The Bubble Bear outside La Terra dell'Orso (an entertaining toyshop where I got some shiny marbles the other day!) There are two bubble-blowing bears in the neighborhood, this one and another around the corner for a semi-trendy/semi-crunchy-granola store nearby. The bubbles from the two of them often fill the intersection, if the wind is blowing just so. It's right near the supermercato I usually go to, and I pass through that neighborhood most days.

The bubbles make my inner child smile every time.

Third Post in Less than 24 Hours... Maybe I need a life away from the computer.

This post is mainly for myself. If you want something more interesting to read and actually care to do so, go down to my previous two posts, the more recent about how I've been doing, and the second most recent about school and problems with Italian culture.
-Also, does anyone know how to do an equivalent of LJcuts for blogspot? Because that would be useful in moments like this.

Here's the book I finished reading yesterday, which I mentioned at the end of my last post. "The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: The Birthplace of the Western World". If you like history, this is an easy and fun read about the great minds of old Alex- I would recommend it.

Photo of 10.29.08

(top image- I can't get these captions to line up right with the pictures, sorry about that): The Night Bridge. I know I've taken pictures of the castle's arches over the moat before, but I like the curves and the reflections. It's too bad my camera doesn't get better resolution at night, but it's a decent camera anyway, so I'm more than happy with it. As you might be able to tell from the massive number of photos I take in general... :) 10.30.08

Unfortunately, plane tickets around Christmas time are ridiculous for going from Europe to the States at the beginning and viceversa at the end of the holiday period, meaning that I can't go home during the break, which is something of a disappointment. On the upside, tickets with the opposite directions (US coming to Europe) are quite reasonably low, so my family (parents and brother Alex) will be visiting me! I am so excited. Also, it will give me a much sooner time to count down until (in comparison with the beginning of February). In the meantime though, there is one week until I see Will and MK in Mainz, and just over a month until Leah and I go to Scotland to visit MK in Edinburgh. These breaks and visits will be a great way to encourage me to get through my classes. Joy for seeing friends and family.

LIST MAKING (for myself mainly and because why not)

Things to do in Ferrara or nearby (I reeeally need to get on this stuff, which means I'm not allowed to complain that there's nothing to do here until I actually do all this).
------------------------------------

[]-make it all the way around the Wall

[x]-the Balloon Festival

[x]-Massari Park

[x]-explore the medieval neighborhoods, old ghetto and historic center

[x]-explore some of the renaissance neighborhoods

[x]-actually go into and explore the castle, not just the courtyards

[x]-look around inside the Duomo

[x]-Grounds of Palazzo di Marfisa D'Este

[]-House of Palazzo di Marfisa D'Este

[x]-Palazzo Schifanoia

[]-Archeological Museum

[]-Casa Romei

[]-go to Pomposa

[]-reach the Po River

[]-learn some traditional Italian recipes from Gardenia.

------------------------------------------------

Places to visit outside Ferrara but in Italy (most of these I don't have full lists yet, and will have to update them with better plans at some point).

-------------------------------------

Venice

[x]-St. Mark's Cathedral

[x]-St. Mark's Piazza

[x]- The Rialto

[]-The Ducal Palace and historical museum

[]-The museum in the Jewish neighborhood

[] -Explore some "normal people" 's neighborhoods

[x]-Ride a vaporetto

[]-Ride a gondola

-------------------------
Florence

[x]-The Duomo, including Tower and Dome (if possible, climb again)

[x]-The Ponte Vecchio

[x]-Various Medici Palaces and Chapels

[x]-Santa Croce

[]-The Accademia

[]-The Uffizi

[]-See Michaelangelo's David.

---------------------------

Siena

[x]-Duomo

[x]-Pinacoteca

--------------------------
Verona

[x]-Casa di Giulietta

[x]-Roman Theater

[x]-Piazza Bra'

[x]-Giardini Giusti.

---------------------------

Comacchio

[x]-see the Po Delta and the fishermen

[x]-visit beaches

[x]-touch the Adriatic (the water was too gross to go swimming)

[x]-visit their version of the Boardwalk.

---------------------------
Sacile

[x]-visit Gina (intend to do again) and see around Sacile

[x]-visit Dolomites

[x]-visit the airbase where Gina works

[]-go skiing with Gina

[]-go skiing in the Alps or Dolomites somewhere awesome.

-------------------------------------

Bergamo

[]-meet the cousins.

