The first week.

09/06/08

What an amazing two days! No blog yesterday because my roommate Ryan and I went out con trei bella regazzi (with three beautiful ladies). I’m just trying to show off my extremely limited Italian. That’s pretty much all I’ve got. We got home at around 2:15 am. During the day, however, we did more registration and I met a bunch of Southern girls. From Alabama, Atlanta, and South Carolina. Tutti bella! I also have become really good friends with a girl from upstate New York who I just met yesterday. I also met a girl who looks like Liv Tyler (so beautiful: a little in love, but not the best personality, so I’m okay), and a fourth theatre major! Then at night, I had dinner with my host mom’s son, wife and grandson, Lorenzo. Lorenzo is five. We played cars together and he would shout things in Italian while I would reply, “si.” I had a good laugh when he said many Italian words, crashed his car and then yelled something about “morto!” (death). Giovanna’s son and daughter in law both speak really good English and we chatted about many things. They were quite wonderful and it sounds like we have them over to dinner frequently. I almost vomito’d again, but I didn’t come as close as the night before. We had pasta with pesto, and then turkey sautéed with peppers and molto sale (salt!!) (she made Ryan and I each have three servings), followed by salad and desert (some sort of delicious grape cake that she, of course, made from scratch). We then sat around and talked and then when the guests left, we headed out for the Duomo (giant church at the center of the city. Many stories will revolve around the Duomo.) at around 11. We missed the first bus and they only come every half hour in the evenings. We drank some wine on the steps of an ancient church we didn’t know the name of and had a great time. There were five of us. We drank two bottles of wine and two large beers. We were set. We had some drama finding taxis – calling them at 1:30 am, trying to order two in Italian and then not having them show up until 2 am. We got to watch some really drunk Americans make fools of themselves though. The buses only run until 1 am (12:45 where we were) and we wanted to stay out some more. We split cab fare and made our way home. It was quite a night. We spent some money, but it was good, safe fun.

Today was also wonderful! We got to sleep in until 9:30 and then we breakfasted and headed to the Duomo with Giovanna. She took us to the interesting and beautiful places. The best Gelataria near the Duomo, a neat market with all sorts of gross meat (nervi? I’m pretty sure it was chicken arteries! I have pictures.) and expensive cheeses, but they had the cheapest lunches we could find (3 Euro panini!) at a wonderful establishment called Pork’s.

Tangent:

My English is already deteriorating, I can see. I speak in broken pieces of sentences because I try to speak as much italiano as possible. When talking to Giovanna, I don’t always use sentences, because she doesn’t understand them all the time. It’s getting bad, but I guess we can also burn that bridge when we come to it.

She left us at the duomo to wander around so we called some friends, met them, showed them the marketplace and wandered the duomo a little bit too. The sun was burning hotter (seriously, it was not an okay temperature today. Someone told me Florence weather is just like Portland weather. This is a lie. Portland does not get this muggy.) and we decided we needed Gelatto and a park, so we went on an adventure through the town. My highlight of the day was during this adventure when we decided we needed to use the bathroom and didn’t want to pay 50 euro cents to use the gross-looking market bathroom. We realized we have these museum passes that get us into a handful of museums in Florence for free. The four of us (me, and three girls from all-girls colleges) decided to go look for one so we could use the bathroom on the way to the park. When were just about a block away from the museum, we stumbled upon Galleria dell’Academia, which was also on our museum pass and just so happened to also hold probably the most famous sculpture in the entire world. Michaelangelo’s David. This was a complete accident and since we were there to see the bathroom, we decided to stop and say hi to David and some more art in the building. This is going to be our new thing: use bathrooms in big museums we have on our passes. After all, they are very nice bathrooms, the buildings are air conditioned, and who doesn’t love a little art to spice up their lives?

We then found Gelato, and chilled in the park, while watching Italian children and dogs playing together. It was fun. We got home at 7:00 pm in time for some relaxation before dinner. Giovanna made fried zucchini, eggplant, onions, sardines and French fries (not called that here). We ate a lot of fried food. She used a little less than 1 liter of peanut oil. We then had salad and had to finish off the grape cake from last night. Then we had fruit and chocolate. Every day is becoming easier to eat the sheer volume of food she flings at us. It is all soooooooo good. Almost as good as my mother’s cooking. We finished the night off by watching a very exciting soccer game: Italia vs. Cyprus. Italy scored an amazing goal with two minutes left that put Cyprus away. Giovanna didn’t watch, but she read the newspaper and sat in the room with us. Things are becoming a lot more comfortable with her. She is probably the cutest little old woman in the history of the world.

New addition to Adam’s blog:

Fun Italian word of the day: Zamzara

Def: mosquito

Fun fact about zamzari: they’re everywhere in Florence and they love Adam’s blood.

Thought of the day:

When complaining about all the students in the program being mindless, blonde idiots, my new friend Joci reminded me that we really haven’t been here too long yet (five days?) and I should probably give them a chance. She’s right. My new goal for the trip is to branch out and try to befriend as many people as possible. Give everyone a chance. On every coin there is a silver edge, or something like that.

Peace and love to everybody or anybody who actually reads my blog.

Ciao!

AJC