Firenze

Calcio – the Italian sport (yes, they claim it as their own) that the rest of the world knows as futbol or soccer. I’ve yet to make it to one of the games of the local team, Fiorentina, but I have three on my calendar. Hopefully I can get to at least one. The team is actually second in the Italian league, behind only Turin’s team, Juventus.

Every week the Accent Center has a program at least one night per week. Tonight’s was a calcetto (mini-soccer) tournament. Teams of five signed up and a tournament was organized. I didn’t end up playing; they did it in teams of 5 but there were 8 of us from TCU. Rather than go another week of everyone asking everyone else if they were still thinking on doing it I decided not to add an additional player to complicate it. The teams created their own costumes and prepared in their individual ways. The TCU team decided to go with cowboy-themed costumes. Rather than get dressed up, I took the safe route behind the camera and cheered the team on. They did admirably. Unfortunately they lost in the first round to Colorado. After that, they battled for third place and defeated those from KSU. Perhaps the funniest comment I heard in the night was from Sarah, one of the Accent staff members when the Colorado team was warming up. “Hey guys, chill, you’re playing cowboys and scarecrows!” The KSU team was dressed like the Wizard of Oz characters (no, Florence isn’t in Kansas and their Dorothy knew it). The team that ended up winning was the Fanta girls from CCSF in San Francisco.

Earlier in the day I saw something I’m glad our team didn’t try. The Soccer Mullet. It was advertised on a poster in a professional hair salon along a side route from our apartment to the Accent Center. What is a soccer mullet? My brother plays, my dad coaches, my mom refs, and none of them (thankfully!) have sported a soccer mullet. The poster (to the right) features a player(?!?) with greasy looking facial hair and uneven lengths at the top of the head sticking up and hair creeping down the back of the neck. I’ve yet to notice anyone here wearing the style; and given that it was written in English words, I’m guessing the ad is not directly aimed at the Florentines. It’s just a reminder that you never know what you’ll see when walking on the streets when you keep your eyes open.

PS – sorry about the window glare — I didn’t feel like bending down to get at eye level!

You’d think while studying my third language I’d finally learn. Nope. I’m consistent: I never do the preliminary work to make my life easier. Before going to Seattle three summers ago I put off learning to do things which would make life easier — like learning how to cook full meals. Two summers ago I could have made my arrival at Boston easier by perhaps looking at a map beforehand and knowing, at least somewhat, what section of town I was living in. This past summer it wasn’t until two hours before I left for my internship in Keokuk that I actually wrote down what route I needed to take to get there; and even then, I didn’t have an Iowa road map with me and I’d only briefly glanced at a zoomed-out version on Google Maps. For Florence, I perhaps prepared worse than all of those situations combined. I didn’t start packing until late the night before I left. I’d only briefly skimmed over some guides before taking off for Europe. I knew so little of what I was getting myself into.

So I’d hope that since I’ve taken three years of Greek at TCU as well as a year of German reading in two months that I would have at least tried to learn a little bit of the language prior to arriving. Nope! What’s worse with this one is that I had a friend who’s a priest who lived in Italy for a while give me a great way to study. Jack recommended that I get the Gospel of Mark in both print and audio in Italian and then read/listen through it several times to at least get a feel for the language. Did I do it? Nope. I actually downloaded the MP3s for free online and the text, but never spent the time to read it.

Today may mark a turning point in my semester. I know, I’m only in my third week, but I’m now at the point where I need to concentrate. Florence, or at least the center of it, is famous for not requiring Italian to live here. You can speak little bits of English and the people generally know what you’re talking about. I’ve had it — I’ve got to work on my Italian more than I am. The 1/2 hour I spend on it five days a week somehow doesn’t absorb as much as I want it to. I know: what a shock.

The sad thing is that I followed this exact pattern with Greek and German. My first weeks were lackadaisical and it picked up after that. The only reason the Greek is still there is because I took so much of it (and it is still there — I’m working on translating different parables while I’m here!). I forgot most of the German about three months after I left Boston. So I’m stuck here tonight picking out cognates here and there, knowing that at some point this language will click with me. Now I’ve got to figure out how to make sure it doesn’t wait to click until the few days before I leave!

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!