Florence
I love you, could you find it in your heart to take me in?
Reasons why I could totally live in Italy
Renters rights are on my side
Maybe this shouldn’t be the top reason as to why I should live here but it was the first to pop into my head, so be it. Like the title says, renter’s rights are totally on my side. Rent here in Florence is incredibly high and just about matches what someone would earn here any given month so needless to say that in addition to being high it’s a bit unreasonable. But on the flipside, if times were to be rough and rent couldn’t be paid for whatever reason it would take years before a landlord could evict you. Yes, read that part again, I said years! Not that I plan on staying here rent free knowing that I could slip through the cracks but I do feel some peace knowing that if I were to fall behind I wouldn’t have to worry about being locked out of my apartment a day later.
If I marry, I keep my last name.
A little vain and ahead of my time but something that has always been a concern to me. I just happen to like the way my name sounds as is, it’s not my fault I’ve grown accustomed to it after hearing it for 25 years. Here in Italy the woman keeps her last name in marriage. Your last name is your way of tracing your roots, if you get rid of your last name you’re erasing your link to your past and Italians are all about family history so there’s no acceptable reason as to why anyone would want to do such a thing. Major plus.
So long gas prices!
Everyone walks here. In my time here I can say that I’ve been on a bus twice, a taxi maybe three times and on the train once. Every other time I have been on foot. All 24 hours of the last 45 days that I’ve been here. Need something from the store? You walk. Meeting someone at the train station? You walk. Want to see the city from the Piazzale Michelangelo on the other side of the Arno? You walk. Walk, walk, walk. The center of the city, which is where I am, is fairly small and has very narrow streets, some even going as far as prohibiting vehicles. Europe has adapted and created some of the smallest cars known to man (well at least to Americans) but even then the main method of transportation here is on foot. I feel like I’m in high school all over again whenever I find out someone I know here has a car, “Oh wow, they drive!”.
Italians are great at arguing
Need I say more? I think I was somehow born in Italy and then taken to California all before the ink on my birth certificate dried.
Spring Breakdown
A week in Izmir, Turkey or a tour of Italy? That what I find myself asking these days as Spring Break is quickly approaching. I’m torn between the two and can’t decide. Why can’t I do both? Spring Break should totally be two weeks instead of just one like back in elementary school and then I’d have more than enough time to go on both of these amazing trips. Izmir is Homer’s birthplace, Turkey’s third largest city and home to the Temple of Artemis, the Gate of Heracles (Hercules) and the House of the Virgin. Being Christian and currently studying mythology those are all major plus points! But at the same Italy is home to-me! Well at least for the next month it is and I must say that for the past month and some change, it has treated me very very well. So here I am in this extraordinary country living in Toscana, and hours away from both the countries capital and Vatican City. How can I go back to San Diego without having explored outside of Florence? I know that whatever I choose to do it’ll be an adventure as I’ll be traveling alone and I have 11 days to do so. Pictures to come soon!
Halfway there…
So as of today I have been here for five weeks and I’ll be here another five. The halfway mark, it should all be downhill from here, if my days and weeks have been going by super fast already I can imagine that from here they’re really going to fly by. Ten weeks sounds like a long time and it kind of is, I’ve never been away from home or San Diego this long and honestly there isn’t a whole lot I miss right now. The transition hasn’t been as hard as I thought it’d be and I’ve adjusted so much so that I actually want to live here now. Not forever, but at least one full year. I think about it and I wonder if I’d ever miss home or not. As different as Florence is to San Diego I can’t say there’s anything that I’ve incredibly missed, nothing that I can’t wait another five weeks to see, feel, touch, taste or smell.
Cooking class
I feel very lucky that I get to say that I went to the free cooking class organized by AIFS, not once, but twice! I thought going back a second time would be a bit of a drag as we’d be cooking the same thing as the week before but the second time around I was able to do the things I didn’t get to do the first time. From the beginning the menu sounded far more complicated than anything I thought I’d be able to accomplish in one class let alone go home and cook on my own later without the help of 3-4 chefs. The menu consisted of millefoglie di verdure, ravioli di ricotta e spinaci and for dessert panna cotta which literally translates to cooked cream. Everything was so delicious and the hands-on tutorial was definitely memorable. Italians are known for eating a ton of pasta and now when I go back home I can say that I made and ate my very own! My favorite part of the meal was the appetizer and I don’t even like eggplant. When I saw what ingredients we were using I thought I’d try it just so I can say I did and so I didn’t seem rude but after my first bite I wanted more, I think I ended up eating about two the first week and another two the second week. That one is definitely one I’ll be making for my family back home. The ravioli was great because it was so fresh and of course no complaints for the dessert as its creamy texture was enough to make me want to make some more that night. I truly enjoyed the classes and wouldn’t mind going back at some point during my stay here to take another class.
Pisa
Our second weekend here and my roommates and I decided to trek outside the city to the great city of Pisa to see the famous Leaning Tower for ourselves. Let me just say that my first impression of it was, “That’s it?”, haha, for so many years I’ve heard of this great tower leaning as if about to fall and then I see it for the first time and I think someone’s come in during the night and shrunk it about five times it’s original size, but no, I was wrong. It really is that size. The ride there was pretty cool as it was my first time on the train here in Italy and it was only an hour away. On the way to the tower we opted to walk instead of talking the bus, we had already gotten used to walking everywhere here in Florence so we thought it wouldn’t be that bad in Pisa, except the tower wasn’t anywhere near as close as anything here in Florence. We quickly decided we’d be taking the bus back on our way home. The city of Pisa itself though is a lot like Florence, its buildings and people are similar. I wish I could just put them in my pocket and show them to everyone I know. I didn’t get to climb un the tower but just looking at it straight on I was able to see just how crooked it was, I thought it was going to fall just by looking at it, I’d hate to know what it would have felt like climbing up. Of course, I had to buy a little replica of it so I guess in a way I can show everyone back home just what it looks like.
