Keeping Up With Gloria

Day Three was another early start, but not nearly as rough as yesterday. Bethany and I went to our first orientation class while Erika slept in for her first class at 11 a.m.

The good thing was, Bethany and I managed to find our way to Cerchi without our guide AND arrived on time for orientation. When we got there, we met Gloria who will be teaching my Elementary Italian 1 class this semester. She went over some more ground rules and drew us a map of Florence complete with some background on various founding families in Florence including the Medicis who built the Ponte Vecchio ("old bridge") over the Arno in the 1500's in order to have a quick escape to the countryside on the opposite side of the river. Gloria said the family needed this bridge because so many people hated them and wanted to kill them... Lovely.

After this, we went on a field trip to learn how to shop for ourselves. We visited a regular mercado, outdoor mercado and a supermercado to learn how to buy food in the three most common types of Florentine markets.

The supermercado was very similar to an American supermarket. It was large and had aisles just like in America. One difference that I really liked was that they have two-in-one shopping cart and basket combos. You pick up a basket by the door that can be used like a regular basket, or you can pull out a handle on the front to drag the basket around on two wheels. I saw one woman earlier in the week while walking past a mercado, dragging a shopping basket and just thought she was being lazy, but apparently not.

Once we finished touring the supermarket, Gloria announced she was leaving and that we could find our way home. Then she literally turned around and booked it out of the store. Bethany, Katy and I, and most of the rest of our group, took off after her, and chased her through Florence until we got to a road we recognized.

It turned out fine after all. Bethany and I met a woman from England who directed us to her favorite restaurant, but it wasn't open yet (this was just before 11 a.m.). Instead we went into a tiny convenience store along the way home and ordered sandwiches from a woman who didn't speak any English.

This was my first encounter with someone in Italy who does not speak any English. Luckily, I whipped out my high school Spanish and ordered una baguette con tacchino, formaggio del gorgonzola e pesto, and got a delicious turkey sandwich. I heard Spanish was a suitable replacement for Italian, and so far that theory has been working quite well. I've found the Spanish is close enough in a lot of cases that I just need to tweak my pronunciation a little bit in order to be understood.

I guess some parts of my North Hills education did pay off.

We brought our sandwiches home to eat just in time to meet Claire, who showed up unexpectedly to see if our apartment had been cleaned yet. It hadn't, of course. When we moved in, Claire told us the cleaning lady had needed to rush out for something and would return to finish the job later in the day. Our beds were clean, but the place obviously had not been dusted or swept in at least weeks. We waited all day for the cleaning lady to come, but she never did. And as of now, she still has not returned.

Claire promised to get on the apartment's case and have someone come to clean tomorrow. She also fixed our TV which hasn't been working, and we passed time between lunch and our next meeting watching Spaghetti Westerns (Aha Moment: Spaghetti Westerns are so titled because they're made in Italy...duh; I had a brain meltdown there for a little bit) on the Italian equivalent of TV Land.

At 3:00, we had our last cohort meeting with Deb and Stan to say goodbye to them as their plane back to Kent leaves tomorrow. We're all very sad to see them go because they really have been our Italian Mom and Dad this week. But Marcello, Petra and the rest of the KSU Florence staff are just as wonderful, so I know we're in excellent hands.

After this meeting, we walked around some more, then came home and made spaghetti, which we ate while watching Italian cartoons and updating Facebook (oh, 21st Century). We also marveled some more over the fact that we hear ambulances driving up and down the main streets all day long - I told you the drivers here are dangerous.

Erika got sick from eating too much chocolate (amateur) and went to bed around 9. Bethany and I headed out to Finnegan Irish Pub a few blocks away from our street, where we met the rest of our "family" (the main point of Deb and Stan's parting speech was to impress upon us the importance of looking out for one another since we are one big family now).

Thursday night at Finnegan is trivia night. Only minutes after arriving at the pub, I won a lovely green (of course) Finnegan's t-shirt. The contest was to solve an anagram written on poster board and held by the bartender who stood on a chair by the door. I managed to unscramble "Luciano Pavarotti" to claim my prize.

