Florence, Italy: Breathing

I’m breathing once again. The air in Florence is cooler, I found an iron so I could wear different shirts, and my classes have begun. I’ve now had all of my classes except for my Art History, which starts next Monday.

Italian is good. It’s a conversation class, which will take a little for me to get used to. I’ve taken three years of Koine Greek and a year’s worth of Theological German, which was just learning to read and translate. The nice thing about Italian is that we meet for two hours on 4 days of the week. It’s intense. One of the downsides is that we don’t have a textbook. I stopped at Edisons (more to come in the article on living here) and picked up an Italian/English dictionary. We do have a workbook they provide us, but none is in English. The nice thing is that I’m (secretly – to some) a grammar nerd, so I’ve been picking up bits and pieces as I’ve read through it. The workbook is starting to look like a giant mind game that I get to play.

The Political Science course is amazing. Davide, my instructor, started the class off today by getting us into some great discussions. If the Religion department wasn’t so cool at TCU, there’s a chance I’d have ended up a Political Science major. The discussions are great and we have to pay attention to news and events to engage in them. I love it! It reminded me of how much I missed Dr. Carter’s 8am Intro to Poli Sci course my freshman year.

I also successfully ordered in Italian for my first time today. I spoke words and didn’t just point and smile (I know, sounds like a photography concept). I figured out when I first got here, that if I had the change in my hand for the amount of something, and pointed, they were pretty willing to sell it to me, even if I didn’t know how to ask for it in Italian. I’m guessing that’s probably a universal thing. Tonight, Brett (my roommate) and I went to a Chinese restaurant three blocks from our apartment and ordered. You may be thinking that two Americans ordering Chinese food in Italian is strange, but it fit! The food was good too. Rice: perfect stickiness; pollo generale (General Chicken): not spicy enough, but not deeply fried like in America.

I’ve been here now for five days, I’ve walked probably over 24 miles, and I’m starting to feel like I’m not just on a vacation.