The main basis for this project will be two of Beppe Severgnini’s books–the first is “La Bella Figura” (although some may know it as “An Italian in Italy”) which is about exactly what you think it is: an Italian’s hilarious observations of his own country. The second, “Ciao America!”, is the same author’s observations about how Italians perceive American culture. I started reading the first last summer but never finished it, and I intend to read both cover to cover this summer to report on his observations and compare them with my own from my time abroad. I will also be supplementing the information from the books with commentary from my Italian friends, American friends who studied in Italy, and what I consider to be my second family (Maria and Luciana).

I hope you enjoy it! Also, if you have some time, feel free to check out my actual blog from my time abroad below.

Ciao!

Holly

Lodovico Ariosto, the namesake for Piazza Ariostea

Maria arrived home (finally) on Monday afternoon after spending a month in Greece. The first comment she made was that I had gotten skinnier, and I explained it was because she wasn’t around for a month to cook for me. I finished laundry on Monday night and slowly started to pack away all of my things. On Tuesday, I went to the center in the afternoon to take some pictures and say goodbye to my program directors and the two lovely owners of Caffetteria Spisani. I had plans later to meet Vassilis in Piazza Ariostea, and wanted to go home to shower and change first, but we ended up running into each other in the center right as I was about to head home (I think we were both really surprised that this happened). This was nice though, because we were able to spend another hour together before I had to go to my last aquagym class. He also gave me a really cute necklace so I would have something to remember him by.

When Wednesday arrived it seemed surreal. I was ready to go home and see my family, but I wasn’t ready to leave what had become my other family and my friends behind. Between periods of semi-productivity during which I was cleaning my room and trying to fit everything into my suitcase, I went to the store and picked up two large things of Nescafe (the instant coffee you mix with milk that I had practically every morning in Ferrara) and some peperoncino. Then a Greek mother and daughter who were traveling Italy (Maria had met them on her return boat from Greece) came over to our apartment for lunch. I was finally all packed and ready to go around 3pm. Luciana drove me to the station and I convinced her to ride down to Bologna with me to see me off. Once I got to the airport, I had to pay 50 euros extra because I checked two bags (thankfully they ignored the fact that one of them was significantly overweight) and said goodbye to Luciana.

I made it through security, but customs was another story. I went up to the window and handed the man behind the counter my passport. He looked at it for what seemed like forever, and then looked at me and said “è scaduto” (this means it’s expired–he was talking about my visa.) Sadly, this was true–my visa was only supposed to be valid until May 31, 2009, but my program directors had assured me that I would be okay if I stayed in the country as a tourist for only 3 months after the expiration date. The customs officer didn’t think so. I did my best to explain my situation in Italian, and it seemed to work, but he kept asking me why I couldn’t speak Italian that well, and why I didn’t study hard enough, and I really just wanted to kill him at this point. Thankfully, he decided to let me through (I mean really, I was on my way out of the country, give me a break) but not without a stern warning of “pay more attention next time” before I left. This just made my flight to London more miserable–my last experience in Italy was a customs officer yelling at me for not paying attention when I had just been misinformed. I arrived at the London Gatwick airport around 7, and stood in a customs line for about an hour and a half. Once I bought my bus ticket to Heathrow (20 pounds more out of my bank account), I had some coffee and a muffin and took advantage of the free wireless to let people know I had completed (well, almost) the first leg of my journey home. The bus was another hour, at least, and when I arrived at Heathrow, I had no idea where to catch the bus to my hotel. I didn’t arrive at my hotel until around 12:30 (a lot later than I had originally expected) and promptly passed out around 1am.

I woke up at 5 and took the bus to Heathrow, where it turns out since I wasn’t technically flying internationally yet, I didn’t have to be there 3 hours before my flight (but I guess it was better to be safe than sorry). A good point of the day was being able to have an omelette for breakfast–I know it’s weird, but Italians don’t do breakfast food and I really missed being able to have eggs and potatoes. The flight to Amsterdam was short, but I slept anyway. I knew I was going to have a short connection on the other end, so I started running once I got off the plane. Of course, it was one of those situations where my terminal and the terminal I had to be in were on opposite ends of the airport, and after about 15 minutes of running with my rolling carry-on, I arrived at my gate (they were almost at the end of the line for the final security screening). The couple in front of me got randomly upgraded to first class and got all excited about it, and I mentally cursed them, because that would have been nice. However, I had the fortune of sitting next to a very nice looking gentleman from Amsterdam who happened to be a rocket scientist and was heading to the states to study in Texas for 6 months. We talked for awhile before takeoff, and then I passed out again. The worst thing about this flight was that it was in the middle of the day, and while the time that my body was adjusted to kept getting later and later, this was not reflected in the fact that it was still incredibly light outside (also did not make it easy to sleep).

We landed in Chicago around 1pm, and after making it through customs again, I realized I did not have my baggage (my short connection in Amsterdam was not enough time for them transfer it onto my plane)–but I think I almost expected that to happen. I wandered around the airport for a good hour, and turned my US cell phone back on and called a few of my friends from Drake as well as my sister. Had a bagel (something else I couldn’t enjoy in Italy) and found my terminal, where I tried not to fall asleep. That ended up happening on the last leg of the trip, and I honestly do not remember anything after take off in Chicago except for the moments before I landed in Green Bay. Thankfully the Green Bay airport isn’t hard to navigate with its two terminals and 10 gates or something like that, and I was still disoriented as my family met me excitedly in the waiting area. For that brief moment, I was happy to see them and happy to be home, but that moment disappeared almost as soon as it happened, and I hated being back in the states. I had heard about reverse culture shock and how it sucked, but I didn’t think it was going to be this bad. I always found a reason to hate where I lived because it was so different from Ferrara, and honestly, that made for a pretty depressing rest of summer. Fortunately, I have stayed in very close contact with Maria and Luciana and am able to occasionally practice my Italian so I don’t forget how to say anything.

