frustration & fun
Friday Sept 22- Day 3
after fruitless attempts to guess the password of the only wifi network near my homestay, I am giving in and writing this entry on Microsoft Word. I went to the Stanford center for the first time yesterday and got settled into my homestay. The center is in a beautiful piazza right on the Arno (with wireless! Wee!). I was forced to move into my host mom’s apartment before my roommate Cori arrived, which was…interesting. After 2 days of being in Florence speaking English with Aron and Alex, I suddenly had to speak Italian to this old (but really sweet and very hip) Italian lady, who knows no English. Cori and I both speak very broken Italian, so most of the time we resorted to miming wildly and/or saying words in English with “o” or “a” on the end to make them Italian.
Cori and I share a bedroom. The apartment is superposh, but vespas and buses drive by the window all night, as I found out the hard way last night, so sleeping is kind of like sleep briefly….bus….sleep….vespa….sleep….bus, and so on. We had orientation today, which basically felt like NSO all over again with a smaller group of people. Everyone was introducing themselves and actually eager to talk to each other…remember those days? It’s hilarious—there are like 7 boys in the program, and about 25 girls. For once, my life is not a sausagefest, though I did find myself alone with 4 of them in a room at one point (I left quickly). Most of them are frat boys anyway, and we know I don’t like those :P
Other than the social aspect, orientation was fairly standard. We heard the director talk about how we need to take advantage of this opportunity, we heard the police talk about how we should be aware at all times, we got syllabi, and listened to a guy talk about politics in Italy for an hour and a half. We also were supposed to have lunch with our language partners (Italian university students who are learning English), but only half of them showed up. Mine didn’t, so I spent the lunch talking with Stanford students…in English.
Our host mom just filled us to the brim with food. I feel gross. Apparently Italians eat many many more courses than Americans do—we had pasta, which I was full after. Then she served us green beans and bread, then I was done, but oh no.. she pulled some meat out of the oven. UGH. Kill me.
***
Saturday
so last night we all went out for the first time...i.e. most of the 35 people in the program squeezing into bars. first we went to this English pub, which was too tiny to accomodate us, but nevertheless fun. had some sangria and wine.. mmm! also had a dude come up to me and sing "oops i did it again." ah, american stereotypes. we also went to this really sweet bar called moyo, where i paid 5 euro for a corona (never again). a slightly drunk me and 3 quite drunk others were eventually led home by a sober cori.
woo!! drunk in florence!
after fruitless attempts to guess the password of the only wifi network near my homestay, I am giving in and writing this entry on Microsoft Word. I went to the Stanford center for the first time yesterday and got settled into my homestay. The center is in a beautiful piazza right on the Arno (with wireless! Wee!). I was forced to move into my host mom’s apartment before my roommate Cori arrived, which was…interesting. After 2 days of being in Florence speaking English with Aron and Alex, I suddenly had to speak Italian to this old (but really sweet and very hip) Italian lady, who knows no English. Cori and I both speak very broken Italian, so most of the time we resorted to miming wildly and/or saying words in English with “o” or “a” on the end to make them Italian.
Cori and I share a bedroom. The apartment is superposh, but vespas and buses drive by the window all night, as I found out the hard way last night, so sleeping is kind of like sleep briefly….bus….sleep….vespa….sleep….bus, and so on. We had orientation today, which basically felt like NSO all over again with a smaller group of people. Everyone was introducing themselves and actually eager to talk to each other…remember those days? It’s hilarious—there are like 7 boys in the program, and about 25 girls. For once, my life is not a sausagefest, though I did find myself alone with 4 of them in a room at one point (I left quickly). Most of them are frat boys anyway, and we know I don’t like those :P
Other than the social aspect, orientation was fairly standard. We heard the director talk about how we need to take advantage of this opportunity, we heard the police talk about how we should be aware at all times, we got syllabi, and listened to a guy talk about politics in Italy for an hour and a half. We also were supposed to have lunch with our language partners (Italian university students who are learning English), but only half of them showed up. Mine didn’t, so I spent the lunch talking with Stanford students…in English.
Our host mom just filled us to the brim with food. I feel gross. Apparently Italians eat many many more courses than Americans do—we had pasta, which I was full after. Then she served us green beans and bread, then I was done, but oh no.. she pulled some meat out of the oven. UGH. Kill me.
***
Saturday
so last night we all went out for the first time...i.e. most of the 35 people in the program squeezing into bars. first we went to this English pub, which was too tiny to accomodate us, but nevertheless fun. had some sangria and wine.. mmm! also had a dude come up to me and sing "oops i did it again." ah, american stereotypes. we also went to this really sweet bar called moyo, where i paid 5 euro for a corona (never again). a slightly drunk me and 3 quite drunk others were eventually led home by a sober cori.
woo!! drunk in florence!
posted by laura | 10:36 AM
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