I’m watching “Harry Potter e la Camera dei Segrei” (Chamber of Secrets) dubbed into Italian, getting ready to go to bed after a very long day in Turin, Italy. What an adventure this day has been, this whole trip really, full of all kinds of unexpected surprises. Apparently someone thinks I need to learn how to go with the flow a little more, worry a little less, which is exactly what I tried to do this weekend. Just another aspect of my Italian education!
This was my first trip completely by myself! I took the train Friday afternoon after class from Florence to Turin, and arrived here around 9pm Friday evening. I had planned on a hotel, but once I got there (by taxi) I felt very uneasy about staying. It was in a strange-looking part of town, no lights were on…I did not feel comfortable. So I asked the taxi driver if he knew any safer hotels, closer to the center of town, somewhere he wouldn’t mind leaving his daughter by herself, and he took me to Hotel Ferrucci, where I have been all weekend. The man at the desk, Gianni, is so very sweet, he has been almost like a grandfather for me. He has taken very good care of me, given me all kinds of directions, and he’s so very patient. All the people here have been very nice and very eager to help.
All day today (Saturday) I have been walking around, exploring Turin, which has again gone astray from my plans. The two things I really wanted to see while I was here were the tombs at Superga and the Museum of the Risorgimento d’Italia. No one was able to tell me how to get to Superga, and I finally found out that it was way up on top of a mountain, and the train that usually takes people there was out of service today. So, I went to see the Risorgimento Museum, only to find out that it has been closed (since 2006) for renovations! So I found a place to sit in a piazza nearby, took out my tourist map, and started looking for things to do and see. I found several museums, a few palaces, and a medieval village, circled them, and started walking.
And I walked and walked and walked and walked and…you get the idea. I’m surprised my legs didn’t mutiny (though I think they would have if I had stopped walking long enough for them to)! I went to Palazzo Reale, the last residence of the last prince of Italy before the royal family was exiled after WWII for allowing Mussolini and fascism to take control of the country. Next to this palace, while I was waiting to go in, I popped into a church, San Lorenzo, which was apparently built by several members of the royal family in succession (it took a while to build). It was the result of a promise made to God that if an important battle was won, a church would be built in honor of whichever saint happened to be on the day of the battle (apparently they won on the day of San Lorenzo). All this (and possibly more that I didn’t quite catch) was told to me in very fast iffy Italian by the tour guide, whom I had just told that I was American, not Italian. Didn’t do me a whole lot of good!
From there I made a circuitous route over to the Egyptian museum, which was really impressive! They had SO MUCH stuff! (I know “stuff” isn’t the technical term, but Egyptian artifacts aren’t really my specialty, I was just in there to see what I could see). For a split second it almost made me wish I was an archeologist, it would have been so awesome to dig up some of that! From there, I made my way over to the Cinema Museum, also impressive for the amount of stuff there. Also, there is an elevator that takes you up to the top of the building for an amazing view of Turin. From there I could see Superga, the only glimpse of it that I got all day, but I understood a little better why no one knew how to get to it (I mean, it was waaaaaaay up there).
Finally, I made it over to the Valentino Park (named for the Valentino Palace, not St. Valentine the loverboy). This was probably my favorite part of the day, because I just walked around this beautiful garden, watching people, enjoying a beautiful evening by the Po River. There was the sweetest thing, a father was taking his little toddler son for a walk, and when they came to a short little wall, he held his son’s hand and let him walk on the wall, and then the little boy would jump and the father would catch him in his arms and twirl him around…it was so cute! Inside the garden there was a preserved medieval village and another palace (palaces were everywhere in Turin, because it used to be the capital of Italy). In the village a couple had just gotten married and they were taking their wedding pictures, one of which I might be in, because I didn’t realize what they were doing! It was very interesting, I didn’t get to go inside very much because it was closing, but walking the streets was fun. Then I walked by the Valentino Palace, and wow! If I had to pick one to live in, it would be that one (see picture above)!
All in all, even though it didn’t go exactly the way I had planned it in my head, I still had a fabulous time, and I wouldn’t mind going back again sometime!