Overall, I must say that my decision to study abroad in Italy easily made for the most memorable and biggest learning experience of my entire life (so far, anyway). I plan on continuing this blog now with my observations on the cultural differences between Italy and the United States (because they never fail to amuse and amaze me).

–è tutto. Ciao!

Caffetteria Spisani in summer

I know this is a late entry, but now I can give you my perspective about what it’s been like to live back in the United States for almost a month. Actually, my dad asked if I was ever going to finish my blog, because my sister caught me reminiscing earlier by reading my old entries, and she said two things: “He’d rather you type out everything in a blog entry so he can just read it on his computer instead of actually talking to you,” and “It’s also called ‘My Semester in Ferrara,’ not ‘I’m back in the United States–FML.’” The extra two months I spent in Ferrara were certainly worth it language-wise (I spoke a lot more Italian without my American friends around), but dealing with the intense ninety degree heat (and no air conditioning) was not ideal. The last month, I joined a water aerobics class with Luciana, and that was the most amazing thing ever, and of course so far I haven’t found anything even remotely similar to it in the States–it was like some kind of high intensity cross between dancing in the water and kickboxing.

My last weekend in Ferrara was certainly memorable. That Friday, our awkward almost-like-a-double-date-but-not quatro went out to eat at Michelangelo Da Vinci Airplane’s (yes, that’s how it’s spelled… I won’t berate the Italians’ misuse of apostrophes because it is not their original language). Saturday, during the day at least, was more of a chill day. There were tentative plans to go down to Rimini (along the coast) for Notte Rosa (a huge festival with music, dancing, etc. also referred to as the New Years of Summer). In the end, there were storms in Rimini, so all of us ended up going to a place only 45 minutes away on the same coast, “Little Venice” or Comacchio. We were on the beach for about an hour before it started to rain there as well, but once the rain stopped we made our way to a bar in Comacchio and stood and talked for awhile. The storms were still coming in off the coast, so it was windy and there was a lot of lightening–but still no rain. I went inside to go to the bathroom with Luciana, and as soon as we were inside, the lights flickered. Not gonna lie, I panicked. The power went off and on for the next five minutes, and then it started to pour buckets outside. The lights were off at this point, but everyone who had been standing outside came running in and packed themselves into this tiny bar, so we got separated from the boys. My fear of being crammed into tight spaces decided to become more present at this point, and I was just pissed off in general because there was no cell phone service, we were still separated, it was pouring, the bar was flooding (so my feet were wet) and random Italian men were pressing up against me. In wet shirts. Gross. After what seemed like forever, Giuseppe found us and our cell phones started working again. Andreas and Vassilis had taken shelter in Giuseppe’s car about 3 blocks away, and when we arrived we found them both stripped down to their boxers, trying to dry their clothes on the car heaters (that is honestly a sight I will never forget). We barely made it out of there alive, I’m not kidding, the streets had accumulated about a foot (or two, even) of water, and the traffic was insane. We drove to a lido not far away, where they had an arcade of sorts (just someplace that we could go to dry off and maybe have some fun). We left after about an hour at 4:30am and began the drive home. By this time, I was exhausted–I just wanted to sleep. I tried to close my eyes in the car, but that didn’t work very well. We arrived in Ferrara around 5:30am, and Vassilis and I planned to take a 6am train to Lido di Classe (the station that we would catch a bus from to the amusement park) and I guess have breakfast there before going into the park.

This plan would have been successful if a) Vassilis’ sisters not accidentally locked him out of his apartment so he could get dry clothes and b) we had not missed the 6am train by about a minute. We took two bikes from his garage and raced to the station, only to have the ticket machine be touchy when we tried to put in cash. We heard the train approaching from inside the station, and if it had not pulled away before we got to the binary, I think we were actually going to get on without a ticket (bad news bears). Thankfully, the cafe at the station opened at 6, and we grabbed some pastries and coffee while I tried to not fall asleep at the table. We went to the binary where they had this enclosed area with seating and slept on and off for the next hour and a half (the next train arrived at 8). I slept more on the train ride, which was another hour and a half. After arriving, we had breakfast again before spending the rest of the day exploring the park. The park itself was not too much to brag about, it had a few large roller-coasters that we stood in line for (I even convinced him on the last one of the day to stand in line longer to ride in the front car–it was totally worth it) but other than that there wasn’t much else besides your typical water coaster ride, a slow moving observation ferris wheel, and one of those tower things where they raise you slowly into the air and then drop you back down at a terrifying speed. We left the park later in the afternoon because we were both exhausted and he had to go back to Ferrara to help a friend out with something or other. Although things didn’t go exactly as I thought they would, it was a great way to spend my last weekend in Italy.

