Roamin' Around Italy

          Hi everybody!  I know I promised a blog entry right after I got back from Rome on Sunday, but I had finals on Tuesday and Wednesday and was out of town today, so sorry for the delay!  Anyways, I went to Rome this past weekend and saw all the main tourist attractions, Vatican City, and the POPE!  The weekend was beautiful, but EXHAUSTING.  After not getting much sleep the night before (or the whole week before, to be honest), we took the 7:45 a.m. train from Siena to Rome on Saturday morning, and arrived in Rome at around 10.  We hadn't had breakfast and were hungry by the time we got there, and Maria and I finally got the McDonald's we had been craving for weeks :)  We don't even love it all that much in the states, but when you're in another country and have had literally the same meal every day for two weeks, you can't help but crave food from home.

          Our first touristy stop was the Trevi Fountain, and when we turned the corner and saw it to the right of us, it looked a lot different than I had expected it to look!  The actual fountain looked the same, but I had this vision in my head that in front of the fountain there was going to be a big huge piazza or open area filled with camera-toting tourists with plenty of room to move around as you please.  Well, there were plenty of camera-toting tourists, but not a whole lot of space to move.  There were rails, stairs, a road, and then buildings pratically right up against us.  I had read somewhere just before we came to Rome that the fountain was named "Trevi" because it is located at the junction of three roads (tre vie), but I was still surprised to see such a small square in front of it.  However, the actual fountain was absolutely stunning, and I made like a typical tourist and had my obligatory make-a-wish-while-tossing-a-coin-over-your-shoulder Kodak moment :)

          After that we happened upon the Spanish Steps (so named because they are in the same piazza as the Spanish Embassy - even though they're not even the steps to the embassy), walked up the steps, and went inside the Trinità dei Monti church at the top.  Shortly after, we made our way to the Pantheon (whose name at first I confused with the Parthenon in Athens).  It is now a Catholic church, but was once a temple to the ancient gods of Rome.  It was really cool, the ceiling was open and they had teeny-tiny drains on the ground of the building for to drain the water when it rained.  The Pantheon also contained the tombs first two kings of Italy.  Our next stop was a mini mall type of place with all kinds of shops inside, and it was here that Maria, Alvaro, Tony and I ran into our friend Haley from back home at GCSU!  She is actually going to be joining us for the Milan program next month and is already here in Italy doing a mission trip.  But we had no idea that we were all going to be in Rome at the same time until we were a few feet away from each other!  It's crazy how small this country actually is, I feel like I have so many friends and friends-of-friends that are studying and/or visiting Italy this summer, and I've already ran into several of them!

          In the early evening on Saturday we headed towards the Colosseum where Tony bought tickets for us to go inside for the next day, since they let in the last group of people at 6:15 p.m.  While Tony was doing that, Maria, Alvaro and I poked around the different souvenir stands outside the Colosseum, took a few pictures of the amazing Roman ruins that were all around us, and Maria and I got really excited when we saw a bride and groom being photographed with the Colosseum in the background!  We ended up seeing another bride and groom later that day, too.  Hey, it's Saturday in Italy :)

          We went back to the hotel and rested for a bit before going out to eat and checking out Rome by night down by the Tiber River.  It was really beautiful :)  We didn't get much sleep again that night, against our better judgment since we knew we had to wake up early the next day to go visit the VATICAN!  If you're Catholic, I seriously recommend saving up and making a pilgrimage to this place - how can you not?  And even if you're not, I'm sure you will still love it. That's what so great about the city - it doesn't just attract Catholics, but people of every religion.  People all over the world are fascinated by the Vatican, the museums, and the pope; and the fact that Vatican City is actually it's own country all by itself is pretty awesome, too :)

          We stood in line to enter Saint Peter's Basilica (the line for the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel was at least two miles long, no exaggeration) which moved fairly quickly, and once we got inside we saw Michelangelo's Pieta and the tomb of Pope John Paul II, which was right next to it.  Simply. Amazing.   I got to go to confession at the basilica too, and I got a bunch of gifts at the gift shop for my family and friends back home :)  While I was at the gift shop, I overheard one of the cashiers telling a French woman that the pope would be speaking from his window at 12:00 p.m., which was only about twenty minutes away!  He doesn't speak publicly every Sunday, but June 26 (the day we were there) is the patronal feast of Saints Peter and Paul.  I found Maria, Alvaro and Tony and told them about the pope speaking soon, so we went outside and joined the crowd that was forming in Saint Peter's Square.  Very shortly after we found a spot, we heard the voice of Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in Italian, followed by French, English, German, Spanish, and Polish!  Maria, Alvaro and Tony all know Spanish, I know French, and of course we all speak Italian and English, and we all agreed that out of all the languages the pope was speaking, he was easiest to understand in Italian, followed by French/Spanish, and then English!

