The rest of this week has been crazy, to say the least. It’s honestly impossible for me to try and separate moments into days because all of my days run together as one huge jumble of memories and emotions.
I will attempt to piece together this puzzle as I go along. Last time I wrote, I had just moved into this cold, cold apartment. I feel much more settled now and can happily say I have had some good nights of sleep! Jet lag still haunts me and has me going to sleep at 4am and waking up at 1pm, but at least I am sleeping for hours at a time!
I’ve been comparing the time I’ve had here so far to the first week of freshman year of college. It’s a week some people love, some people hate, and some people just want to end. I’m the latter.
Don’t get me wrong, I am LOVING it here! I am just very used to being constantly surrounded by my best friends and family, all people I never have to try around. They know me inside and out, and there’s something very comforting in that. In Italy, nobody knows who anybody is (besides the group of frat boys that all came together and all live together…) and I often feel like I’m seeing some show where everyone is acting, not just being themselves. I’m part of that show as well, and it gets so tiring trying so hard!
Back to what I’ve been up to! I’ve gone on a guided tour around the center of Florence, which was extremely helpful. Our guide was way too knowledgeable but I now know the history of many of that statues I walk by daily, I know what most of the buildings are called, I can maneuver the crazy streets a little better, and I am starting to feel more like I actually LIVE here. I’m not just a tourist visiting for a week of vacation.
I finally have to talk about school. It is so easy to forget that we are here to actually learn. We had the whole weekend to do as we please and it was incredibly much too easy to pretend this is what the next four months would be like. Before the weekend, we had a pretty busy schedule filled with orientations and group meetings. They got me SO EXCITED! We met our director, Michelangelo (think of a hot Italian man in his 30’s and you get him) and all of the professors and just everyone in charge. They are all soooo incredibly kind and nice and also have this Italian attitude that is hard to resist. They offer insane amounts of support to us students and really want us to have the time of our lives. It feels so wonderful to have this!
Side note: I feel like I might actually LOSE weight in Italy. Never thought you’d hear me say that, huh?? The beauty of the situation is that I kind of forget to eat until I am hungry and then when I do eat its small portions and just food made good for your body. The people in Italy care so much more about their bodies and appearance than those in the U.S.. They are definitely ahead in that area. Back to losing weight, I also walk miles and miles every day! Put those all together and you get weight loss! This is just the diet I was looking for J
In our orientations we learned a ton of surprising and wonderful perks to this program. We will be going on two trips all together (Free! Sort of) (one of them is this coming Friday to Pisa and Lucca), we will be taking a cooking class taught by a well known chef, we will have monthly movie nights, we have a welcome catered dinner tonight, we get a pass with our name on it that lets us into every museum in Florence for FREE and we also get to cut in front of the line, we are offered tons of volunteer opportunities (I am going to volunteer in a school!) and can do an exchange of language program with a native, we get to go to an Opera for free and dress up, and at the end of the program we have a huge dinner that is catered at a villa in the hills of Tuscany, overlooking Florence. I almost can’t breathe thinking of all that is to come! EEEK!
Sheesh, I waited too long to write in this blog. Quick sum up of the weekend: finished an orientation, went out with my housemates and some of the friends they had made (really not my scene unfortunately. I felt like we screamed AMERICAN and I just am trying to integrate myself into this culture more than they are) for dinner but then I came back to the apartment alone and slept instead. The next day was MUCH better and after our walking tour we I shimmied away with another group of people who have very similar thoughts as me. We all want to stay in Italy most of the time and immerse ourselves completely, we don’t want to go crazy, we want to mingle with actual Italians, we want to absorb this wonderful place and not leave every chance we get, and we just want to make close relationships. This is PERFECT. Anyways, we all hung out and went to dinner (the free wine place AGAIN), then we met up with some fashion photographers at a pub! My friend Cristina followed one of their blogs and since there was a huge men’s fashion show this past week in Florence, she jumped on the chance to meet them! It was very cool to talk with them and it was a wonderful night. I ended up sleeping at Cristina’s place (I’m 30 mins away and its not safe to walk alone at night here) and then woke up at 1pm again! Sunday was a day for relaxing and regrouping. I went to bed at a decent hour and woke up ready for class!
Another quick sum up of classes: I’m loving them. I had my Italian class earlier this morning and was entirely surprised to never hear one word of English come from my professors mouth. I am in Italian level 1, so I’m just slightly worried. I was impressed, though, that I could make out almost everything she was saying and within the 3 hour class I learned a TON. She is so sweet and our class of 20 people is going to become fluent by the end. Oh, by the way, in one semester we are covering 3 quarters of Italian!!! It scares me to think of that. But we are in Italy, after all, so I am most excited to be speaking Italian in no time! My other class is called Renaissance Florence. We pretty much just went over the syllabus today but our professor is AMAZING. She used to teach at Berkeley and she just has such a passion for Florence. We will be having classes out in the city very often and I, not being a history person at all, am actually looking forward to this class. There are only about 10 people total in the class, so I really, really have to learn my stuff!
Time to get ready for our welcome dinner!
Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment