Any TCU student knows to silently curse the word Sodexho whenever they hear it. This gigantic corporation caters large clientele like Marriott and also provides foodservice to SO many of America’s universities. Sodexho is the reason that TCU administrators give us for having to raise the amount required for on-campus meal plans. Sodexho holds the only contact to provide food at TCU, save for outside events allowed to use the Kelly Alumni Center. Sodexho is the corporation that charges super-inflated prices for meals. Sodexho is the system; Sodexho is die Macht (Bertold Brecht is coming to mind at the moment). Why am I bringing this up since I’m living in Florence and not eating TCU food?

I can’t escape it. This morning I was in Mercato Centrale this morning, a building housing scads of stands of independent vendors for fruits, veggies, meats, cheeses, wines, cappuccinos; everything. Halfway through the trip, I turned a corner and saw it. One of the vendors had posted on the wall all of the endorsements it had received. What was at the top of the list? SODEXHO!!!

Perhaps I’m overreacting. Perhaps Sodexho might have some quality and reasonably priced food somewhere. If you know of any instances, I’d LOVE to know. At least that would justify this vendor having their seal of approval. Still, in the middle of Florence, Italy I still have to be reminded of this corporation and all of the faux-gourmet filth they stand for. OK, that was enough of a rant for this entry; I’m serious though – you know of a good situation that Sodexho’s involved in? Do share!

Have you ever noticed that, no matter how hard you try, sometimes you can never get to “Cloud 9?” I’ve been trying like crazy today, but there are always little details that slip me up.

I started out the day going to the Central Market. For those from Texas, the Florence Mercato Centrale blows the HEB version out of the water. This is two-story and is full of different meat, cheese, fruit, bakery and wine stands. This was only the second time I’ve been there; every other time I’ve thought of going I haven’t had enough confidence in my Italian skills to try ordering quantities of foods. This morning, it worked. The vendors understood me, gave me smiles and those always-appreciated head nods affirming “you’re getting closer.”

Then on the way to the apartment I met our landlady in the street and had a wonderful little conversation with her. She speaks incredibly little English and I speak almost as little Italian. She asked me questions on if our water was hot (we went five days after the leaking sink fix) and if my roommate had told me she’d showed him how to drain the shower (we’d also had a problem of the shower overflowing onto the floor if it lasted longer than 45 seconds — which wasn’t a problem with only cold water). I said yes and then told her that the window works great for the steam (there’s a window in our shower to let the steam out; another side-note: we learned the word for window yesterday in Italian class, so I already got a chance to use it). I left Adua (the landlady) and was pretty excited: I finally felt like the semester had a good future.

Later in the morning I went to the Accent Center and checked my e-mail. Eric, a friend who works at my parent’s business in Iowa, had helped me with deploying a computer programming project and it works. I felt like it couldn’t get better. I went to the bookstore that the Accent Center pointed me to and found a copy of “Rhetoric” in a version of Aristotle’s collected works that I need to read for my Classical Rhetoric course. Perfect! Things couldn’t go worse. After lunch I was going to talk with my parents via webcam.

The one downside to the day: technology. Actually, that’s the one downside to many of my days; go figure! For some reason, the video conferencing we’d installed on my Mom’s computer that worked with mine while I was in the states doesn’t want to work now. I’m still confused on it, but my guess is that a firewall is closed somewhere between Italy and America. I know, that’s pretty general and non-specific, but I’m at the point where that’s the only thing I can say in confidence about it. Even though we couldn’t get the webcams communicating, I did talk to both of my parents on instant messenger. I found out that the Drake University student newspaper used three of my pictures on a story they did of the soccer team. That was like a cherry added to a cake without frosting: good sometimes if you have the right wine (or I guess “whine”) with it. Hehehe.

The day has gone well since then. I was able to do audio chats on my Mac with two friends, one from the University of Chicago Div. School and another one who left this afternoon from TN to come over to Scotland to work on his PhD in Theology. Why does audio chat work with them and not my parents? Macs and PCs. Why can’t we all just get along?!? The working solution for this one is that my mom is going to borrow her mom’s iBook and use it to talk to me Friday night. That’ll be the first time we’ll have heard each other’s voices since I left on Aug. 31st. We could give in and just pay for the cell phone costs, but why should we do that when the technology’s supposed to solve all of the problems? (I know: a little sardonic,; but, I don’t care!)

I may be plummeting from cloud 8.95 soon since my first Italian test is tomorrow. Then again, if it goes well it might be the elusive icing on the cake. We’ll see! Pretty soon Erin, one of the TCU girls, is coming over to teach us how to make an Asiago cream sauce. She’s the epicurean master of our group.

Monday. My longest day of classes. I haven’t had Monday classes since the Fall of 2004. Ugh. This was a little hard to realize today. Nevertheless, I’m in love. No, for those reading this, it’s not to a specific girl: I absolutely love my Monday classes.

