Let me just say that after living in the Tuscany region for the entire month of June, taking classes in Siena and taking weekend trips to nearby Cinque Terre, Florence, Rome, San Gimignano, Assisi, Perugia and Pisa, AND after spending ten glorious days in the heart of the Mediterranean with my cousins and family in Sicily, any place that I would go to after that would surely have some tough competition for my affection. That is the nicest way to explain why I can only describe Milan as a bit of a disappointment (not Lago di Garda though - I'll get to that later). I'm glad I got the opportunity to go to Milan, but the classes there didn't seem to have any sort of structure or lesson plan, and it wasn't until after we had all taken our placement test that the professors realized that everybody had a different competency and background with the Italian language and that there should probably be more than just two levels.
Maria and I also had an unfortuantely unpleasant encounter with one of the employees in the university residence who, when we had accidentally left one morning with our key still in our room (ONE time), was downright rude and lectured and yelled at us like we were children. I had never experienced service like that before, since every other RA or landlord I have ever come across has always been willing to let me into my room when I needed them to, since that is, in fact, their JOB. For the record, this guy wasn't actually Italian, so don't think I'm talking bad about gli italiani! :)
Like I mentioned in my last post, I spent my first two days in Milan with my cousin Luca who lives there. He picked me up from the airport when I arrived there from Sicily and took me to two of the city's biggest sights, the Duomo and the Galleria. I didn't get to see a whole lot of him for the remainder of the time I was there, since he was working a LOT, but he and his girlfriend Azzurra took me to see the movie Captain America one night, which was great because it was entirely in Italian and I understood just about all of it! :)
My favorite day/night during my time in Milan was definitely when two of my friends from America, Taylor and Steffi, came to visit. The two of them spent a couple of weeks traveling around Italy this summer, and happened to stop in Milan during my stay there. I met up with them on my first Friday in Milan (July 15) after I got out of class. We took some pictures in front of the Duomo and then headed over to Castello Sforzesco, another touristy location. It was nice going to these places with tourists, since I had pretty much turned into a Milan resident myself and hadn't gotten the time to do much else other than go about my daily business like the rest of the Milanese people. When I went to Florence with some friends for the weekend and spent time with my friend Courtney who was studying there, she mentioned how she was glad to have friends come to the city so she could have an excuse - and find time! - to visit all of the touristy places that she hadn't yet gotten to see. This was exactly how I felt when Steffi and Taylor came to Milan!
We spent the day poking around the city and once it got dark, headed out to experience Milan nightlife. We met two Turkish students from one of the many universities in Milan who told us about a place called Le Colonne which was a popular place for college-age students to hang out. We accompanied them (Ezgi and Mehmet) to Le Colonne and there we met new friends from Italy, England, and fellow Americans from New York and New Jersey! The Italian guys lived there in Milan (though one of them was actually from Sicily, so we bonded over that!), the British guys were there on vacation, and the American guys were architecture grad students who were there studying for a week, and who would then go to Siena to spend a month taking classes there. Since I myself had just spent a month there, I told them all about the city and gave them recommendations on what to do and see while they're there.
The Americans, like I mentioned, were from New York and New Jersey so that was yet another thing that we bonded over. Though I haven't lived in either of those places, I have family in both states and in nearby Connecticut and Massachusetts, have taken many trips up there, and consider the northeast my favorite area of the country. Anyway, at one point one of the guys, Travis, told me that he was surprised when I told him that we were all from Atlanta because according to him, I looked and seemed like somebody from up north! I was thrilled to hear that, especially from a northeasterner :) We then talked about how easy it is to pick out the Americans here in Italy, even just walking past them and without them saying a word. Travis then told me, "I've had a pretty good eye for figuring out who the Americans are up until now. I actually never would have pegged you as an American. I thought you were a native Italian until you told me otherwise." I was even more thrilled to hear that :)
L-R: Travis (NY), Eric (NJ), Steffi (GA), Luigi (Sicily), me (GA), Diego (Italy), Matt (England), in front: Trevor (NY) and Josh (England)
Since I've been in Italy I've had many people ask me where I'm from, and some who try to guess where I'm from before I tell them. When I was on the bus from Palermo to Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily, I asked one of the other passengers, in Italian, how far we were from the stop for Castellammare, and after answering me, and probably assuming I was a tourist, the guy just up and asked me if I was from Germany. He is actually one of three people to ask me if I was from there since I've been in Italy. Another time, when Maria and I were eating at a restaurant in Milan, our waiter (also probably realizing that we were tourists) asked us where we were from, and after we told him the United States he said that he had thought we were from Spain. Though Maria is Hispanic and speaks Spanish she isn't of Spanish descent (that is, from Spain) so we gathered that it was probably because our Italian professor back in the United States is himself a Spaniard, so we must have said something in Italian to the waiter with a Spanish pronunciation, the way our professor says it. This waiter was also the third Italian person since I've been here to think I'm from Spain. How does one person think I'm from Germany and the next think I'm from Spain? It's crazy!