Language Barriers
I’ve known for quite some time about this Florence trip and that I wanted to come, so in preparation I began taking Italian 101 last semester so that when I came I would have at least enough knowledge to keep me from getting lost or into trouble. I’ve always heard that Italian is like Spanish and that if you were to speak to an Italian in Spanish they’d understand you. Not really! Luckily most of the locals that I’ve encountered here have spoken either English or Spanish and that has helped out molto! But there have been a few occasions, this past weekend especially, where I have not been able to communicate at all in any of the three languages. I can speak very little and very basic Italian, I can understand just a bit more. This weekend however I met a boy that spoke only his native tongue of Italian. Being with my more advanced roommate she helped me translate whatever I didn’t understand, but then she went home and I was left to fend for myself on this battlefield called a language barrier. I have never felt so hopeless, there was nothing I could say that this boy would understand and there was not much he could say to me that I would understand. My limited vocabulary soon ran out and I was left saying “Si, si”, “Molto freddo” and “Non capisco” for the rest of the night. Fun. There were some phrases which I heard that I sort of understood what he was talking about but for most of it I was left in the dark. Before this encounter I knew I wanted to learn as much Italian as possible to blend in with the locals. After this encounter however I know that I definitely need to learn as much Italian so I can manage a conversation without relying on friends for help.
My neighborhood
Let me just start off by saying that I absolutely loooooooove my neighborhood. When I first learned where I’d be living I was ecstatic. I live literally less than a minute away from the Piazza de Santa Croce and my school. I had constantly heard about how small Florence was and how easy it was to get around but I didn’t believe it until seeing it. Everything is so close. There are markets, 99 cents stores, coffee shops and tabacchi shops everywhere I turn, not to mention the local pubs/lounges that are just within a minutes distance. Our apartment building may be extremely quiet and private but as soon as I walk out I’m enveloped by the city and reminded of where I am. There’s a mix of locals and tourists in my neighborhood with the latter sometimes dominating just a tad more because of the fact that Santa Croce is like our porch, it seems that we get a lot of the Asian tourists on our doorstep, not so much of the Americans or Brits. In fact, sometimes it can be a little bit of an issue trying to get past all of them and into our apartment as they all tend to walk in straight lines and there are so many of them or they like to stand around making it hard to get through. I really really like where I live though. It’s close enough to the piazza to see a ton of traffic, both on foot and by car but it’s also a bit off to where unless you’re going to one of the shops on the corner or the church you normally wouldn’t pass through here. I can hear the church bells every hour or the neighbors coming and going. If I want to hang out amongst the locals I can just walk half a block to the closest pub or if I want to indulge in a late night snack I can just walk around the school to get to “the secret bakery”, a sweet treat on late nights.
My apartment
The first time I heard about the apartments we were going to be living in I embraced myself for the worst, preparing myself for what I thought would be a miserable living situation for the next three months—boy was I wrong. I live in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath with 4 other classmates. Among the three bedrooms one is a single and one has two beds, leaving the third with three beds. The apartment we were put in is much more than any of us expected. We have a laundry room and a terrace, a laundry room that I swear houses an old Italian lady who one day is going to come out with her cane and pull us off our beds in the middle of the night haha, don’t ask. I haven’t seen any of the other apartments so I have nothing to compare ours to but I’m very content. It’s on the “second floor”, third for us Americans, so the walk up is brutal but the privacy more than makes up for it. The colors are vibrant, gold, red and white throughout the entire house with Firenze’s own giglio decorating the kitchen walls. The curtains are all doubled so that one can be pulled away and held with a flower pin, the couches are covered with gold patterned sofa covers, orange candles are placed in candle holders on the table when you first walk in, and our coffee table has glass compartments with potpourri inside. A lot of detail was given into where everything is. The only thing that constantly reminds me of where I am is: the shower. It’s no more than a square in the corner with a showerhead and enough space for you to stand and face one direction before feeling claustrophobic. I’m not even kidding.
Welcome dinner
Our first Monday here in Florence AIFS, the program that coordinated the trip for us, took all of us for a welcome dinner to Il Teatro, a local pizzeria. Even though we had only been in town for about 2 days it was more than enough for me to realize that most of the shops around the city are pretty small so I was curious as to see where we’d be eating and was surprised to see that not only was it indeed big enough to sit all 40 of us, it was really close to my apartment. I wasn’t sure of what to expect as I hadn’t tried any legit Italian food yet, all I knew was that the portions were probably going to be more than I usually had for dinner. The antipasti was some sort of thin bread toasted with herbs and served in slices as with a pizza, the primo piatti was lasagna and rice with pesto sauce. I’m very visual so upon first glance I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy the food but that quickly changed as I had my first bite. It was delicious! The secondo was chicken with tomatoes and mushrooms and oven roasted potatoes as a side, for dolce we had panna cotta and of course red wine to accompany everything. Usually I don’t drink wine but seeing as how we’re in Italy and having a traditional dinner I had to. I enjoyed everything, the dessert and first dish more than the others. The fact that it was everybody that came on the trip at the dinner made it that much more enjoyable.