Some of the other contests included a geography quiz, a movie poster identification quiz, a word origin quiz, and a challenge where the bartender played a thirty second song clip and we had to write down the song name and artist. My team, "Raging Bulls," came in fourth place overall in the trivia, which was pretty pathetic considering most of our competitors were drunk, but we had fun anyhow.

We ended the night by getting a late night snack at an Indian market and heading home. There is another orientation field trip tomorrow, so I need to get to bed asap. My feet are killing me. I'll have to try my new tennies tomorrow. I've never walked so much in my life! I have no idea how people gain wait here because all we do is walk. Hopefully that will keep up so I don't pack on any pasta pounds. :)

Ciao ciao!

... And Ordering Cake From John Lennon

Day Two began bright and early with an 8 a.m. meeting at Il Duomo and a walk to some unidentified giant palace(?) for an introduction to the Florence program by Marcello, Dean of Florence Study Abroad.

The only problem with that was my flatmates and I ended up being late because we got locked in. Yes. Locked in our own apartment, and it took a good ten minutes to escape. There's some kind of deadbolt in the door that we can't control yet and apparently it chose this morning to show itself.

Bethany called Kevin and explained the situation to him so that he could relay the message to the rest of our group. Kevin told the group we got lost in our apartment (the smallest of the apartments at only four rooms), so of course we looked like idiots showing up late at Il Duomo. (Too bad Niccolo wasn't around for that one; we will never redeem ourselves around him).

When we all finally made it to the introduction, Marcello talked about what to expect of our time here, what is expected from us and ground rules for el Palazzo dei Cerchi. As hard as I tried to stay alert, the fact that I'm still not fully recovered from jetlag and that the building we were in was unheated and bitterly cold, I hate to admit that I drifted a bit during all of this.

Then Marijka, another professor, gave a very frightening speech that I'm pretty sure focused on all the students she's seen come through the program in the past two decades who died here due to drinking too much and 1) falling off a balcony, 2) falling in the Arno River or 3) being punted by a vehicle (which, to be fair, could happen to anyone, these Italians are psychos behind the wheel... or handlebars... or reigns).

By the time she finished I was shivering violently and couldn't feel my extremities, despite my layers and stylish pseudo-Italian scarf (a Christmas gift from the bro). I lost my flatmates in the crush of 130 students racing to escape into the comparative warmth of January afternoon sunshine, but ended up with the four guys from our group.

The five of us spent our two hour lunch break getting sandwiches at a tiny cafe and wandering down the banks of the truly breathtaking Arno River.

While down there, we saw some interesting sites, including a band of gypsies, a storefront of massive dead fish, postcards celebrating "the genitals of Firenze (on the statues at Museo Uffizi)," and this LIVING human statue.

Yes, this is a REAL person. Not moving. At all.

We finally made our way back to Cerchi to fill out stay permits and other paperwork before a snack reception hosted by the professors.

After that, it was another roommate night. We meandered around Firenze after leaving Cerchi in search of our first bottle of wine in Italy.

We got lost in a very wealthy part of the Arno, walking past unbelievably grand hotels right on the riverbank. It took us about an hour to get back to the Duomo and find our way home, but we spent that hour window shopping and not getting hit by cars.

Second Lesson Learned: Erika has the directional sense of a homing pigeon. No matter where we are in Florence and even though we're usually somewhere we've never been, Erika is able to sniff out our location and lead Bethany and me in the right direction. I shudder to think what would happen to us without Erika leading us around like a mother duck. (Although she does tend to walk across the streets and continue going whether we are with her or not.)

After this lovely little adventure, we returned home with our wine and took a minute to settle down before heading out to dinner.

We were going to go to the pizza place down the street where we ate our first night and appreciated the fine view of our sexy Italian waiter.

Turns out Sexy Waiter doesn't work Wednesdays. The shop was closed, so we backtracked to a cafe right on the corner of our street.

I was in love the second we walked in. The heavenly sounds of "Please, Please Me" serenaded us as the host seated us at a little table by the window.

The Beatles kept it up all dinner long, with our waiter and John Lennon himself singing along just to impress us Americans (or so it seemed).

I had absolutely perfect spaghetti alla carbonara while singing along to the Beatles' early albums, pumped out of a laptop courtesy of the John Lennon look-alike cook.