--------------------------------------

Padova

[x]-Scrovegni/Giotto Chapel

[x]-Basilica di San Antonio

[x]-Prato delle Valle

---------------------------------------

Ravenna

[]-Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

[]-Basilica of San Vitale

[]-as many of the other major sites of masterwork mosaics I can get to while there.

-----------------------------------------

Trieste Area

[]-visit Remy Franklin at the UWC and maybe travel around in the area with him.

----------------------------

Bologna

?

-----------------------------------------

Rome

...soooo many things to see (plus meeting with Rikako if she's still in the country). Will make list another time.

-----------------------------------------

Sicily

[]-go to Leonforte. Meet the family again.

[]-go to Taormina and see the Greek Theater, the Roman Baths, and the Mazzaro Bay

[]-maybe go to Siracusa, because it's supposed to be really cool

[]-get to the top of Mount Etna (the volcano)

[]-go to Palermo, visit the Cappella Palatina, figure out a few other things to see there

[]-not run into any problems with the Mafia or the regular dangers of being in Sicily... oh please Lord.

[]-maybe stay in a convent and see how the nuns live, since all of Sicily's small handful of hostels should apparently be closed by then.

--------------------------------------------

Beyond visiting Will and MK, there are a few other places in Europe that, time and money allowing, I'd like to go (like Prague and Vienna, for example). But since those are so variable and less likely, I will not make lists of them now. Being here is for primarily learning about Italy rather than all of Europe, and since I'm considering these short trips to be a valuable part of my education here, I've decided they're worth the time and money - with reason, that is. Farther trips to elsewhere in Europe are going to be harder than I anticipated, but oh well. Ok, so it's good to see all these goals laid out like this - between all these and homework and applications for things to do next summer (for both of which I have additional lists), I am officially not allowed to comment that I have nothing to do. Nope nope nope. So I should go and be productive now. Or at least pretend to be. Night!

Long and Introspective Thoughts

Warning: if you just want to read about Italy/ don't care about/ aren't comfortable with reading my rambles about how I've been doing beyond traveling and classes, then don't continue. Just saying.

One is a Solitary Number

Like just a number of others I know from home who are studying abroad, I have found my time to be spent primarily alone (this applies less to those to whom I’ve talked who are in Japan who have gone with a significant group of previously-known friendly faces). This seems somewhat antithetical to the study abroad experience, as the point is to learn about another culture and, often, another language. But if you don’t have a host family who intentionally bring you into their lives, and are instead just having to go about daily life routines and classes and schoolwork by yourself, then, that is how you are – by yourself. Schedules don’t line up so easily with others around as they do at college, between farflung living locations, class times, different phases of life, different expectations for interactions, etc. etc. etc. It is of course possible to make time to interact, but much harder to run into people or to arrange those intentional meetings. This is at least my experience and somewhat shared by others with whom I’ve talked about this. I’m just glad that I do intentionally make time to hang out with or talk to others (like Leah! and when our schedules line up, Gardenia or Aurora), because otherwise I might go crazy.

Having to take care of myself and spend so much time by myself has allowed me to learn –how- to take care of myself and be alone, two things which I previously was not very good at at all. This summer, I realized that for the previous 5 years, I had had either a significant other or a very good friend with whom I had long conversations at least several times a week, and in some periods of time, every day, multiple times a day. I could call them or run to their room/house or talk online most anytime I really needed to do so, and so got used to being able to rely on someone else to help me figure things out. And those 5 years, being part of highschool and the first half of college, involved a lot of figuring things out and growing up. But there are some things that a person needs to do by themselves, and this summer I realized that a number of those things I simply hadn’t done well enough by myself to understand myself as well, or be as strong a person as I could be at this point in life, having often relied on someone else for part of my strength.

And as some of you know, I have a tendency to be, uh, well, clingy, affectionate to those I care about, and sometimes quite dependent on those around me. So, finding myself unexpectedly single and unable to talk to people as often as I wanted because of language school put me in a crash course for learning how to be more independent and dealing with high-stress situations. I perhaps permanently lost some friends in the process, but got to better know myself, how people –can- work, and some of my other friends. I am so grateful that Alison, Will, Lizzie-Hannah, Toby, Andrew and Leah were on campus, for when I could make it out of Arabic School to see them, that my small handful of Arabic School friends were helpful, and that my parents were very supportive as usual. (And other friends I got to talk to on rare occasions.) I had to be way more independent than before, but at least they made me a safety-net, and helped me through being hurt and confused sufficiently that I could actually not only make it through Arabic school well, but could deal with coming here to Italy. And I did make it through that, and am probably a stronger person for it, even if it frankly felt like hell at the time.

