Fare Un’ Escursione

So far life has been good. I think I have finally adjusted to being here and am no longer getting sick (knock on wood that this continues). The main plus of not being sick, I get to eat delish food! Mi piace molto il cibo Italiano. Here’s what this past week has been like:

Classes: All and all they are going well. The first week of school is never really that demanding, but the syllabi lead me to believe that all the work will not be overwhelming. I’m in Intermediate Italian and I can understand everything that’s going on. The textbook is straightforward and I am not worried much about this class. I also get a lot of practice in listening and speaking by living with my host mom, who doesn’t speak a word of English, which is really the best thing that could have happened for me. Just living in a residential place, watching Italian tv (or American tv shows dubbed over in Italian, “lui si chiama Walker, e’ un Texas Ranger” and many more wonderful shows like Ugly Betty-which keeps the Spanish in Spanish so I feel like I’m at home). A History of Witchcraft is so great!! I love the readings, one of which is inspiring me on what I may want to write my thesis on (popular culture/mentality in medieval Italy, in regards to religious conflict between the Catholic church and older-pagan/fairytales/folklore/superstitions; but I’m still working on it). The proff is crazy knowledgeable, and really keeps the lectures interesting-they would be better if certain people would shut up and stop trying to be such show-offs. I’m going to try and ignore those two girls, seeing as how I only have to deal with them for a few months, plus deep down I know I am smarter than them. The end of that subject. Art History: Antiquity-Michelangelo is great. We spend one class in the classroom and the other class out in the city. This past week we walked around the centro and had site-visits to the oldest parts of the city. I love it! Classical Mythology is interesting. I decided I was in dire need to learn the true mythology seeing as how I’ve been basing my knowledge off of Disney’s Hercules and other animated shorts (highly amusing but I do need to know what really happened). Main point: I like my classes, not all the people in them, but the material is still fascinating.

Fieldtrips: one of the best things to do here is to go on the all school/class fieldtrips. On Friday I went to Assisi and had a blast! We obviously went into the church, and had a guided tour about St. Francis and the frescos on the wall. It was very interesting, but sometimes hard to hear because you could not speak above a whisper and our earpieces were not working that well. I sort of told myself the story of the frescos as we went along. Then we did a walking tour of the village of Assisi and oh boy was that tiring. Something most people do not know about Assisi, it’s on top of a hill/mountain, and many of the roads are at a steep incline, which means walking tour of the city was very tiring. It’s a beautiful place, making the trek worthwhile. I’d like to live in a little medieval town just like it. Also, it has the best gelato I’ve ever eaten. It was this vanilla frozen yogurt with berries mixed in! Yum! I know I will miss it when I leave and feel that I should look into getting it shipped to me in the states of opening up my own gelateria if the grad school thing doesn’t work out ☺ We then climbed to the top of the Rocca, which had a spectacular view!
Then on Sunday I went to Populonia, which is this archeological site in the middle of nowhere. We trekked around the site and then crawled into some of the old Etruscan tombs. Yes, I said crawled. Populonia is great because it is one of the best sites to see Etruscan life. After we saw the crazy cool graves, we hiked/climbed up the hill/mountain to see the quarry. It was very tiring but worth it. We got to see some more tombs that were just beginning to be excavated in the forest and the view from the top was very impressive. It was a bit too cloudy so I was unable to see the island of Elba across the sea. But the trek made me feel like Indiana Jones discovering lost worlds, minus the giant bolder chasing after me and no Nazis.

I’ve been making more travel plans and on the days when I have stayed in Florence I have been exploring the city. I’ve gotten better at navigating the bus system and getting around in general. The city is beautiful yet dirty, and the people are accommodating and interesting yet rude. In general, Florence is a one duality. Today after classes, I’m going to find soccer tickets to a game next week. I think that’s about it for now. Alla prossima.