It may not remain so as the semester continues; we’ll see. The day starts out with an Art History site visit (changes weekly) from 10:45am-1:00pm. We then usually have a lecture from 2:00pm-3:15pm based on what we saw during the morning visit. Today lasted longer than it normally will. We met at 10:45 and, besides a 25 minute lunch break, didn’t end until 3:35. I then have Italian from 4:00-6:00. Oh Italian … more to come at the end.

Today’s site visits were phenomenal. Since it was our first session of class, our professor took us up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is on a hill on the opposite side of the city from Fiesole (a former Etruscan town outside of the city that we went to with Dr. Antrim while he was still here — side note: he saw the Grateful Dead perform there in ’85 — how cool is that?!?). At the Piazzale was a church, the Church of San Miniato al Monte. Most of the insides of the churches in Florence are treasures, but this one also had a beautiful outside.

There were a couple of things that happened which made this place extra special. First, the church is Benedictine, so we sat in the sacristy and traced the life of St. Benedict through the frescoes on the ceiling. Incredible! Then, when we were looking into the choir area, one of the monks came out and talked to us, asking our teacher where we were from. When she answered that we were all American students (sono studenti americani), he asked if any of us were from New Orleans. None of us were from the city itself, but it was still incredible to see that it was on their minds. He was a little man with flowing white robes, but the concern was showing on his face when he asked. (I’m kind of at a loss on what to say now — so touching).

After we left, we went to the Museo Archeologico. When we got there we found out that the Roman and Greek sections were closed off due to technical issues. If I could only describe the frustration seeping through my body when I heard that. We went upstairs and saw the Etruscan exhibit, which our professor used to show the inspirations and earlier models that the Renaissance artists used in sculpting. She pointed out where they got the proportions of the body right and where they got it wrong. Then, as we were getting ready to leave, someone from the Museum came in and said that they’d found enough museum staff to let us go up and see the Greek and Roman objects. Phew! I was giddy (a state that sometimes frightens those who haven’t seen me in it before). I was first in line when we got upstairs and it definitely matched up to the expectations. Some of these works I’d seen in books on the classical periods; these were the actual versions right in front of me!

Italian was good, too, but it couldn’t match up to the rest of the day. My one regret is that this is the one day that I didn’t bring my camera (I know, I’ll be kicking myself on this one for months). I’m also probably going to go up to the church again some night in the next couple of weeks and listen to the monks sing the gregorian chants at their evening mass (vespers?).

Wow, I’m worn out just typing that one. Needless to say, at the moment I’m in love with Mondays.

Something I never expected to do in Florence was go to a classical music concert. I’d gone to symphony concerts for 5-6 years in middle school and high school and the thought that I should go to one (or now several) in Florence never even came to my mind. Luckily, it was exactly what Erin was looking for. Erin, a girl from TCU who has a great taste in actually deciding on things, decided to get some of us to go to a chamber orchestra concert with her.

It was held in the church of Orsanmichele, a place with amazing acoustics. It was the real thing. Hearing the horns warming up before the orchestra (Orchestra Da Camera Fiorentina) even came to their chairs was amazing. The tone filled the room: I could feel the horn vibrations on my body. Then they came out. The place held probably around 300 people and was silent. If it wasn’t, we’d have been able to hear it!

They only did four of the five pieces listed on the program. I think the one they left out was a Haydn piano concerto. The cellist they had was good too; it may have just been the acoustics, or he may really have been that good: I couldn’t tell which was the case.

Perhaps it’s the little things that made the performance stand out. It was in the space the pieces were written for. The etiquette for performances crosses cultures (you don’t clap between movements, the string instruments clap the same way (tapping their bows across their hands)). The names of the works in Italian are referenced by “La”, “Re”, and “Fa” maggiore, and not by the D major notation I’m used to. Maybe another little thing that makes all of them fun is that, whether in high school or in Florence, the people I went with were great. They loved the music as much as I did. That might be what makes it stand out most of all.

Rain, rain, go away! The rain finally stopped this morning in Siena a while after we arrived this morning. We were soaked, but it ended up being a fun visit. We started the trip at the Church of San Domenico. This church is also the Basilica of St. Catherine. In it we saw not only a lot of paintings hanging on the walls, but also a crypt that has St. Catherine’s head preserved as well as one of her fingers. I’m still not sure what to think of those … 😉

The rest of Siena was fun and we saw several gorgeous frescoes in the Cathedral as well as some phenomenal sculptures (the Donatello one was great). After we finished the majority of the day in Siena, we spent a couple of hours at San Gimignano. The city is notable for anything, other than some great wines, a bunch of touristy shops, and again, some great wines.

Perhaps the most telling way to see the fun stuff from today is to look at the gallery. I put comments on each picture if you click on the info tab. Enjoy!

Sometimes it’s amazing how the most mundane things can bring us out of our ‘shells.’ Whenever I’m adapting to new cultures, my style is to first observe and then emulate. I’m one who looks at different cultures and doesn’t dive right in but instead tries to find niches to which I can adapt. I’ve been doing this in Florence. Today, when I was thinking during my Siena trip about how I was interacting, I realized that something happened yesterday which forced me to ‘step into’ Florence.

