First Sunday in Italy

Ciao Tutti!
I arrived in Italy late late Monday night. The trip over wasn’t too bad, minus the fact that NWA lost one of my bags. Upon arrival in Detroit, my plane decided to sit on the ground for an hour before pulling into the gate. As a result, I had to run across the airport to make my flight to Paris, and my bag didn’t quite make it on board. Luckily, the bag I did get had some underwear in it. And my heart felt a new joy a few days later when my bag showed up at school.
We’ve only had one day of classes, and one of my classes was cancelled that day, so I’ve had… one class. I got put into intermediate Italian, which is quite possibly a huge mistake. There are three girls in our class who speak pretty fluently, and the rest of us get confused. A lot. Tomorrow I’ll have Italian Cinema, Italian, and Photographing Florence. I’m currently signed up for one-too-many classes. Hopefully one will scream “drop me!” by the end of the week. Each class only meets once a week, but for three hours. Luckily, I have no classes on Friday, which is molto bene for travelling, etc.
I’m living with Alyssa from GW and Colleen from Purdue, and our apartment is cosy. It’s small, but we decorated today, so it feels much more home-y. We’re starting to find out way around the city. I’d say I can make my way around at least the main streets of the city centre. Our apartment is also in a great location. It’s literally around the corner from school, which is super convenient. It is a 5-10 minute walk from the Piazza dei Republica, and right near the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens. I, at least, really love the location. It’s pretty quiet at night, but busy during the day, and everything we need is within our neighborhood. The past two days have been really relaxing, probably due to the fact that we were running all week long. Quick recap:
Monday: flying flying flying. Sitting sitting sitting in the airport. Driving driving driving to the apartment.
Tuesday: Tours of Accademia Italiana. The school is mostly Italian and international students, which is pretty rad. They fed us, gave us a placement exam for Italian, then we went on tours of the city in small groups. That night, some of us went out to dinner at a restaurant on the river, got gelato, and sketched around town a bit.
Wednesday: All the Arcadia program students got the typical orientation talk. We also learned about this permit to stay thing we had to have, and it turned out we had to run all over to buy stuff for it and make copies of 95 different things. And all of us had to use the same copier within 2 hours. It was intense. After that got done, though, we went on a bus tour of some more of the city, driving up into the surrounding hill towns. We ate at a delicious restaurant called Enotecha La Sosta del Rossellino, which had the best gnocchi IN THE WORLD. He makes it from just potatoes, and nothing else.
Thursday: Got into school at 8:30 for the permit to stay stuff, then walked across town to find the internet store. Once that mission was accomplished, I made my way back to school for Italian. After, I dashed to the other building for Mixed Media, but it was cancelled. So, I walked back along the river… and got followed most of the way back. Usually people during the day just stare at you, and it’s only at night when they’ll actively call you and follow you. Fortunately my evil stare sent them away. Yes, I have an evil stare. That night we went to a club called Twice, where I got 20 euro stolen out of my coat pocket. I took it out to buy something, but we got distracted talking to people, so I discreetly slipped it into my coat pocket. Evidently someone was watching, because when I went to grab it the 20 euro was no more. My shoes also killed my feet, but they’re currently recovering. It was a sad day feet-and-money-wise, but still a fun night.
Friday: Slept in. Went shopping with Colleen and Morgan during the day, FINALLY finding a curling iron. I found it at a phone store. Sure, it would be easiest for them to be at a cosmetics store or a pharmacy, but when you find a curling iron at a phone store, you feel like you’ve really earned it. That night, 12 of us went to a place called Yab. For girls, the dinner, a bottle of wine and a bottle for water for ever 4 people cost 1 euro. For guys, it cost 25 euro. Sometimes it pays to be a girl. The whole night only cost 4 euro for me. Beautiful.
Saturday: Slept in. The apartment was quiet when I woke up, so I assumed Colleen and Alyssa had woken up during AM hours and were off gallivanting. False. They emerged around 3:30. We played the lazy game yesterday, watching Friends, getting settled in, and Skyping to lovely people back home.
Sunday: Slept in. Went grocery shopping. I decided our kitchen/living area needed to be a bit more home-y, so I started decorating. Mid-decorating, I open a drawer to put something away and discover bliss. In the drawer is 2 whisks, strainers, many kitchen utensils, bottle openers, and (drum roll please) a wine bottle opener. Now, we have been looking for a wine opener since we got here, because we had a bottle of Italian wine bought (by Colleen) and ready to inaugurate our trip. What commenced was a classic struggle between (wo)man and inanimate object. Days earlier, people at tried, to no avail, to open the bottle with a fork, knife, and brute strength. This made getting the cork out with a regular opener mighty difficult. In the end, we had Colleen standing against the wall holding the bottle, me sitting on the floor, legs on the wall on either side of her, pulling with all my might, and Alyssa taking pictures. Eventually, (wo)man won. Sorry, inanimate object. I’m sure we’ll battle again another day.
Now I must sleep, because I have to awaken at 7:30 AM. It’s almost like being in high school again. Only way better, because I’m in Italy and not in high school.
Ciao ciao!