Corsa Porto Reno in Ferrara

Today, despite the extreme heat, I had one of the best days I’ve ever had during my stay in Italy (and it’s not over yet, still has the potential to get better!) I woke up early (like before 8am–the sun was already filling my room anyways), because I had plans to skype with a friend from school (but she forgot, and apologized), but I was able to stay awake and have breakfast before 8:30, when I started english lessons with Maria. This morning, I found a great website to help her with grammar things (because incidentally, I’ve forgotten most grammar rules because they’re just… embedded in my brain, I guess). This site, meant for Dutch students trying to learn english, had these verb worksheets that we worked on today for 2 hours, and at the end of the lesson, Maria was like–this was really good! Which made me happy, because I didn’t have to deal with her silly english books like last week, and made her happy, because I think she actually learned something instead of me just having to supervise her pronunciation as she read out loud. Plus, she totally was like, “hey, I learned this verb from listening to Hotel California,” and proceeded to recite a line from the song… she told me previously that by listening to that song, she learned english. I guess if I had to suffer through her playing it continuously, and she learned one verb…

Then, Maria and I left around 10:30 with Giuseppe and Luciana (who were going to the office) and they dropped us off in the center, where we stopped by the Monday morning market–I’d never been before, imagine… I’ve been here a semester and had never been to the market! I’d always been meaning to go, but I either had class or didn’t want to get up super early. Anyway, Maria and I parted ways about a half hour later after she helped me buy a ticket for the bus, and I walked to the CIEE office to return some books that I had used for class, and I ended up picking up two books to read leisurely, “An Italian in Italy” and “An Italian in America,” both by Beppe Severgnini, who is supposed to be hilarious with his observations about both his culture and ours. I also picked up 5 films to watch (all Italian–I’ll watch them with subtitles though, so I can understand) so I’m really excited about doing that. I also got to chill with some people who were leaving today that I never really hung out with during the program–and I really should have more. We just sat outside of Caffetteria Spisani, discussing the most random things for almost 2 hours. Then, I helped Laura get her luggage from the CIEE office, on the bus to the train station, and then onto the train to Bologna itself–I think I really wish I had hung out with her more, she’s one of the sweetest girls on the program.

Plus, I’ve finally learned how to take public transportation! Yeah, I know… after one semester… I’ve finally gotten over my fear of the bus system. I’ve also made a “summer music” playlist in my iTunes with a bunch of songs I never knew I had before, and that’s been keeping my good mood up since the weekend. So now, it’s only 4:30 in the afternoon–I’m going to go watch one of my Italian films, maybe read a little, and then later this evening I’m going to e-mail both my old Italian teacher and my second cousin Kelly, and see if they want a visit anytime in the near future–because although I love Ferrara, I definitely need to get out more. Otherwise I’ll be writing in this blog every few hours… and no one wants that, do they?

Ciaoooo!

Vernazza, the fourth Cinque Terre town

This blog entry is going to be a doozy. I will try to remember everything as best as I can, because apparently I can’t stay dedicated enough to my blog writing to update once a week.

The second week of April, I picked up my family in the Venice train station, and we returned to Ferrara for 2 days, then went to Florence for a night to meet up with Dad’s second cousin Kelly and her family, where they own a really cool bed and breakfast right in the middle of the center square. On Easter morning, we watched a really old Florentine tradition that involved blowing up (okay, not really… there were just a lot of fireworks coming out of it) a 400-year-old “cart” that was pulled into the center square by oxen that didn’t look too pleased. I also got to meet my 5 year old third cousin, Alessandro, and we bonded. We then left that afternoon for le Cinque Terre (the “five lands”), which are five small, picturesque fishing villages on Italy’s west coast on the Ligurian Sea. We spent two nights in the first town, Riomaggiore, and spent the second day there hiking above the towns–however, we only made it to Vernazza, the fourth town, before we decided to take the boat back and change for dinner. Then, we headed north to Lake Como and the small town of Varenna, which I felt like was overpopulated by honeymooners (although it was incredibly beautiful). Our last morning there, we took a cooking class about 10 minutes outside of Varenna, and getting there involved going up winding mountain roads in the rain (fun!) and then we took the train to Milan, where we caught our train to Venice for our last few days of vacation. Our first whole day in Venice was actually spent with a quirky tour guide, Paolo, who drove us to the Dolomites and showed us Cortina, where we ate lunch. After lunch, of course, we took lots of potential Christmas card pictures–Paolo became our photographer, and pretended to be the paparazzi… like I said, he was quirky. Our final day of vacation was spent touring Venice’s main attractions as well as its back “roads,” before everyone had to catch a bus to the airport at 4. I was sad to see them go, but I was glad they came to visit me–Mom kept saying how lucky we were to have amazing weather (minus the one day it rained, but we were inside all day, so it didn’t matter) so of course, within minutes of returning to Ferrara, it began to downpour–and continued to do so for most of the week.