          After our fantastic visit to the Vatican, we encountered more Roman ruins and took some more pictures.  Once we were back on the city roads we started looking for a place to eat lunch.  The restaurants and waiters in Rome are ruthless when it comes to trying to get you to dine with them, they will stand outside their doors shoving menus into your hands, shouting the specials at you, and then some will even go as far as to follow you as you try to walk away, even across the street.  Nonetheless, we ended up giving in and eating at one of these places.  How do you pass up a glass of wine, bread, caprese salad and lasagna for 10 euros?  After lunch it was finally time to go inside the Colosseum!  We explored some of the ruins and when we made our way into the center of the landmark and encircled it, around every corner and bend we would say, "Ooh! This would be a good picture!" so now we all have pictures of ourselves and each other from just about every possible angle of the Colosseum.  We toured some gardens and finally hopped on our bus for the 3-hour drive back to Siena at around 8 p.m., where we all slept the entire time.  "Bella, ma stancante!" is how we decided to describe Rome - beautiful, but exhausting!

          Back in Siena, we had our written final exam on Tuesday, and our oral final on Wednesday.  I did well and ended up with an A in the class :)  We went out with our friends from around the world to celebrate Wednesday night.  I'm actually kind of sad to leave Siena, especially since I just made a lot of these friends within the last month, some of them even in the last week, and now we are all departing from one another :(  Walking through the streets and passing my favorite gelateria, my favorite pizzeria, and my favorite marketplace in Siena, I realized I am going to miss this little town more than I thought I would!

          However, one thing I am probably not going to miss is the constant noise coming from outside our window at all times of the day and night (we live in the city center and our street is also a bar crawl), especially at this time of year.  The Palio is taking place on Saturday, July 2 and this town is so hyped up about it it's ridiculous.  What the Palio is is a horse race, one that lasts for 90 seconds, that the whole town goes crazy about for weeks beforehand.  Maria and I awoke to the loudest possible group of drummers outside of our building one Sunday morning, and the whole lot of them went on for about ten minutes.  Loud.  Right outside our window.  On a Sunday morning.  I'm actually pretty glad I booked my flight to Sicily for the day before the Palio.  I had no idea about the Palio before I made my reservations, but I would much rather be relaxing on the Sicilian coast with my cousins than watch a horse race that I probably wouldn't even get to watch, what with all the locals and tourists that will be here for it :)

          Today (Thursday) Tony took us to visit the Umbrian towns of Assisi and Perugia.  That's right, Assisi as in Saint Francis and Saint Clare, and Perugia as in where Amanda Knox was in school.  Assisi was one of my favorite places in Italy that I've seen thus far.  When we arrived in the town there was a sign that said "Welcome to Assisi - City of Peace" and the town definitely lived up to that introduction.  Of course it's pretty touristy, but definitely not touristy like Rome, Milan and the like, because it's not industrial at all, the only industry in Assisi is tourism.  It's a quiet, beautiful town, and the only shops are souvenir shops, restaurants, tiny boutiques, etc :) We got to see a lot of churches, beautiful views, and the tombs of Saint Francis and Saint Clare of Assisi.  I decided that if my mom were here in Italy with me Assisi would probably be her favorite town, and I intend to take her here one day :)  After Assisi we visited Perugia, which reminded me a lot of Siena in that it had a lot of the big-name clothing stores and chains in the city center.

          Tomorrow we are going to visit the Tuscan towns of San Gimignano, Lucca and Pisa, and then Maria, Alvaro and Tony will come back to Siena after dropping me off at the airport to catch my flight to Palermo, where my third-cousin Guido (yes that's his name, isn't it awesome?), whom I have never met and whom I didn't even know existed at this time last year, will meet me at the airport and take me to his hometown of Castellammare del Golfo, which is the same town where my great-grandfather Luca Fontana lived and grew up before he came to America in 1919 at the age of seventeen.  This is going to be one of the most exciting times of my life, and I know I'm going to want to record as much as I can, both in words and in pictures, so I will be sure to post blog entries and snapshots whenever possible!

Off to go finish packing and get some sleep before the day's adventures start!  Ciao!

Chloe :)

Bella Siena

            I guess it’s about time for another blog entry, huh?  I know it may seem like I’ve been keeping you guys in the dark about what I’ve been up to ever since my Florence post, which was almost two weeks ago, but I’ve just been sooo busy with school, studying, socializing, and sightseeing in the city of Siena – oh, and sleeping, but not even a whole lot of that! – that I haven’t had a free waking moment to type up anything other than written compositions for my Italian classes.  But since it is Friday and the weekend is here, I will spend my early evening catching you guys up on la mia vita italiana!
         
            As you might have guessed, my classes have been taking up the bulk of my time here in Siena.  Don’t think for a second that I’m complaining about that, though, because I love the classes here and every other Italian and foreign language class I’ve taken.  Also, as far as my career choice and plans for a master’s degree go, I know that these are the classes that are going to benefit me the most in those aspects, and for the rest of my life.  (By the way, those plans are to be a high school Italian and French teacher with a master’s degree in Italian.  My university in Georgia doesn’t even actually offer a bachelor’s degree in Italian, but I am on track to get a bachelor’s degree in French, and with a total of four college Italian classes taken in the United States and four taken abroad in Italy, I will have enough credits to eventually be certified to teach both languages, and enroll in a master’s degree program in either or both.)  Anyways, I placed into the fourth level out of six at the Università per Stranieri di Siena, and the subjects we have been focusing on the most are the subjunctive tense (il congiuntivo) and the past, present, and imperfect forms of that tense, and also transferring texts from direct to indirect discourse.