La Scuola Lorenzo de Medici

Ciao a tutti! I’m laid up in bed right now with a terrible ‘mal di schiena’ (backache), so I guess I’ll try to update this again.
Classes started today! I am taking 6 credit hour super-intensive advanced Italian, and it certainly lives up to it’s name! There were only 8 of us in the class this morning, and after the first class there are now 6, out of whom I am the only American! Three of the students are from Switzerland, one is from Japan, and one is from Poland. So we don’t even all have English as a common fallback language, all we have is Italian. So when we’re trying to describe things or when someone doesn’t know what a certain word means, we have to give definitions in Italian, which is new for me. Fortunately, though I don’t talk nearly as quickly as all of them, I am much better with the grammar and have a larger vocabulary than most of them, so as far as grades, I don’t think I’ll have any problems. Our textbook is fairly large, larger than I would expect for a class of only 4 weeks, so I expect we will move extremely quickly through the material.
My teachers are both Italians, and both seem very nice. There is Mariangela, who does most of the conversation practice first, and then Irene, with whom we work on grammar and writing. Irene actually taught at UNC through some sort of exchange program a few years back, which I thought was interesting. Sometime I will have to ask her what she thought of it. Not a lot of homework yet, but I know its coming. Plus I will probably have to help my roommate and her friends along. They are taking beginning Italian, which I think is very exciting, and so hopefully I can help some! I think we are planning to have homework sessions together in one of the museums, since we have free passes to all of them and they are some of the few buildings that have decent air conditioning! My roommate, being from Hawaii, thinks that 70 degrees is cool. I can’t quite agree!
Last night we walked two blocks from our house, ate pizza and gelato, and sat on the steps of the Duomo until it got dark, chatting. It seems a lot of people do that. In the evenings, those who aren’t still sitting around the table at dinner chatting are out in the piazza or sitting around whatever is there, just socializing and relaxing. There was a woman singing opera in front of the Duomo, and a lot of people selling counterfeit artwork. They are always entertaining to watch, because as soon as the police drive by, they close up shop so quickly, its amazing! (They have obviously had plenty of practice.) Living in the center of the city is nice, because we see so much, but it is very noisy all the time.
By the way, feel free to comment after my blogs, or on Facebook. I have internet at my house, so I check things fairly often.

I am quasi unpacked and settled into my home away from home for the next four weeks. But did I ever have an adventure getting here!
Our story begins in Charlotte, NC, where a small town girl living in a lonely world did not take the midnight train going anywhere, but instead the midday plane going to Philadelphia. Once there, I somehow managed to kill 5 hours of layover time before my flight at 6:20 pm to Rome, Italy! The flight was, as most international flights are, unbearably long, slow, and boring. You try to trick your body into thinking that it’s time to sleep, but it knows better. And as punishment, it makes you toss and turn the whole flight. I think I would have traded my right hand just to be able to lay flat somewhere, not hunched over in an airplane seat next to two other girls and a screaming baby (why are there always screaming babies on overnight flights where people are trying to sleep?).
Anyway, I FINALLY got to Rome at 9 am the next morning, and the proceeded to roll my 58-pound suitcase all over Italy. You think I jest, but just from trying to get out of the airport alone, I’m sure we’re talking the distance across Sicily. I met up with a girl going to the same place named Kim. Then we made our way to the Leonardo Express (express my …!), to get to the Rome Termini and catch a train to Florence. The Leonardo Express got us about half way through what was supposed to be a 30-min trip, and then all out stopped on the tracks. A message in Italian came over the intercom (which I translated for the girls traveling with me) that said we were on the wrong track, a train was coming towards us on the same track, and they had to wait for communication from their leaders to know what to do. So we sat on the railroad track for 45 minutes, turning our supposed 30-minute trip into an hour and 15-minute trip. On a train without air conditioning when it was 27-degrees Celsius (that’s about 81-degrees Fahrenheit).
Well, we finally got to the Rome Termini, bought our train tickets to Florence, and thought we had gotten on the right train. We checked with everyone getting on the train, and they all said that it was headed to Florence, which was correct. However, we had bought tickets for the express train to Florence, which was labeled as the train to Venice (but that stopped at Florence first, a fact we missed). This train would have taken a little over an hour to get to Florence. The train we got on took us 4 hours and we stopped every 15 minutes.
Finally, I was in Florence. I had planned to arrive at 1:30pm, and instead got there at around 6pm. I made it safely via taxi to my home-stay, and met my ‘parents’, Sonia and Marzio, and their two children Lapo and Emma. My roommate, Zhihua, got their a little later. She is from University of Hawaii and speaks no Italian. She is a very sweet girl, though, and I have enjoyed spending time with her and her group from UH.
As for my adventures with the Italian language, I found that I have gotten along fairly well and been able to talk with almost everyone I’ve come in contact with. I had a few problems asking for bug spray and a memory stick adapter, but other than that I have been very proud of myself!