After vacation, I had to turn my focus to final papers and exams–which are never fun to do. In typical “me” fashion, I ended up writing most of them at the last minute, and everything was going smoothly until the night before my medieval history paper was due. Of course, this was the one that I had tried the hardest on, because I had heard from first semester students that the teacher was a bit harsh with his grading, and I had been working on it for the entire day before it was due–I had about 1600 words, and needed 2000–so I felt pretty confident that I could take a break for a little bit, and come back and finish it later. So, I texted Vassilis asking if he wanted to go out, and I met him in Piazza Ariostea at 8:30. We ended up running into some of his friends that I hadn’t met, and it took about 20 minutes of my awkward silence until one of them was like, “but wait, aren’t you Italian?” and when I shook my head no, he was like, “Oh! I’m so sorry, I thought you were and you could understand us.” I could understand them a little, but I was just trying to be polite anyway. We stayed for an hour, and his friends bought us both another drink (bad idea) even though we insisted we didn’t want anything. After they left and I was able to spend about an hour with Vassilis by myself, his sisters called and were like “You’re late for dinner.” So I went to go see Kelsey, and got a cornetto, and got home around 12:15. When I returned to my room, I immediately heard a strange clicking noise coming from my desk. I thought that my iPod had finally died, because it sometimes makes a similar noise when it’s trying to change songs–but it was coming from my computer. I was able to save (three times over) my paper, and change my MSN status to online, but when I went to go open an internet window, the dock froze, so I manually shut down my computer and tried to restart it. The computer restarted, but instead of coming up with the normal apple startup logo, there was a grey folder with a question mark on it. So… my almost finished paper that was due at 2pm the following day was trapped inside my computer that wouldn’t start up–reason to freak out, don’t you think? I immediately sent an e-mail to the professor from Maria’s computer, and he surprisingly took sympathy on me, and told me not to worry about it (I also happened to have an exam in his class that same day). I did end up having to rewrite my entire paper later… which sucked, because I knew it wasn’t at all the paper that I wrote before… I just hope that the professor will take my misfortune into account and go a little easy on me…

I went to the office with Luciana and Giuseppe, where Luciana proceeded to open up my computer and take out the hard drive to see if we could connect it to one of the computers there and download a program to help save any of my data. After a few hours, we gave up, and took the computer back to the place where I had the logic board replaced earlier, and they said they would try to save anything they could off the hard drive and let me know by the afternoon. Meanwhile, I went to go take Luke’s exam, and he went to go talk to Richard about how to handle the paper MIA situation. By Friday, the computer repair shop had given me two options: to pay them 100 euros to see if they could recover my data, or to have them send it apple, get a new hard drive because mine was still (thankfully) under warranty and lose all my data… I chose the second option. I had to wait almost 2 weeks to get it back BUT when I did get it back (on Thursday) they had upgraded me to the new operating system and given me the entire Adobe CS4 Creative Suite (photoshop, indesign, dreamweaver…) for free. That’s huge. Especially for me, I can make a lot of use of these programs as a magazines major. Anyway, I lost all my documents and photos (those thankfully are still in little tiny thumbnails on my iPod), however, I was able to recover most all of my music thanks to Margie, Claire, and a program I downloaded.

Thankfully, I didn’t have a completely boring two weeks without my computer–the first week, I went to London to visit Margie (my roommate) during the last week of her program. It was a nice change, being able to speak english, although for one night, I met a Japanese girl and a girl from Milan who were talking to each other in Italian when I got out of the shower–so they said hi to me, and I was like, nono, I also speak Italian (it was quite cool). We saw so many things, rode on the London Eye, visited Buckingham and saw the changing of the guard, walked across Abbey Road, went to the Tower of London, saw Spring Awakening–it was all amazing.

Anyways, I returned to Ferrara two Fridays ago, and since I forgot that Europe was on 24-hour time, I booked my flight for 7 in the morning. Stansted Airport is about an hour and a half outside the city, and I had to take a taxi from my hostel to the bus station, and since international flights require you to be at the airport 2 hours before, I had no sleep. I went to bed at midnight after packing, and woke up at 2:30 so I could leave the hostel at 3am. Thankfully, I’m pretty okay with traveling by myself, and everything went surprisingly well.

This past week has been incredibly hot–90s all week, and my apartment doesn’t have air conditioning (or a fan!) so it’s been slightly miserable and boring–plus I didn’t have my computer, so I had no music to listen to or anything… I got so bored I cleaned my room. For those of you that know me… that’s huge. Of course, it’s dirty again, clothes are everywhere because I keep avoiding laundry, but for those of you that know me, that’s typical. Most of you probably don’t know this, because I’ve been absolutely horrible with updating this, but I’m staying in Ferrara until July 9th mainly to keep improving my Italian, but also because I didn’t find a job in the states (I had a Skype interview with a camp I went to as a kid, but that didn’t work out). You’ll never get me to admit that I stayed in Ferrara for Vassilis, in case you’re wondering. Originally, I was going to try and be an aupair of sorts for a family in Padova, but I wasn’t able to stay as long as they needed me, so I’ll teaching Maria English in exchange for being able to stay there until the beginning of July. That being said, I’m sure I have an interesting summer ahead of me!

Ciao!

Piazza Bra in Verona

I’m fine, guys. Just so you all don’t have to worry. The earthquake hit in L’Aquila, which is probably over 200 miles from me. I didn’t feel or hear a thing (although some of my classmates swore they did), so everything’s good in the city of Ferrara. Just to give you all some peace of mind. I didn’t think it would worry everyone this much. (Just because I knew where the earthquake actually was… silly me for thinking you all knew Italian geography as I barely know it myself)

I’ll update more later–I went to Verona on Sunday, and it was amazing (although I didn’t get to touch Giuliette’s boob…) but I have a presentation tomorrow and another one Wednesday that I need to finish–and then my parents come!

Ciao!

Cappellacci di Zucca (all'aceto balsamico) from Archibugio

It’s only 10 days until my family arrives, and I’m so excited (I’m making them let me meet them in Venice… something my father doesn’t particularly like but I feel is a necessity because Venice is a labyrinth and they do not speak any Italian… and of course I miss them that much!)