            If you’re not a language buff and thinking about all of that is making your brain hurt, you’d probably prefer to hear about my classes on a more fun scale, such as the people around the world with whom I am in class.  I have classmates here from all over North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa, and it is so crazy to think that I am using Italian to talk to people from places like Germany, Japan and Syria.  I just think it’s so cool that people who speak such different languages (English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic) can come together in one room and still speak the same language with one another.  If we didn’t have our knowledge of Italian in common, we quite literally would not be able to communicate with one another or form some of the friendships we have made.

             Like me, some of my classmates are also on track to teach Italian in their home country.  There is one girl from Germany who wants to teach Italian at the high school level, and another from Scotland who will actually be teaching English in Puglia, Italy (the heel of the boot) for ten months starting in the fall.  Also, within the past three weeks we have had students come and go in our class who are actually teachers of Italian in their home countries, most of them from Lebanon, and who are either working towards their master’s degrees or just coming to get extra practice with the language and teaching strategies.  One of them was actually not a teacher but a translator, and the fact that I was in the same class with people who are already teaching and translating Italian as careers just blew my mind!

             Now on to some of the recent adventures I’ve had and the places and sights I have seen.  Last Saturday, after finally getting to sleep in for the first time in weeks, Maria and I decided to be tourists in our own city and poke around and explore Siena.  We finally got to see Siena’s Duomo and took streets we had never before taken.  All throughout last week, after living solely on pizza, pasta and gelato for most of our time in Italy, Maria and I were craving some good old American cuisine and decided that that weekend we would take the bus outside of the Siena city center and go to the McDonald’s we went to with Tony and Alvaro when we first got to Siena a couple of weeks before.  We hopped on one of the buses we thought was going where we need to go, and got off where we saw a sign for McDonald’s, but after searching in two or three different directions from the sign, we still weren’t seeing it anywhere.  We walked around for about an hour or so looking for it, or any place to eat at that point, since we were starving.  We eventually ended up taking the bus back to the main train station, where we knew there was a mall and a food court, and grabbed some hamburgers and French fries.  So everything ended up working out, and we got back to the city center perfectly fine, but we were laughing about the fact that our professor Tony told us that Siena was impossible to get lost in, and we were positive that we were going to prove him wrong at some point, and we did!  Haha :)

            Since Tony got back to Siena from Spain at the beginning of the week, every day since Monday we have been meeting up with him after our classes get out and visiting a different landmark, church or museum in Siena.  On Tuesday we visited the Basilica di San Domenico, which contains several relics of Saint Catherine of Siena, who lived from 1347-1380 and is the patroness saint of Rome, Italy and Europe.  The relics in the Basilica are Saint Catherine’s actual head and finger, so they were pretty darn amazing to see!  Today Tony took us to Siena’s Duomo, where there was also a relic of another well-known saint – the right arm and hand of Saint John the Baptist!  The relics of the saints are probably the coolest things I’ve seen in Italy thus far :)

            Since Siena is a pretty touristy destination (what place in Tuscany isn’t?), there are signs everywhere (especially at the museums and churches) that are written in five languages – Italian, English, French, German and Spanish.  I love seeing so many languages, and I always try to decipher the signs in Italian or French before reading the English translation.  Italy is absolutely amazing, and I still have two months left in this country and so much to see and do!  This weekend (actually, seven hours from now) I am leaving Siena to go to Rome with Maria, Alvaro and Tony!  So there will most definitely be another blog entry either Sunday night or Monday afternoon (or Sunday afternoon/Monday morning U.S. time).  This Tuesday in class I have my written final, Wednesday I have my oral final which I am doing with my Canadian friend Kylin, and after that I will be finished with my classes in Siena!

          Next Thursday we will be visiting Montepulciano and maybe Perugia and Assisi as well, and on Friday we will see the towns of Lucca and Pisa.  And finally, one week from today, I will finally be in Sicily with my cousins and extended family who live there, some of whom I didn’t even know existed at this time last year!  Everything is happening so fast and I can’t believe that Sicily is almost here!  I am certain that my week-long vacation in Sicily is going to be my favorite part of my trip, just because how many people get to meet their distant relatives in another country?  How many people even know their distant relatives in other countries?  I really am so blessed :)  I’m also looking forward to speaking only in Italian and only to native speakers while I am in Sicily.  I’m speaking Italian a lot in Siena, but of course there are English-speaking students in my class with whom I often use my native language, so I can’t wait to be thrust into a situation where I will have to speak Italian with everybody I encounter!  It’s going to be so cool :)

Vado a Roma!  Ciao!

Chloe

When in Florence...

            As you may have read on Facebook, I went to Florence this past weekend and had the time of my life!  It was my favorite part of my stay in Italy thus far, one of the best weekends of my life, and I can now officially say that Florence is my new favorite city in the world.  There is just so much to see and do there, a lot more than in the city center of Siena where I live, and it’s just so pretty and historical.  In short, the highlights of my weekend in Florence were getting to spend it with my friend Courtney from back home, who is studying in Florence this summer; getting a spectacular bird’s-eye view of the entire city from the Piazzale Michelangelo; getting to visit the Basilica di Santa Croce and view the tombs of Michelangelo, Dante, Galileo, Machiavelli and Marconi, just to name a few; and finally, seeing my two favorite guidos, Pauly D and Vinny of Jersey Shore, in the flesh just a few feet away from me!