As many of you may know, I will be leaving for Italy on Wednesday, May 20th! I'll be flying overnight into Rome, meeting up with a new friend, Kim, and taking a train to Florence to meet my new family for the next 6 weeks!
Hopefully this trip will give me many new adventures to share, and I wanted to be able to share them with more people at the same time, so I'll be journaling and posting pictures on this blog. (Since I'm not in Italy yet, I just grabbed this pic off the web, but there will be PLENTY of my own pictures to post very soon!)
Right now, I'm feeling a little nervous, very excited though! I can't tell you how many times I have packed and unpacked my suitcase, trying to decide what I might need over the next month and a half. It will be an interesting experience living out of a suitcase for this long. I have been on trips before, and I have been to Italy twice, but never for more than a week and a half at a time. The first part of my trip will be spent taking classes at Lorenzo de'Medici in Florence. Then, I will fly to Cefalu, Sicily for a few more classes. In Florence, I'll be living with a family, and in Sicily I will have an apartment to myself near the beach! I've got all the details planned out, in my usual style, but how they will play out in the end is a mystery! But I'll be sure to keep you updated!

The Rantings of a Single Woman at Home on a Saturday Night

I have re-emerged! I have my doubts that anyone actually reads this, but who knows! Tonight, at least, I am writing for my own mental and emotional well-being, regardless of who's toes I might step on. Tonight, I am that most cliche and taboo "bitter single woman." And yet can you blame me? Here I sit, in my pajamas on a Saturday night watching reruns of Frasier. Now, I'm not so vain as to think that I'm anyone's Angelina Jolie (do those women even exist?), but I like to think of myself as at least semi-attractive. And anyone who has ever tasted anything I've baked has always followed it with, "wow, you are going to make someone a great wife one day!" Both trivial things to be sure, but would you believe me if I said that I also have a great personality? All this, irrelevant. Because the fact of the matter is, I've seen what is on the market nowadays, and quite frankly, I prefer Frasier and my pajamas.
I have met the workaholics. The otherwise kind, romantic gentlemen who I'm sure would be charming dates if only you can pry them away from their Blackberry long enough to have an actual conversation. And no matter how charming you might have been, you can forget a second date; it was a sheer blessing from the dating gods that you found a gap in their schedule that they could go out the first time. To try and tempt fate again would be just too much. Perfect husbands I'm sure for the wives who would rather see their husband's money than their husbands, but not for me.
And then of course we have the opposite, the "artistic," "free-spirited" ones who spend the entire date talking about themselves, their feelings, their dreams. Quite an easy date really, but really more suited for the deaf mute than the vibrant, intelligent female like myself. And don't get me wrong, I love a stroll in the park as much as the next romantic, but on multiple dates to avoid paying for meals...not nearly as effective.
I've dated the sentimentalists, usually just coming out of a long relationship, wanting to take things slow...unless of course you're willing to come back to their place tonight for a drink. Eventually, though, no matter how sweet they seem, some old flame will call them back one day, and all of the sudden its, "Oh, I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression." Of course you didn't. You're a man. I get it. Same thing with the overly anxious room-workers who ooze self-confidence out of every pore, only usually that self-confidence pushes the fast forward button on the whole thing and its over within the week.
Of course there is no way that I can cover all of you lovely specimens (yes, bad pun intended) out there. But I would be remiss to leave out the good guy, the friend, the sweet little back-up plan that waits himself right into a groomsman position at the love of his life's wedding. Here is where I am a bit reluctant to say it, because I know guys like you well, but I'm going to anyway: no woman wants a timid man. We want to be the demure, coy, elusive ones. And dammit, we want you to chase us, to fight for us, to sweat and struggle for us. Granted that you, gentlemen, will get turned down. No questions about it. But if she isn't worth the feeling of rejection, then she wasn't worth going after. More plainly put, if you don't have the balls to ask her out, then maybe you aren't really that into her.
I know we live in a day and age where it is perfectly acceptable for a woman to ask a man out on a date. And I thoroughly resent it. Men, how can you allow us to emasculate you like this? What an opportunity to show us how bold and daring, how adventurous you are. Not to mention how caring...to shelter us from the possibility of having to face rejection. How could you let us take that away from you? I, for one, refuse to do so.
Of course, the classic argument would be that I am tearing down all these stereotypes without giving a realistic ideal to put back up in their place. And that is because, honestly, I haven't met him yet, so I can't tell you what he is. I am not, at least in this respect, a perfectionist...I like to think of myself as a realist, and that I do understand at least a little bit about men. A love for sports/action movies/video games/other forms of controlled violence, (we'll call it) "appreciation" for the female anatomy and it's...diversions, cringes of disgust and fear at the slightest mention of emotions, and an awed incomprehension (humor me) of the female brain and its idiosyncrasies.
I will say of this last one that I do find for the most part it is from a sheer lack of effort on the part of men that they don't "understand" women. Most of the time, though we try to be "supportive," we hate your bowling trophies as much as you hate our shoe fetish, which is why its helpful if men and women have time away from each other to do things that only men or only women seem to like to do. But in the time that you men do spend with us, for goodness sake, at least try to be a little romantic. We won't take you to the mall on a shoe expedition if you don't take us to a sports bar to watch that "big game" (unless of course you are one of those brave women who is actually into that...in which case, kudos). But men, do your homework. If you seriously don't know what women want, then invest the time and money and rent a chick-flick (think of it as an educational experience...or a conversation starter...or a way to get laid...whatever). We're not as difficult as you make us out to be...at least not in the beginning.
Perhaps you think me foolish and old-fashioned, and that is perfectly fine with me. Maybe you think I am being unfair, and I am...but you know what, I have a right to be. Because IF I ever decide to enter into wedded bliss, it is going to be with a man as close to my ideal as I can find. In my beliefs, this is something you only get one shot at (or at least, only one at a time), its not something to be taken lightly, and I believe its something I can afford to be a little picky about. And if that means that I end up in my 40s watching Frasier in my pjs on Saturday nights, then so be it!