This past week, our house pretty much fell apart. Why? Maria left for London on vacation on Tuesday. Luciana also almost kicked Giuseppe out of the house at least twice (I know only about these times because they were when I was home… but there very easily could have been others). Not that I was home much anyways, because Kelsey’s friend Leah was visiting from the states this week, so after going to Bologna to pick her up last Saturday, we took her to Archibugio to get the best pumpkin pasta in Ferrara. Unfortunately, I don’t ever want to go back to that restaurant… but that’s a different story entirely.

This past week was just the usual: classes, gelato after classes, walking around, biking around, buying clothes I don’t need but that look really amazing, etc. I discovered on Tuesday that I pulled off a B+ on Luke’s exam (the one I thought I failed). How I managed this, I’m not sure… I guess if you can make an argument (even if he thinks it’s wrong) he’s still obliged to give you points for it… not sure what the policy is for incoherent arguments or claiming that Dante was infamous… whoops. I also didn’t have my four hour class on Wednesday, which made this week go by a lot more quickly. Thursday, after class, Kelsey, Leah and I went to go get gelato. I really don’t understand how my gaining weight has stopped… but it has. I eat gelato and pasta all the time. Lucky me, I guess. Doesn’t help me solve the mystery of how Italian people are so skinny. They have perfect everything. Perfect hair, perfect legs, perfect faces… you get the idea. They all look amazing. The fact that their 3-year-old children wear clean, white skinny jeans and cardigans do not help this fact.

Anyways, on Thursday, we went to go park our bikes by Piazza Municipale, and proceeded to get gently scolded by a really cute old man. I didn’t catch half of what he said to me, but apparently we were parking our bikes in the wrong place, and he showed us where we were allowed to park our bikes, and after we bid him good day, we walked to the gelato place… and it was closed. So we had to walk back to unlock our bikes. He came back over and was like… what are you doing? You just parked your bikes! So we had to explain to him. He finally realized that we weren’t Italian, and so he slowed down a little bit when he talked. He also had a bunch of friends standing by the place where he made us put our bikes, and one of them asked me why I didn’t have my jacket on. It was 65 degrees, at least. The Ferrarese are babies when it comes to the cold. I know this, because even though I hail from the midwest where it gets to be quite chilly, I’ve complained when it’s been 35 or 40 degrees here–I’d be celebrating in Wisconsin if it were that warm in March! Finally, the cute old men bid us good day, and we proceeded on to go find another gelato place.

We went back to Archibugio again that night because Leah really liked the cappellacci. About halfway through the dinner, Leah pointed out that there was a table of 3 guys who looked to be about in their mid 20s diagonal from ours. One boy in particular kept looking over at us. When I say this, I mean he would gazein our direction. For 30 seconds at a time. It was ridiculous. Of course, we totally encouraged it… oops. We sat there talking about it and looking over while giggling… looking back on the night that is something that could have easily been avoided. And should have been. We had just finished our dinner when they got up… and said guy did about 5 long glances back at our table. Think that’s all that happened? No. Think again. He came back. Not to our table, exactly, but Leah was dictating this to me as it happened. He grabbed a piece of paper from the place where the cash register was and disappeared back around the corner. Kelsey conveniently decided to pretend to go to the bathroom (which was around the corner) and I guess he stopped her on the way back (because he was waiting there…) and asked if he could speak to me. I was quite… intoxicated at this point because I had drunk a lot of wine throughout dinner, so unfortunately, I obliged. He seemed nice at first, introduced himself as Andrea and informed me that they were going to another restaurant after, and asked if they (him and another friend) should wait for us. I told him no, because we had just ordered desert and I didn’t know how long we’d be. This is how I ended up getting his phone number and promised to call him after we finished eating. After we did end up finishing, we headed to Tsunami. I waited about 1 hour before sending him a text, because I didn’t want to be rude and leave the poor boy hanging… after all, he seemed really nice, and nervous, and that he didn’t do this all the time… Ha. He called me within 5 minutes… and then proceeded to call me twice more before actually finding the place. That should have raised a red flag. It didn’t. We left abruptly after Leah became quite angry with us (rightly so, as she was a major 5th wheel). The friend he brought along proceeded to become completely enamored with Kelsey, and even now after we explained to Andrea that I had a boyfriend (which I think gave him the message, because he stopped calling), his friend (Sebastiano) calls Kelsey twice or three times a day, and sends her text messages proclaiming his undying love for her. It’s hilarious. I honestly cannot help but laugh at how I managed to pick up a guy in a restaurant, and cause his friend to become interested in my friend. But seriously… in a restaurant? This is why I can never go back to Archibugio.

Since I know you all want to know, things with Vassilis are going well. Apparently it’s understood here when you’re in a relationship, but I’m not sure if it’s weird to ask. Anyhow, we pretty much act like we’re in a relationship so that’s enough for me at this point. I don’t like to think about what’s going to happen in a month and a half, so I just don’t. Kelsey pointed out the other day how cool our “whatever we are” is: He’s Greek, and I think English is his second language and Italian is his third (because he’s only lived here for 5 years). Anyways, when we talk online, I practice writing my Italian, and when we see each other, most of the time he talks in Italian (again, so I can practice), but I also make him talk in English sometimes. Except for when we talk in English, it’s cool because neither one of us is using our first language to communicate with the other. Who would have thought that could happen?

I feel like I’ve updated you all enough. I’m probably going to go take a nap in a little bit, because it’s been raining all day (you know how those rainy days go… they make you want to sleep all day. It’s bad enough that I haven’t gotten dressed.)

Ciao!

Italian child chasing pigeons in Piazza del Campo

I am sick. Again. It’s just this nagging little cold like thing that comes and goes occasionally.