            After a couple of very late nights, Maria and I met up with Alvaro, Matteo and Toni at the Siena bus stop to catch our 11:40 bus to Florence on Saturday morning.  We finally arrived at around 1:00 in the afternoon, and we were able to see the Duomo, one of the most famous cathedrals in the world, from where the bus dropped us off.  Since we were tourists and the Duomo was the biggest, tallest, and shiniest thing we saw, we migrated straight to it.  When we got to the Piazza del Duomo I called my friend Courtney to see where she was and where she wanted to meet up.  She lived only about a ten-minute walk from the Duomo so she decided to meet me there.  A short while later I saw her walking in my direction, and after we hugged for about a minute, she told me that she had just recently started feeling homesick and was so happy to see a familiar face from home.  She was also saying that she hadn’t done a whole lot of the touristy things yet, like take in a view of the city from the Piazzale Michelangelo or even try Italian gelato, so I think she was happy to have visitors with whom to show and explore the city.

            After finding Courtney and taking a couple of pictures with the Duomo as the backdrop, our next order of business (well, my next order of business) was tracking down Pizzeria O’Vesuvio, where I knew the cast of Jersey Shore, was working for the summer.  I guided everybody to the street it was on using Courtney’s map (of course I knew the name of the street even before coming to Florence), and found it about four blocks away from where we were at the Duomo.  I was hoping once I tracked it down I would be able to get a pizza margherita made especially for me by Vinny Guadagnino himself, but none of the cast members were there when we got there.  Some of the other touristy fans like myself told me that some of them had just left.  One of the other tourists outside the pizzeria, a middle-aged man with a thick New Jersey accent, cracked us all up when he said he was looking for “Spooky” (Snooki) and was disappointed that he wasn’t getting to see her here :) But since I was starving, I did end up splitting a pizza margherita with Matteo, even if Vinny didn’t make it for me.  We asked one of their coworkers about the cast and when they would be in, and she said she didn’t think they were working until Monday.  I spent about ten minutes inside the restaurant, though, so when I see it on TV in August, it will be familiar territory to me!  As will many other locales in the city.  And don’t you worry, I ended up seeing my two favorite Jersey guidos the next day... :)

            After I polished off that delicious O’Vesuvio pizza, the six of us decided to just poke around the city and see all that we could see.  We passed an H&M, and the guys were the ones who asked the rest of us if we could go in.  It was a four-story H&M, so we caved.  After our shopping pit stop we were all in the mood for gelato, and we stumbled upon a place that served not only gelato in cups and cones, but these sandwich-type things with gelato on the inside and two sugar-coated waffles on the outside.  Mmmm…  After our heart attack on a plate, we decided to walk it off and make the trek uphill to the Pizzale Michelangelo.  On our way over to that part of town we passed over the Ponte Vecchio and took some awesome pictures.  We did the same when we got to the top of the Piazzale; the view was absolutely spectacular!  There was also a replica of Michelangelo’s David in the piazzale (the original is also in Florence) as well as many souvenir shops; I got a couple of magnets and an umbrella with pictures of several Italian cities on it, since I had forgotten to bring an umbrella to Italy with me and it’s already rained a couple of times since I’ve been here.  The umbrella actually came in handy on Sunday when it started raining; some locals looked at me like I was the tackiest tourist in the world, but I didn’t mind one bit.  Another lady was carrying the same umbrella as me!

                                                                                                            

            Later that night, we grabbed a late bite to eat at Florence’s Osteria Il Gatto e La Volpe, stayed there for a while, and then went to check out a nightclub called Twice.  Courtney’s host family was nice enough to let me stay the night at their place, so I didn’t have to pay for a hotel or hostel :) After we ate breakfast the next morning, I pulled out my obligatory student travel guide for Italy to see if there was anything else in particular I wanted to see in Florence before I went back to Siena.  I decided I wanted to go see the Basilica di Santa Croce after reading that it contained the tombs of Michelangelo, Dante, Galileo, Machiavelli and Marconi, as well as some awesome artwork in the Museo di Santa Croce that borders it.  Courtney hadn’t been there yet either, and since she was in Florence studying art history, she was keen on going as well.

            My guidebook told me it was one of the more expensive places to visit in town, but it only ended up being five euros total to get into both the basilica and the museum.  This place was absolutely beautiful, and it wasn’t just the tombs that were amazing to see, but all the artwork.  They even had Cimabue’s Crucifix, which was constructed in the year 1280 and was the one piece of artwork in the museum that endured the most damage during the flood that swept through Florence in 1966.  They were able to restore it as much as possible, but all the mud, oil and water ruined it quite a bit.  They didn’t paint over where all the muck wiped the paint away (of course, because then it wouldn’t have been Cimabue’s work), so it literally looks like somebody took a big eraser and just erased half of the paint that was there.  At one point I was actually in the room alone with the crucifix, which was amazing; I just stood there staring at it for about five minutes.  It is 731 years old!  Americans really have no idea what history is compared to Europeans; I learned that very quickly.  Visiting the Santa Croce basilica and museum was like a pilgrimage for Courtney and I; she is studying art history, I am studying Italian language and culture, and we are both Catholic.  It was amazing in so many ways!

