Buonasera amici!
As of yesterday at 9:30 morning, I have officially begun my stay in Florence. This semester, I'll spend three weeks in Florence, have a short break, then spend a month in Tuscania, a month in Rome, and my remaining weeks in Venice. I'll study Italian language, history, classics, and even one course on the food of Italy. I've never been to Italy before - or Europe, for that matter - so this is the blog of a newbie, or as I like to refer to it, a Work in Progress (WIP for short). Feel free to live vicariously through this adventure, but be warned: the last thing I plan to do this semester is get comfortable.
"I’d like to have something happen to give me a jolt, something that would rattle my teeth and shake my hairpins out." — Edna St. Vincent Millay
My journey began in Cleveland. I flew to Toronto, ran (and just made it) onto a flight to Frankfurt, Germany, and then flew over the Alps to Florence. I wish that any of my pictures did the view over Germany and the view of the Alps justice. Landing in Florence was like landing in another world - a secret hidden at the foot of isolated mountains, a piece of history that time somehow excused.
I took a cab to my school's housing office, where they quickly handed me a key and pointed me toward my apartment. After spending about half an hour learning that most doors in Italy push inward instead of pulling outward, I got in. The apartment is absolutely perfect. My favorite part about it is that Italians are very conscious of their energy usage and their environmental impact. Heat may only be turned on 12 hours a day and only in certain months; electricity is used sparingly as well; recycling bins are in the piazza and collected every day. Many things are different, but I'm still wildly intrigued by the differences. The only thing I miss at the moment is people, and I'm lucky enough to have some pretty solid wifi which allows me to Skype when I need to.
I live with three other American students, none of whom have been here before either and none of whom speak Italian. We've already been in a few classic American adventures, including stumbling into a restaurant, ordering in quite broken Italian, trying out a cafe, and wandering aimlessly in the streets looking for the market. LdM (our school) is quite insistent that we learn by experience, which is probably the most exciting way to learn.
I've had one Italian language course so far, which was taught totally in Italian. The first things we learn is how to say are "How do you say -" and "What does ___ mean?" so that we can communicate with the professor. When I left the class, I couldn't believe how much I'd understood, even though the instructors said maybe one or two English sentences the entire time! Learning the language is what excites me the most at the moment. It's so beautiful, and the cadence of it seems to ring through the streets here every hour of every day - I want to be a part of that song.
Check out my photos so far at http://instagram.com/sydneymaltese/, and hopefully I'll be able to post a few photos on here soon.
Till then, arrivederci.
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