Anyways, quickly about my trip the previous weekend to Siena: We left at 8:30am on Friday morning and arrived around 3 hours later at Le Rocche di Vagliano, the place we stayed in for 2 nights. It was literally in the middle of nowhere–but that added so much to its charm. We all stayed in little villas that were clustered together, only the one that Kelsey, Rachael, Abby and I shared was two stories, had a kitchen, living room, and 2 bathrooms/bedrooms. Other people were not so lucky. Later, we arrived in Pienza–a cute little hill town of about 2,000–where we ate lunch and had a quick tour of the city. Unfortunately, we barely had any free time here, except to sample some pecorino cheese (not my favorite), but that was a group thing. I got bus-sick on the way to Montalcino, where we toured Castello Banfi, the main winery in Tuscany–and the most famous. Naturally, after the tour we got to taste some of the best Tuscan wines–if we’re going to be honest here… I still prefer the 6 euro bottle of Chianti–I’m definitely not the wine connoisseur type.

Afterwards, we ate dinner at this cute little pizzeria in Montalcino–I really wish I could have seen that city during the daytime, it looked like it was really pretty. The next morning, we ate a big breakfast (by Italian standards) and spent the entire day in Siena–the three hour tour took up most of the time. When it was time to eat lunch, we all were expecting another big CIEE meal–but not like the one we had. They came around first with an appetizer, which was different types of bruschetta. Then, the waiter came and asked me (since I’m vegetarian) if having ravioli with butter and sage sauce was okay. I was like, alright. After I ate all of that, he came around again and told me we were having pasta for the next course as well–so would I be fine with tomato sauce? Okay. I figured this was the second course, and then we’d have dessert. He brought out gnocchi–I ate all of it. Then he came around a third time, announced we’d be having another course, and asked if I’d like a cheese plate or a caprese salad. I looked at him like… you’re crazy. There can’t be another course. But there was. (I had the cheese plate because I could not possibly eat anything else, so at least I could be polite and pick at it a little.) The meat eaters actually had way more food, and I don’t know how they survived. For dessert, they brought out a dessert wine and ricciarelli, almond sweets that are famous from Siena.

After lunch, we had 2 hours of free time–too much! Plus, we couldn’t even climb up the tower to get good views because it was closed–it was a beautiful day, which was a shame. Kelsey and I just ended up wandering around the hilly streets for the entire time, which wasn’t bad–but by that point I was really tired and just wanted to get back on the bus. When we returned to Le Rocche, we had to eat dinner. Unfortunately, it was cooked by the people who ran the place (and wasn’t that great) and unfortunately, no one wanted to eat it. So, everyone just got incredibly drunk, and we all played charades. It was great fun.

The next morning, we were all quite… dead. Or hungover, whichever term you prefer. I actually didn’t get drunk, but instead felt like I had a cold (the same one that I have now), so I slept for most of the bus ride. We stopped for an hour in Monteriggioni, a very well preserved medieval town not far from Le Rocche. It was really quiet, and unfortunately, a cloudy day–but I still enjoyed walking around. By the time we arrived in Pistoia, where we had a “light” lunch and yet another guided tour… we all just wanted to get back on the bus. Finally, we returned to Ferrara at around 7:30–honestly, I’ve grown very attached to this town. So much that I can’t even leave it for a weekend without missing it. I forsee this as being quite a problem in May. But we’ll take each day as it comes.

For right now, I have to study some renaissance art for my art history midterm tomorrow… if anyone’s interested, I got a high A on my Italian midterm (I think the highest in the class). Not that it counts, which sucks. Also, I found out that Drake has every modern language spoken taught through its DULAP program except Italian. Another reason to hate DULAP. I’ll write more about last week later–it wasn’t really that eventful, I promise!

A dopo!

Gondolas at Piazza San Marco

I really suck at this. Actually, I don’t… I’ve just gotten really busy with school and everything. That being said, I’m going to try and update this weekly… hopefully more than that though. For this entry, I’m going back to last weekend, the one before Mardi Gras.

I took a trip to Venice with Kelsey and Rachel on Saturday. We left Ferrara on the 10:30 train, and barely made it because the line for the ticket machine was so long. We stood the entire train ride (2 hours) because it was so crowded, and we ended up stopping just before the S. Lucia station so it looked like we were stopped on the water–if I didn’t have to stand the entire train ride it would have been cool looking, but by the end I was claustrophobic and warm and just wanted to get off the train.

When we got off the train, we bought our return trip tickets just so we’d have them and not have to worry about it later, and then exited the station with the mass of people. Venice, honestly, was still incredible, despite the thousands of people there (I hate crowds). After wandering for a little bit, we found a cute place to eat lunch–we thought it would be cheap, but it ended up being 40 euros for all three of us to eat–including a 4 euro bottle of water? Sad. The food wasn’t even that good. After lunch we wandered the narrow streets of Venice, occasionally stopping in mask shops to get masks for ourselves and in Rachel’s case, for souvenirs. After about 3 hours of walking, we finally reached Piazza S. Marco, where the party really was. There was a band walking as they played, people dancing–it was great. As we got further through the Piazza, we stopped to watch a comical play, but didn’t stay long, because we didn’t understand much of it.