            After our visit to Santa Croce, Courtney and I were both starving.  Since I had had pizza for at least one meal a day almost every day that I’ve been in Italy, and since that’s about all I can get in Siena, I was craving something else, anything else.  We decided to go to a Mexican grill called Tijuana that we had walked by the night before, and oh my gosh, what a delicious change of pace that was!  My chicken and cheese quesadillas were sooooo good!  After lunch I wanted to head over to the bus and train stations so I could check the schedules and buy a ticket back to Siena for sometime later that day.  As we were walking I remembered for the first time since I left Pizzeria O’Vesuvio the day before that the Jersey Shore cast was in town at that same moment, and I was actually almost surprised that I hadn’t seen them, or a gaggle of cameramen and fans, anywhere in Florence the past two days.

We had to pass by the Duomo and its surrounding cafés and shops on the way to the bus station, and as we were passing through we noticed a small crowd gathered outside of a restaurant and bar called Astor, which is, as Courtney had told me earlier, one of the places that is frequently visited by the Jersey Shore cast.  We looked closer and noticed that there were a couple of cameras in between the spectators and the patio… clearly, a camera crew and a crowd of people gathered outside Astor could only mean one thing!  I made my way through the group of people (I can’t even really call it a crowd, there were only about 20 of us, max) and I almost died when I saw that it was Vinny and Pauly D!  I was so happy it was them, because if I could have handpicked two Shore cast members (or any two celebrities, for that matter) that I would have wanted to see, I would have picked them!  They’re just so mmmm... :) It was almost hard to believe it was actually them at first, because they were the exact same distance away from me at the restaurant in Florence as they are whenever I watch them on TV :) The only difference was that this time, they were actually looking back at me!

    That's them at the table behind me!

I almost kind of felt bad for them, though (they are my paesani, after all), since they literally can’t go anywhere, even out of the country, without people staring at them and snapping their picture.  I actually caught Pauly’s eye as I was holding my camera and realized he must have felt like a caged animal at the zoo.  But I didn’t feel bad enough to put my camera away completely; after all, they did sign up for it!  Anyways, Pauly is just as handsome in person as he is on TV, and Vinny is even more so!  He has more of a five o’clock shadow now, perhaps to blend in better here in Italia.  While we were standing there ogling like oglers on ogle tablets, several local people and other Italians saw the commotion and stopped by and asked who they were, so I explained it to them.  One lady told one of the security guards that she thought he was cuter than Vinny and Pauly, so she asked to get a picture with him.  What a silly person :P

            And so ends my amazing weekend in Florence.  I really want to go back!  I walked around the city so much this weekend and saw so much that I was certain I walked down every single street at least twice, but I know there is still so much to see!  Next time I come to Italy I will for sure be spending a great deal of time in Firenze.  But in two weekends we are going to Roma, and then the weekend after that I head down to Sicilia!  Oh yeah, and my studies, you know, that thing I actually came here to do… they’re going great!  I am learning new things every day, and each time I walk through the streets of Siena and hear the bits of conversations that go by, I understand more and more :)


          I'll try to put more pictures on here later, it only let me add the one just now.  But I'm putting about a hundred pictures from Florence on Facebook, so check there too!


Chloe

La Dolce Vita

            I guess I’ll start this entry five minutes after the other one left off.  After I posted my last entry on Thursday, I went straight upstairs to our room at the hostel where we stayed for a few nights; Maria had just gone upstairs a couple of minutes before me, and everyone else was already asleep.  When I got to the room I looked around for the fourth set of sheets the owner of the hostel had given us when we checked in, but I couldn’t find them anywhere.  (I found out the next morning that they were on Alvaro’s bed the whole time.  But anyway…) so since I couldn’t find them I decided to put my Italian skills to good use and go downstairs and ask the hostel owner if he had any extra sheets.  I was so excited about talking to an Italian in his native language that it was almost ridiculous J

            I headed downstairs and knocked on his door, which was ajar, and said, “Scusa?”  He came out of another door saying, “Si?”  I said to him, “Ha due lenzuole?  Non posso trovare le mie…”  He said, “Ahh, si,” and went to go get them out of a cupboard.  After he gave them to me I said, “Grazie mille.”  Such a simple conversation, but it was such a long time coming for me to have a conversation in Italian with a real Italian person in Italy, and I was very proud of myself J  And the best thing is, there will be more where that came from!  I am so excited to be here I can’t even describe it.