Journey to Bethlehem

Finally, I've made it home for Christmas Break! As I sit in my room on the second floor of my house, I have a clear view of the centurion soldier riding up and down the street on his horse, and I can hear the census taker blowing his trumpet as the line of cars idle by. Let me explain.
I live in a tee-tiny little town, on the corner of my block, next to a Presbyterian church. On a normal day, my street is so quiet you could lay down in the middle of the road for hours and not have to worry about getting run over (and yes, we've been bored enough to test this theory on many occasions). But for three nights out of the year, the tiny little church in this tiny little town puts on what is called "Journey to Bethlehem," which is a spectacular reproduction of Mary and Joseph's trip to Bethlehem and the birth of the baby Jesus, complete with live animals (the aforementioned horse, as well as donkeys and sheep) and spotlight-star shining up over the manger. Cars line both sides of the block for hours to drive through the scenes; so many cars that the town's police had to start coming out to direct the flow of traffic and add lanes to the small unmarked road using traffic cones. Needless to say, it has become quite a popular event around the area.
I suppose it's partly because it is such a great production to put people in the Christmas spirit that we don't mind being trapped in our house all evening for one weekend out of the year. Yup, trapped. As I mentioned, we live on the corner, and we have 3 driveways...but on this one weekend, the way that they route traffic blocks both of our front driveways with people waiting in line to go in, and our back driveway as people exit out the back. So we're completely hedged in by a line of traffic on a block that barely sees any action at all most days of the week. It's different, to say the least. But it's a worthwhile sacrifice to make to allow the "Journey" to continue. It has gone on for many years now, and we go through it every year, because it is such a great reminder of why we celebrate Christmas at all. And whether you are 'religious' or not, it really doesn't matter...the love, joy, humility, and hope that the Christmas story represents are as relevant today as they were over 2000 years ago.

"So...Italian major...what are you going to do with that???"

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that response...I could pay for grad school! I'm not going to lie, it's beginning to get a little bit old. Not that it's going to change my mind, I love where I am and I would not change it for the world. I'm not asking anyone to understand that, but anyone who is truly passionate about what they do knows what I'm talking about, and I pity anyone that is doing something they are not passionate about.
What bothers me a smidge is how people minimize me as a person because of my major...as if I'm doing Italian because I couldn't do law school or med school or whatever else it is that is considered to be so fantastic. Maybe that's the problem with colleges in general...they put way too much emphasis on classifying you by your major, until you become a number within a group of English majors or History majors or whatnot. I understand the need for specialization, and even the desire for it by students (God knows I would die if I had to take another math or science class!), but somewhere along the way, to use a cliche', you can't see the tree for the forrest. In other words, people begin to look at students based on their academic grouping and ignoring the things that make them unique. Sure, I'm a proud Italian major, and I love it, but it's only a small part of who I am as a person.
I'll end my rant shortly, because I have a Beethoven exam to study for, but I suppose the point I would like to make is for goodness' sake...get to know people! Your teachers, your friends/acquaintances, your parents, your grocery clerk, your mailman...people are more than their titles, and maybe I'm wrong here, but I can speak at least for myself: they have a deep desire to be known, to have others recognize them for who they are and appreciate them, to have other people witness and share their lives.

On a slightly different note, I've had a suggestion to write blogs in Italian, which I would LOVE to do, but that would severely limit my readership...which defeats the purpose a little, no? Chissa', maybe I'll try it someday, for now I'll just throw out little Italian phrases here and there, and kudos to anyone who takes the time to figure them out ;) !
Sogni d'oro!