When Brett (roommate) came to Italian class yesterday afternoon, he said that some of our neighbors and our landlady were in our apartment. He said there was water leaking through the walls and they were trying to fix it. I figured it wasn’t a problem and that they were taking care of it. When we got back after class, Brett was talking on the phone and went into the bedroom. It was me and the Italians, alone! Our landlady (whose name I found out is Adua (not sure that’s the spelling)) came up to me and starting talking really fast in Italian and was making all kinds of motions. She doesn’t speak any English, and my Italian is limited to an incredibly select group of words, so motions were what carried the conversation.

From what Brett had told me, I pieced together that something under our sink was leaking and they were fixing it. It turns out that one of my neighbors (Mustafah) below us, who I’d met before on the street, was working on it. Adua was so nice and was showing me that for 1.30 euros they were able to get the replacement joint and a bunch of teflon tape to carry the water past where it was leaking. Amazing! Mustafah spoke a few English words and he enjoyed joking (like trying to convince me he’d studied in New York — a questioning look got him laughing hysterically).

I told Jeremy (one of the guys from Accent) about it today on our trip and I realized that it was my first actual intercultural experience. Commercial interactions, no matter how challenging they may be, aren’t actually communication. They don’t require anything other than currency and finger-pointing. Trying to discover how they’re rerouting what I now consider renewing water, however, takes facial expressions, takes insecurity, and takes willingness to break out of the shell. I’ve known for over a year that I’d have to do it eventually in Italy; it’s ironic that it took this long. Water cleanses; water removes; water renews.

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.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to have classes. Then again, I so do! Classes begin tomorrow and I’m anxious. Even though I’ve been working on my directed study for Classical Rhetoric, I’m ready for my classes here as well. I’m picking up little Italian phrases here and there, but since I’m going to spend 2 hrs per day (Mon-Thurs) on it in class every afternoon, I’ll pick a lot more up very soon!

This weekend we have a trip planned to Siena and to San Gimignano. We also head to Rome for a three day trip at the end of September. Our group of students (the 8 of us from TCU) are still talking about what other side trips we’re going to do. For sure I’ll do some with them, but then again, I’ll probably do a couple alone as well. We’re all pretty indecisive at nights on where to eat (it’s like we’re in Ft. Worth and having the same problem — I guess it’s universal), but we’re starting to mix well together. We all have our unique personality quirks and now that we’re mostly aware of them, we’re not shocked quite as easily.

I’m off to meet the others for dinner (cooking in the girls’ apartment), so ciao!

Oh yeah, PS – I just read the TCU beat OU in football — why does the cool stuff happen when I’m across the pond? Oh well, great to hear!

Well, I just got to our hotel where the TCU students are staying before we move into our apartments tomorrow. My body is revolting; it’s as if I’m telling myself that I’m worthless and can’t do anything. Then again, I guess I can’t. I carried my 40lb appalachian trail bag and my Burton snowboarding bag and my laptop case through the Florence airport about three times. Why would I be going through the Florence airport three times? To go through customs; or at least because I think I need to go through customs.

The European customs boggle my mind. Whenever I’ve returned to America from abroad I’ve had to check in through customs at the first place I enter. I didn’t understand the “schengen” system before I just learned the hard (or I guess long) way. It turns out that once you check in to any of the countries participating in the schengen visa system, you don’t have to recheck through customs at any of the other countries. So we hit the problem in Germany where they had us go through with every different gate we entered. We had the opposite problem in Milan where we were confused since we made it to the gate without ever being asked to go through it. When we checked there they said to do it at our final destination. When we found the customs area at Florence, they said we didn’t have to since we’d already checked in. Why is it that America is so paranoid about our borders yet the Europeans are so lax? Cultural shock never stops happening I guess. We’re going out to dinner with an Accent Center person and Dr. Antrim (Dean Volcansek’s husband) who is meeting us here.

I’m in Frankfurt, Germany. Things are really different; I knew they would be. It’s fun to see all of the differences. I’m waiting by a bistro bar with a girl from TCU named Amanda to find out what gate our flight to Milan leaves from. I’m hearing 4 different languages from the people sitting around us. It’s great! I’m kicking myself because I really let my German slip last fall after my intense summer of it.

Languages are one noticeable difference, but even more striking is style. It may just be Europeans or the rest of the world in general, but not everyone wears similar clothes. Their individual choices help them look their best. I just saw a knock-out airport employee who would have looked good anyway, but looked especially good because the green hue of her uniform accentuated her blonde hair. I know, hers isn’t really a choice on style (at least I’m pretty sure the airport employees can’t choose custom uniforms), but something in the way she wore it made it stand out.

While I say things are different, we also just noticed a link that shows how connected our world is. Amanda was laying on the chairs trying to take a nap and randomly looked up and said, “wow, those are some tall guys.” I looked up and there was Dirk Nowitzky of the Dallas Mavericks walking about 20 feet away from us (I’m kicking myself for not having my camera assembled before it happened). We just left Dallas and the US, and an hour in we see an NBA player. All things here are different, yet not really!