            Since we had had a long day of traveling, walking, etc. and were up late that same night, Tony let us all sleep in the next morning (Friday).  He actually didn’t wake us up until one o’clock in the afternoon.  So we all got ready and headed out at about 2:00 to visit Rapallo, Portofino, and Santa Margherita, three really beautiful towns along the coast of western Italy.  Out of all three towns, Portofino was probably the most touristy.  And I actually ended up seeing the father of some old friends of mine from middle and high school while I was in Rapallo!  That was the day that Maria, Alvaro and I got our first tastes of Italian pizza and gelato.  Delizioso!  We have had some type of pizza every day since Friday and gelato two times since then as well.  Just about all the restaurants we’ve come across either have “pizzeria” or “gelateria” in their names, and if it’s not in their name, it’s still very likely you’ll find either pizza or gelato inside the doors J

            On Saturday, the four of us got an early start and headed out to visit the Cinque Terre.  If you haven’t seen pictures of the Cinque Terre, go Google it right now, or look at the pictures I will post on Facebook.  They were absolutely SPECTACULAR!  Classic Italian towns with classic Italian houses, restaurants, shops and people.  The names of the Cinque Terre (literally five earths; five towns) are Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore.  We went to all but Corniglia.  We got lunch from a take-out pizzeria in Vernazza, and as we were waiting for our boxes, we turned around to see a small cat sleeping on top of a couple cases of beer.  He was adorable!  He kept his eyes shut even as we pet him.  Cats and dogs seem to be everywhere in Italy, both on and off leashes.

            We got to go for a swim when we were in Manarola, and we had fun jumping off of the rocks into the beautiful water!  When Maria was using a rope to climb up the side of a rock, she said to Alvaro, Tony and I, “Faccio l’alpinismo!” which means “I am mountain climbing!”  She looked so proud of herself, and for some reason, her saying that made us both start dying laughing, and we still laugh when we think about it.  We also met a guy in Manarola who was from New York; he was in Italy camping and couch-surfing.  We went out to eat that night after we got back to Genova, and since Maria and I were both full after eating our primo piatto (“first plate;” many Italian meals consist of an appetizer, first course, second course, and a dessert), we were joking that we both had food babies.  Tony overheard us and gave us a confused look, so we explained to him the expression “food baby” and what it meant.  Since we were in fact in Italy, we decided to Italianize the joke and say that we each had a “bambino di cibo,” which just made us burst out laughing all over again.

            On Sunday night we finally arrived in Siena!  This is where I will be living and taking classes for the next four weeks.  The train station actually borders the university, so when and if I need to take the train I should have no problem finding it J  Monday morning we all woke up early and had breakfast at 7:45, since we had to be at the university to take our placement test at 9:00.  I placed in the post-intermediate one, level B4, which sounds good to me!  While we were waiting on our results we met some of the other foreign students that are going to be in our class – three from Canada, one from Australia and one from Russia.  The Russian girl does not speak English, which is great, because I really want to meet and make friends with people with whom I will be forced to use Italian and not English!

            We spent the rest of Monday exploring Siena, moving into our apartments, and making sure that we know how to get to our classes from the apartments.  Maria and I lucked out and somehow snagged a flat that is just about as close as you can get to the building where our classes will be; we just have to turn two corners and it’s right there!  We will have another roommate too, but we haven’t met her yet.  We also met our landlord, who had inherited the building, and who was celebrating his 25^th birthday that day too.  As we have been getting used to our room we’ve already had to call on him for his help on how to use the washing machine (Maria was using it and it just stopped randomly and wouldn’t go back on, and we weren’t sure if that was normal or not), and what we thought was the latch to flush the toilet ended up spraying water everywhere, and our landlord told us it was actually the bidet.  The flusher was practically up on the ceiling.  What typical Americans in Europe we are J  But in all honesty, every toilet we have seen has been different than the last, and every lock we have tried to open or close turned a different way and a different number of times.  But you live and you learn J

            Tony had to drive back to Milano to catch his flight to Spain later that afternoon, so after he helped Maria, Alvaro and I get our Italian cell phones and SIM cards, that’s just what he did.  Now we are on our own!  But the streets of Siena seem fairly easy to navigate, and language/communication-wise, we really do just need to be thrown into the deep end and left to fend for ourselves.  The three of us have been using Italian to the best of our ability since we’ve been here, but Tony had been helping us do things like buy food, phones and just communicate with people, but if we’re ever going to learn the language fluently, we obviously have to fend for ourselves, which is just what Tony said.  I’m excited and nervous at the same time; I trust my knowledge enough to know I can find the words to express myself, but if someone is speaking a mile a minute, I’m not yet at the point where I can comprehend them a hundred percent.  Sometimes when we have tried to talk to people here, they can tell we speak English so they just start using that, so my goal for my time in Siena is to walk into an establishment (food, clothing, etc.) and speak Italian with fluency so that the other person does not think that they need to use English J

            A couple hours after Tony left, Alvaro came over to Maria’s and my room claiming he was starving, so the three of us went off to get something to eat.  We decided to dine at a restaurant that had reasonable prices while still serving classic Italian dishes.  We walked in and found out that they had a happy hour special, where we could get an all-you-can-eat buffet AND anything to drink (including wine, beer, etc.) for just five euros!  So obviously, we jumped on that.  The three of us felt like we were in a movie, or a dream, or something completely unreal as we sat at a table outside the restaurant, in the streets of Siena, sipping our wine, eating our pasta, and just listening to the sounds of Italy.

            On our way back to our apartment, we stopped to get some essentials like breakfast foods and shampoo, and realized that the ladies who had given us our phones and told us they would call one of us to tell us what our phone numbers were still had not called us to let us know.  And of course, we couldn’t find out what they were by calling each other because we didn’t know each other’s numbers.  I immediately thought of a solution – since I now had an Italian phone number, I could text my cousin Luca, who lives in Milano, and ask him to text me back and tell me what my number was!  So that’s just what I did.  When he texted me to let me know, Maria and Alvaro called that number so that I could tell them what their numbers were.  Genius, huh?

