We all just kind of stared at him.

"Like, the actor Kevin Spacey? The Kevin Spacey?" I asked.

It took us a little while to figure out Fabio was kidding. I think we might have problems with that this semester since Fabio seems to be very sarcastic, but with his accent, it's difficult to pick up on his sarcasm.

It turns out Kevin Spacey is just one of his favorite actors - "I wish I knew him and could invite him to come to class" - and Fabio will be showing us movie and television clips from Italy and America to help us recognize and understand differences in culture.

Fabio assigned us homework to describe who we are in three sentences, to be handed in and discussed in class tomorrow. That's going to be rough, but Fabio told us that's the idea. He wants to challenge us a lot this semester. Part of our homework every week will be to choose one new experience that challenges us, puzzles us or just makes us think because of it's foreign nature, and remember it to discuss in class. We can present these experiences any way that suites us - through writing, speaking, video, art, etc. Those are going to be very cool assignments as well.

After class, we got sandwiches (ham, goat cheese and spinaci) at a corner store on the same street as the school and did a little grocery shopping. Now we're hanging out for the afternoon and beginning to plan our big weekend trips. Any ideas where to go in Europe?