The Venetian people must get a kick out of Carnavale each year, because all of these tourists come, and they get to dress up in elaborate and amazing costumes and get their picture taken about a thousand times per day. After wandering some more, we decided to start making our way back to the train station. I decided that I really wanted to ride in a gondola, and managed to convince Kelsey to as well. Rachel insisted that she had already ridden in one, and didn’t need to again. When we finally found a gondolier, he told us that the 2km (I think) ride would be 80 euros total. Split into three, it was about 26.50 or something like that–which Rachel refused to pay because it was more expensive than her previous gondola ride. If she didn’t come with us, it would be 40 each for me and Kelsey–ouch. We both really wanted to go… so we agreed that it was a one time splurge. Rachel was going to meet us back at the original starting point (because the gondola brought you back to the same place) and then Kelsey felt bad, or something, I can’t remember… but she ended up coming with us and not paying because she still was picky about the price. The ride was totally worth it though–we saw Casanova’s house, and our gondolier started to sing to us towards the end. Literally, he just busted out with… “I love you baby…” and Kelsey and I giggled, because that’s what Heath Ledger sings in 10 Things I Hate About You, and then he stopped. We turned around and tried to clarify that we weren’t laughing at him, which took a bit, but on the last stretch of the ride he started singing in Italian.

After the gondola ride, we stopped in a bar to get some hot chocolate (con panna!) It actually ended up being the worst hot chocolate I’ve had here so far–there was too much cream and the chocolate was really lukewarm… sad. But we also ate some delicious chocolate cannoli (btw… cannoli is the plural, cannolo is the singular. People in the states also get that wrong with panini–the singular is panino.) Finding our way back to la stazione ferrovia was interesting–we just kept following the signs, but with everyone trying to get back to the station at once, it was quite difficult, and it took about 2 hours. Thankfully, we arrived at the station with about a half hour to spare, and validated our tickets. Right after the train came up on the big screen, we got on, and still were barely able to find seats–so Kelsey had to sit across from me and Rachel in a completely different row. It didn’t matter though, I was so tired that I fell asleep almost immediately. I woke up after our stop at Rovigo (the one right before Ferrara) and listened to the Beatles with Kelsey.

After getting home, I found Giuseppe and Luciana on the couch, watching Cold Case in Italian. They probably thought I was crazy, because I definitely flipped out about it. After eating some gnocchi al formaggio, we went out and picked up Andreas from his home. We parked the car, went to the same bar from two weekends ago, and then after spending about an hour there, went to a different one called Lobster. I actually ran into some people I knew there, which was quite interesting, but a little awkward, because we never really talk that much. We left this place at around… 2:30 I’m assuming, and went to Renfe (the local discotheque), where we passed back Luciana’s membership card for… 5 people–all of them were guys except for me. I’m still not sure how we did it, but they didn’t even look at my card as I walked through the gate, and I have no idea how harsh they were on everyone else. Also, I had no idea that we were doing such a thing until Vassilis came out and tried to discreetly hand me the card, and it took me about a minute to understand what was actually going on. After getting inside, we had to stand for a half hour in the bathroom line (because people here go into the bathroom to smoke… stupid people) and then we just stood around and didn’t really dance much (which I suppose is why no one pays 10 euros for a membership card…)

The song lineup later in the evening really made me happy though. At first, it was just normal club/dancing songs, and then “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys came on. Immediately following that was “Twist and Shout” and “She Loves You” by the Beatles. Then they played 2 songs from the Grease soundtrack–including Greased Lightening, to which I did the dance… and no one knew what I was doing. It made me incredibly sad. After, they played “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham, which proved to me they couldn’t really decide which musical era they wanted to be in. We left around 4:30, and I was in bed by 5:30. I actually got sleep this time, and woke up around 1:30 to eat lunch.

Apparently, Giuseppe and Luciana had previous plans with friends to travel to Venice on Sunday, and despite my protests of “I’m tired” or “I just went yesterday,” they dragged me along with them. I made Giuseppe promise to be home by 10 or 11 at the latest, so when we returned at 2, I was not pleased at all. We parked the car in Mestre and decided to take the train into Venice. The ticket dispenser wasn’t producing any tickets for Venice at the time we got there, and the line to the ticket window was too long, and we were about to miss the train… so we got on without a ticket. All 4 of us. The ticket would have cost us 1 euro, and if we got caught, we would have each had to pay something upwards of 50 euros. So what did we do? We all hid in the bathroom. All 4 of us. I wasn’t too happy with them to begin with… but this definitely annoyed me for the rest of the night. After meeting Biddi and his girlfriend in Piazza S. Marco, we just sort of hung out for 2 hours and then walked back. We got on the 9:30 train to Mestre, arrived at 10… and then Giuseppe wanted to stick to the original plan and go to the casino. I told him it was fine, as long as we only stayed a half hour and were home by midnight. We arrived at 10:30, and by 11:30, Giuseppe finally decided it was time to go. I had won 2.50 euros on an electronic roulette machine, and when we found Andreas at the blackjack tables, he was losing money, so we “couldn’t leave.” I got really pissed, because it was an hour and a half drive home–putting us home at around 1. Luciana and I ended up going out to the car so I could at least sleep a little bit. About 15 minutes later, Giuseppe and Andreas finally emerged, and as soon as Giuseppe entered the car, he was like, “Holly’s angry!” Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be? I had class in the morning, and we weren’t going to be home until 2.