            I continued to talk to Luca when I got back to my apartment, this time on Facebook.  I was telling him about what I had done that day and that I was now just hanging out at my apartment with friends.  Since I wasn’t doing anything of major importance and since he now had my phone number, he told me he was going to call me.  I was excited to finally be able to talk to him on the phone, but a little nervous too!  Again, I know that I can converse with someone in Italian based on what I have learned, but hey, this was like a moment of truth!  But as the conversation went on, it got easier to converse and I realized I shouldn’t have been worrying about it.  We discussed my plans to go to Sicily and Milano and what days I will be arriving and leaving, and he reassured me that he would pick me up at the Bergamo airport when I got to Milano.  At the end of our phone conversation I asked him how my Italian was.  He gave me six and a half out of ten, and told me that by the time I return to the United States, my Italian skills will be greater than ten J  I sure hope so!  And a six and a half out of ten pretty much corresponds with the post-intermediate level of classes I am taking.  That is the main reason I am here after all, to learn the language!

            Maria and I spent the later part of the evening hanging out in our sixth-floor Siena apartment, sipping our wine and listening to the Italian conversations and cars going by down below.  This is the life J  Last night at about midnight, we heard some keys fiddling around in the lock and knew our third roommate must be home.  We had found out from our landlord that she was from Romania, so I wasn’t sure at that point which languages she spoke, or whether or not her Italian was fluent.  Well, talk about getting thrown into the deep end!  She speaks Italian perfectly and not much English.  She walked in the door and called out to us, realizing that there were people there.  She asked us if we spoke Italian and where we were from, and we told her we are students from the United States studying Italian at the Università di Siena.  Her name is Daniela, she is 25 and works at a restaurant.  She showed us around the apartment and then we hung out in her room for a bit, getting to know each other while practicing our Italian and helping her learn a little bit of English.  She is really sweet, and it’s so cool living with someone from another country who I must use another language to talk to!

            Today (Tuesday) was the first day of classes!  It was sprinkling a little bit, but Maria and I made the quick walk to the main university building from our apartment.  Our classes last from 9:00 am until 2:00 pm, with a 15-minute break at 11:25.  My instructors are great at explaining and speaking Italian, and these classes in Siena pretty much pick up from right where I left off with my Italian studies at GCSU.  Maria, Alvaro and I met up with our new Canadian friends that we had met the day before (their names are Kylin, Toni and Matteo) during the break and after classes got out.  We bonded with them and thought it was cool how they were a group of two girls and one guy, just like us.  After we got out of class we decided to go and get something to eat at – where else? – a pizzeria J  Kylin, Toni and Matteo directed us to one they had been telling us about that sold huge slices for two euros each.  After lunch we went to get the book for our class and made our way back to the apartment, which is where I am now.

            I know this update is long, and I would be updating more often but my Internet connection has been going in and out at every place I’ve been.  I’ll try to keep you guys posted as much as I can, though!  Thanks for keeping up with me!

Chloe

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Aerei, Treni, e Automobili!

          Those three words pretty much describe the last 24 hours of my life.  Since this time yesterday I have taken a nine-hour flight from Atlanta to Zurich, Switzerland; lugged my luggage around (I guess that's how luggage got its name?) for a short time before taking the ten-minute train ride from the Zurich airport to the Zurich central train station; stored my luggage in some lockers at the train station and walked around downtown Zurich for a couple hours; grabbed my luggage and got on the three-hour train ride from Zurich to Milan, with a stop in Chiasso (the border town and passport control city between Switzerland and Italy); and then finally, after waiting at the Milano Centrale train station for about an hour, my friends Maria, Alvaro and I and our professor Tony took the car he rented to Genoa, Italy, which is where I am now.

          The plane ride was good, it was the longest plane ride I had even taken in my life but it really didn't seem that long, even though I barely even slept a wink.  Our adventure started out with the plane being delayed about two hours, but that was the only real pitfall of the day.  We were served dinner and breakfast (which were actually pretty good for airplane food), and they played several movies and TV shows during the flight.  I studied my Italian textbook, read a magazine, and tried to get some shut-eye, but even though my eyes were shut I just couldn't get comfortable enough to actually fall asleep.  However, I did manage to get some sleep on the trains and car rides later on in the day.

          And I enjoyed the food built into the price of the ticket while it lasted, because all of the restaurants we encountered later on that day displayed the most extravagant prices I had ever seen.  We even stopped at McDonald’s once thinking it would be cheap eats, and the cost for a meal was 14.50 Swiss francs.  Hint: One Swiss franc is worth more than a euro.  One euro is worth more than one US dollar.  So that would have been around $25 for a Big Mac and fries.  No, thank you.  Europeans love McDonald’s, though; in both Zurich and Milan I saw three McDonald’s within walking distance of each other.

            Anyway, we got to Switzerland at about 9:30 in the morning their time, which was 3:30 in the morning Eastern Standard Time.  It was unseasonably chilly in Zurich because of it being in a mountainous region of the Alps, and I couldn’t find a pair of jeans that I thought I had packed in my suitcase, so Maria let me borrow a pair of hers.  Luckily, everywhere we are planning to go in Italy isn’t going to be as chilly as Switzerland was, so even if I can’t find my jeans I should still be good for the summer wearing what I have.