He really did look exactly like John Lennon circa 1969, complete with owl eye specs. We spent our whole evening trying to sneak a photo of him without his noticing. We failed, but when we got up to pay our bill, John met us at the register.

He was a complete sweetheart, asking us if we were students and teaching us how to say "a piece of cake," una feta di torta after we ordered a coconut and chocolate slice of cake.

It turns out John's real name is Alessandro and he's our new best friend. For real. We love him. We'll be getting a picture with him as soon as we work up the nerve to ask in Italian. La Casa de Aprile (Bethany's new name for us) will definitely be making many trips to Alessandro's Beatle-inspired ristorante this semester.

And now, a little wine to warm up since the sun has gone down, the heat has turned off and the afghans have come out.

Buona notte!

An Observation On Italian Fashion

Everyone in this country walked out of a fashion magazine. They don't only look that way, they actually just walked off a photo shoot. I feel like a hobo next to them and I brought my nicest clothes.

Also, some of the clothing stores have black tie parties after sundown. With hors d'oeuvres and live music and really attractive bouncers. We need to figure out how to get invited to these.

Learning the Ropes

First full day over. I feel accomplished.

We started this morning with a roommate coffee date at a tiny little coffee shop across from Il Duomo. 

First Lesson Learned: If you order coffee in Italy, you are expected to drink it standing up by the register and not linger. There is a ridiculous tax for sitting in the cafe. Like, a 15 Euros per cup tax.

Erika, Bethany and I did not know this. So of course, when we paid 2.50 for our cappuccinos and sat down at a table, the cashier seemed pissed. We figured it was just because we're Americans and we ordered really clumsily. Wrong. It was because of that stupid tax, as we were later informed by Stan, the Dean of our college. 

Luckily, we escaped without having to pay the extra fee, but it was a good thing to learn for future reference.

After coffee, we met the rest of our cohorts on the steps of Il Duomo for free lunch and an apartment tour courtesy of Stan and his wife Deborah (who's in charge of the whole trip). We visited the 700 year old Palazzo dei Cerchi (Kent State's Florence campus) and looked at some of our classrooms before lunch at Osteria del Gatto e la Volpe, where I had the best chicken parmesan I've ever eaten in my life (so far), followed by a shot of espresso.

To walk off our fancy lunch, we visited the three other girls' apartments (all larger and nicer than ours, but ours is cozy and we're the only ones who have private bedrooms). We wandered around more of Florence and just appreciated the shops, courtyards, pigeons (fearless pigeons, might I add; one swooped down and cuffed me with its wing), fashion, Arno River, and just the feel of the city in general. We exchanged money at a tiny little closet of a bank and got gelato courtesy of Deb and Stan (caramel and leche; it ruined ice cream for me, I swear it is that good).

We ended the tour with a stop at Glenn and Kevin's down the street from us (we visited them yesterday) and a quick group tour of our humble little casa.

The rest of the evening was spent on roommate time: grocery shopping at the 99 cent store, buying a hair dryer, having a guy point at us and say "Americanas," and ordering dessert-to-go to eat back at the apartment (mine was some kind of delicious apple/plum/apricot/walnut tart).

We were also successful in avoiding being killed by any passing vehicles, because no car, bus, taxi, carriage, or vespa driver, nor any bicyclist will bat an eye or slow down a bit when they see you coming. 

Now we're recovering from the day (it was incredible, but just a tad overwhelming), bundled up in blankets back in our newly-stocked apartment, watching the temperature drop in this place. It's currently 19 degrees Celsius. Due to Italy's strict energy laws, apartments can't be heated more than eight hours a day, and we're several hours past shut down. It's going to be another cold night with an early start tomorrow, but at least it's a night in Florence.

Spring 2012 CCI Cohort on Ponte Vecchio!

How To Get Ready For Bed In Florence

Step One: Put on one pair of long pajama pants.

Step Two: Put on one pair of sweatpants over pajama pants.

Step Three: Put on one sweatshirt.

Step Four: Put on one hoodie.

Step Five: Put on one normal pair of socks.

Step Six: Put on one pair of slipper socks.

Step Seven: Make bed with one sheet, three quilts, one airplane blanket, and all the towels you can find.

Step Eight: Tuck in all blankets to make a cocoon of body heat.

Step Nine: Go to sleep!