He’s also picked up “creepy” from me, because well, I call him creepy all the time, because he always stands in my doorway that’s cracked open a little bit and just whispers at me all the time. So now, my new name is Creepy. Or Creep Holly, whatever works or whatever he feels like. Fortunately, Luciana helps me with words like, “Shut up” and “asshole” so I can just respond back in Italian and he’ll leave me alone

I was completely dead on Monday, and ended up having to explain my weekend in Italian to the class. After getting back, I took a nap, and then we all ate lunch together and like most Mondays, I did nothing all day. I met Kelsey in the center around 5 after she was done with classes for hot chocolate… pretty much our favorite thing to do. When we were walking, I heard someone whistling at me. My first instinct was just to ignore it… but then someone started calling my name. Turns out it was Jordan, just being funny. He reminded us both of the cooking class at Balebuste, so we had to hurry through our hot chocolate to get there. The cooking class was totally worth it, we learned how to make cappellaci di zucca! It was soo amazing. Apparently the average serving of cappellaci is around 8-10 pieces. They brought us out the first plate, and then brought out some extra, which we all devoured even though we complained it was too much. After the first extra plate was gone, they brought out another! So all of us really ate about… 3 servings of cappellaci. Tuesday really wasn’t any better than Monday, because I felt halfway sick, like I just had a head cold or something. Wednesday was the long day, but I managed to get through it–went to try on new spring clothes at Pimpkie with Kelsey after meeting her for hot chocolate after class. I’ve been having problems with my wrist, probably from riding my bike so much, and ever since I got my brace at the beginning of the week, it’s been difficult to brake my bike–with only one brake functioning, and of course the left one, where I wear my brace. So I managed to part with my bike with the promise of getting it back the next morning. It was very difficult. After that, we met Rachel back at her house, and walked to Pizzeria Archibugio to have an organized dinner with some SPAL players and supporters (organized by Riccardo, of course). We ended up sitting next to this really nice German woman who knew 5 languages, including english, quite well. We also watched as a younger man who we thought was a player pour himself 12 glasses of beer. Just one right after the other. We counted. It was a hilarious dinner long joke. After dinner, Luciana picked me up in the center of town in her car (since I had no other way to get home).

Thursday, after she dropped me back off by the castle, I went to the bike shop–where the man explained that my bike wasn’t ready, so I had to take a different one. Turns out, I like this one a lot better–it doesn’t make any weird noises, and both brakes work. Also, the handlebars are red and white POLKA DOTS, and it has some cool rainbow chains on the back wheel. I’m going to go back tomorrow and ask him if I can just keep this one. One random thing before I close this blog up (will write about my trip to Siena in the next one, I promise)–I have seen some of the UGLIEST dogs here, but apparently they’re all purebred. I don’t understand it.

Ciao!

The old Fascist Aqueduct

Today wasn’t too horrible. I discovered that in the instance that I leave extremely late from my house, I can get to the CIEE office in about 13 minutes. I left at 10:45 today for my class at 11. It was the fastest bike ride of my life, I think. Thankfully, the traffic was forgiving. I was the second one to arrive to class, and had to explain to Michaela that yesterday (when we were at the Pinoteca for Art History), although Caroline had brought my homework packet to give to me, she had to leave early and even though she left it on the table, she didn’t mention it to me and therefore I didn’t see it and I didn’t get it. And wasn’t able to complete my homework. After asking me about the rest of my weekend and how I felt after being sick on Monday, she declared that she could write a book about my life.

I didn’t have much for lunch today, because I only had an hour and a half (to read and eat), so I had cinnamon hot chocolate and a pastry from Spisani–because that normally will fill me up. Apparently, not if I have coffee, which I did in order to stay awake during contemporary history today. This was a mistake. I had a cappucino right before class, and a caffè macchiato at the break we had at 4pm. I didn’t start to feel like I’d had an overdose of caffeine until we took a tour of facist buildings built around Ferrara, about an hour before class ended. Class actually wasn’t that bad today, because two students had about 35 minute presentations each–and it’s definitely easier to understand the material when our peers talk about it rather than when she does. After the presentations, we read aloud about two cases of facist censorship of novels, which was pretty interesting, and then went on the facist buildings tour, which included the post office and the old aqueduct. The old aqueduct (aka the monument) is now a “family center,” which I think means daycare. Anyways, all of these parents were hanging around while their kids were running every which way in the plaza and on the monument. We were walking up the ramp to see the building, and this one little girl, about… 4 years old, I’d say, just looks up at us from about 10 feet away, jumps up and down while waving her arms, and shouts, “Ehi! CIAO!” It was the cutest thing I’d seen in my life. (We all of course responded back with “Ciao!”)

After class, I called Kelsey to meet me in the center to go in search of food to help with my caffeine overdose–and we ended up purchasing crepes… with nutella. While easily the messiest snack I have ever eaten, it was totally worth it. They were absolutely amazing. I got home around 7:20, and proceeded to show Luciana how to play M*A*S*H (the game you probably played as a little kid that “predicted” who you were going to marry and the exact circumstances that your future held), and her first experience wasn’t so great–she ended up living in an apartment in London with her ex-boyfriend and 10 kids. At 8, we went to Ristorante 99, a pizzeria close by to have a “family” dinner with CIEE–they organized this so all of the students and families could eat together. What ended up happening was the students and the families were forced to sit at two different tables, which was a bummer, because we really don’t need any more excuses to talk in English. And I wanted to meet some other people’s families. And Luciana and Maria were sitting in a really awkward end of the table, and they looked really bored, and I felt bad for them. We left around a quarter to 11 to pick up Giuseppe from driving school (I guess to earn some points back on his license… can’t remember how he lost them). I didn’t end up going to bed really late in order to finish some homework–and now here I am, 10 minutes before having to leave for class… oops.

A dopo!