            So we took the train from the airport to Zurich’s main train station and locked our luggage in some lockers while Tony took us on a little tour of the city.  There was a lot of construction going on, mainly because some areas of the city are still being built up, and June 2 was apparently a national holiday in Switzerland so all the stores and shops were closed.  It was kind of nice, though, because since nobody was working we didn’t have to deal with all the swarms of people on their lunch break wandering around the city with us; it wasn’t very crowded and at some points it was almost like we had the city to ourselves.

            Let me just say that if somebody had told me that the first place outside of the United States I would ever set foot in was Zurich, Switzerland, I probably wouldn’t have believed them.  I always thought that after studying French and Italian I would have gone directly to France, Italy, or Canada, but getting the opportunity to visit Switzerland was really nice!  It was especially cool because there wasn’t just one language you were hearing everybody speak, there were at least five.  German was the most prevalent, of course, and I heard a good number of Italian speakers as well, but only overheard a couple of conversations in French.

What also kind of surprised me, though, was the amount of people in the country that spoke English, even though it is not one of the country’s four official languages (German, French, Italian and Romansch).  And I could tell that most of the people speaking English weren’t from the United States or United Kingdom, either.  While Maria and Alvaro and I were wandering around and going into different restaurants at the train station to try and see if any of them would let us use their restrooms without paying to use it (answer: no), one of the ladies at the counter started speaking to us in German.  It wasn’t anything any of us recognized with our limited knowledge of the German language (“Guten Tag,” and “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” are about all I know how to say), so we just kind of stood there and might have managed to squeak out a “Hi.”  I did get a big smile and a “Guten Tag,” from a cute German-speaking guy who was standing near me at one point, though J  Fifteen seconds after that I felt someone’s finger on my back so I turned around thinking it was Alvaro or Tony, and it was some older guy (maybe early 40s) who gave me a somewhat creepy smile as I turned around.  Yeah.  Not so cute.

What I was probably most surprised about, however, was the amount of people who could tell I was American and started speaking English to me, even if I tried speaking to them in Italian or French first!  I did this with one cashier, who spoke German with every other customer before me, and when it was my turn to pay I said, “Una Coca-Cola, per favore,” with the perfect Italian accent and everything, and she responded to me by saying, “Three-fifty, please.”  How do they know?!?!  Then when we were on the train to Milan, one of the conductors that was walking by was saying, “Ciao,” “Auf Wiedersehen,” and “Adios” to everybody as they were leaving, and when he got to our seats he said “Good-bye!”  He may or may not have heard us speaking English beforehand, but I knew I had to take action or else people would just keep speaking English to me and not Italian or even French, so I said to Maria on the train, “Non voglio parlare inglese più!”  And she said, “Why?” and I said, “Perchè siamo in Italia!” J

Speaking of being on the train with Maria, there was this simply adorable little Italian boy about three years old, who was speaking Italian in his adorable little voice and saying things like, “…adesso!” (now), “è molto blu il lago!” (how blue the lake is!), and to whoever he was playing a game with, “hai vinto ancora!” (you won again!).  It was just the cutest thing in the world!  Literally every time he said something, Maria and I would hold our hands over our hearts in fascination of his cuteness.  We decided when we each have kids of our own we are going to teach them Italian J

            Throughout the train ride from Zurich to Milan, many of the German speakers got off and many more Italian speakers got on, and before long Italian was the only language that was spoken on the train.  I loved that I was finally getting to be immersed in it!  And then, finally, we arrived in Milano, where we picked up our rental car.  My first impression of Milano was that the Milanese people are absolutely crazy drivers.  You know how in America on many roads, there are two lanes on both the northbound and southbound directions?  Well, there were two lanes here too, but no dotted line or anything separating them, so people were swerving all over the place and getting really close to us on the other side, plus one crazy Vespa rider swerving in between the two lanes of traffic.  I heard a couple screeching of tires and a few horns honking in the fifteen or so minutes we spent driving through the city.  But it seems to be a very interesting and pretty city, and I can’t wait to spend more time there in about six weeks!

            Speaking returning to Milano, all I could think about when I was there from the time I got off the train from the time we drove out of the city, was one of my native Sicilian cousins, Luca, who now lives and works in the city and who I am looking forward to meeting and spending much time with once I return to Milano for classes!  I had told him a couple of days ago that I would be passing through Milano on my way from Zurich down to Siena, but I wasn’t sure where or when we would be in Milano or how much time we would be spending there, so of course I wasn’t able to see him during the one hour we ended up spending there.  I did, however, keep my eyes peeled in the best-case scenario that I would somehow get to pass him walking down the street!  How crazy awesome would that have been?!  But I’m still excited because I will get to see him in five and a half weeks, and my family in Sicily in about four weeks!

            So that is just Day 1 of my awesome summer 2011 European adventure!  Thanks for reading if you’re all the way down here, there was just so many cool, interesting, and new things that happened to me today that I couldn’t write about just a few!

Chloe

P.S. Pictures are coming soon to Facebook!