The next Sunday (July 24) I went to Lago di Como for the day with my British friend Niamh (pronounced Neeve), which is the same lake on which George Clooney has a house :) I have no idea what it looks like though so we may or may not have seen it. We had a lot of fun poking around the town of Como and even got to go out on the lake in a paddleboat :) During our last week in Milan, the week of July 25-29, I went with Maria, Haley and Niamh and the many other students from our class and other universities in Milan on free visits to the Pinacoteca di Brera, a very famous art gallery in Milan; il Cenacolo, otherwise known as Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, the famous depiction of the moment when Jesus announces that one of his twelve apostles would betray him; and also Leonardo's Codice Atlantico (Codex Atlanticus), which showcased over a thousand pages of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and writings. Pretty amazing stuff! We weren't allowed to take pictures of them, though, otherwise I would put some up. Here's one of me in the paddleboat on Lago di Como though! :)
On Monday, August 1, Maria, Alvaro, Haley and I packed up and headed to Stazione Centrale, Milan's central train station, where we would be meeting our bus to Gargnano as well as several of our new classmates from all over the world! Our new classmates and friends are from England, Ireland, Spain, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Switzerland, Poland, Israel, India, China, Japan, Letonia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and there may be some more places I'm forgetting. Maria, Alvaro, Haley and I are the only students from America. There is also another girl from Georgia - but the country of Georgia, not the state! We bonded over the fact that we're both "Georgians" and we extended the invitation to each other to visit the other Georgia :)
Meeting the Gargnano group in Milan!
L-R: Natia (Georgia, the country); Valeria (Switzerland); Alvaro (Peru/USA); Maria & me (USA); Fumiko (Japan); Carlos (Mexico); Menakshi (India); Melisa (Serbia); and Merav (Israel).
So not only is the town of Gargnano right on Lago di Garda, but so is the building where we are staying! I shouldn't even call it a building, its name is Palazzo Feltrinelli and palazzo in Italian means "mansion." :) Our classes are also held in the palazzo, so we just have to walk downstairs to get to class. All of our meals during the week (which are absolutely delicious) are served to us outside, on the lake, with fabulous service! I'm living in what can only be described as a five-star hotel for three weeks, overlooking the lake, in a beautiful town in northern Italy! It's absolutely incredible :)
This is where we are served lunch and dinner every day!
Our classes are great, and our teachers are so friendly! In the mornings we have three and half hours of language classes, from 9 am - 12:50 with a twenty minute break at 11, then lunch, then a few hours of free time, then from 5:30-7:30 we have our culture classes, with a ten-minute break at 6:20. I really like the culture class; it's very interesting and engaging! It's a lot like the American culture class I took last semester at my home university, except it's all about Italian culture and entirely in Italian. It makes me feel like I'm a real Italian student at a university in Italy just going to class :)
On Saturday (August 6), we spent the day in the mountains of Gargnano (which are a part of the Alps), taking a car halfway up and then climbing up the rest of the mountain the old-fashioned way. When we descended the mountain we had lunch with the mayor of Gargnano, who had greeted us all when we first stepped off the bus in his town last Monday, and after lunch, a local DJ named Davide, who we've become friends with, played the guitar for us while we all sang along to the songs in Italian, English and Spanish that he was playing :)
Me, Maria, Alvaro and Haley and the wine our teachers gave us after class.
Only in Italy :)
Me and il Sindaco di Gargnano (the Mayor of Gargnano), Gianfranco Scarpetta!
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