I learned how to open up to friends and have good conversations with them without having to rely on them as much. I know I feel healthiest with close friends and my family and good conversations on a regular basis – the drastic way in which such things can better my mood here has proved that without a doubt. But now I –can- spend long periods of time by myself. I can better deal with stressors on my own, and sit down and think about what’s going on, what I can do to fix the problem, and how to (at least often) have the patience to let time do its thing. This doesn’t always work, and I don’t know if it ever will completely. But it’s a start, and this is a good thing.

It probably also helps that, as frustrating as being in Italy and dealing with all that that entails can sometimes be, there are in general fewer things to really worry about here. Not having daily homework assignments has its problems, which I mentioned in my last post, but it also allows me to do thinking about some more long-term situations or “the bigger picture”, as I don’t have as many time-immediate things to think about. Not having a whole lot of a social life here, although sometimes really lonely in a negative way, does indeed greatly reduce the opportunity for social drama, or for having to regularly deal with people whom I’d rather not have to see all the time. Sometimes it drives me crazy and makes me long for my family or for my second family of friends and for the sense of community I found so well in Middlebury. But sometimes I’m glad for the chance to have a quiet day and just do my own thing like think or wander or write a blog entry, or for the knowledge that on my own I can manage with the practical bits of life (so far) and deal with the more abstract emotional issues that any 20 year old college student post-dramatic-summer might have or think about thinking and how to deal with such issues. That’s a pretty good feeling, when I can get it through my head that I have that self-control. It comes and goes all the time, but this is one of the better moments, so I figured it was a good time to write it out, in case I need a reminder later on. I am Emmons and I can do this!

Turn, Turn, Turn!

I’m a fan of the kinetic sculpture philosophy, even if I can’t always stick to it. This is something that my mommy told me years ago, and has stuck with me ever since, and which I know I’ve mentioned to a handful of you. We have a large collection of mobiles/kinetic sculpture (sculpture that moves, for anyone who doesn’t know) in our home in Mountain Lakes. Some are little and sit on tables. Some are medium-sized and hang from the ceiling. And some are several tons and in our yard and make our house known as the one with the big colorful moving things in the yard (which made giving directions as a kid to my house pretty easy, ha). One of my family’s favorite artists is Alexander Calder, the inventor of mobiles. So I grew up surrounded by and very aware of these things; they are distinctly a part of my life, and so it was easy to integrate a philosophy with mobiles as the symbol into my point of view. This summer and being here has ingrained it waay more thoroughly for me than it was before though. (Indeed, the gallery in the Middlebury Museum this summer with a Calder and some really interestingly engineered kinetic pieces was a regular refuge of mine. The fact that it had a window seat and was a peaceful place to do homework also helped. :) )

This philosophy has to do with the fact that everything changes. (We’re not going into a discussion on an everlasting God/Mystery/Karma/platonic essences, etc. existing or not at this point; I’m referring to parts of life in the more earthly sense.) Life is constantly changing. And when things are going badly, they will change and get better again, so have hope; you can make it through it, even if it takes a while. And when things are going well, something bad will eventually happen, so you better appreciate what good things you have while they last. It’s simple, and easier said than done, but it’s a nice little piece of positive thinking that is also rather practical. It’s amazing what it can do when you just focus on these three simple points. And since mobiles are always moving, they make a good metaphor for the constantly changing nature of the world, and an often comforting one – besides being sheerly awesome to watch and and having interesting engineering. :) One could also think of the song “Turn, Turn, Turn!” and the associated Bible passages for a similar viewpoint, come to think of it.

The Italian “boh!” point of view (first explained here: http://elisabetta-in-italia.blogspot.com/2008/09/city-of-silence.html) is similar to this, except it seems now to be more on the apathetic side of things, rather than mainly being patient and optimistic, which dissatisifies me. But given that the Italians often have this attitude from what I can tell (I don’t have much social life, but I’ve had enough conversations/people watching to get this quite strong impression), and therefore don’t bother to fix the difficulties and disorder of their world, the way to survive here is to adopt a similar point of view. Visiting Italy for short periods of time might not give one a full appreciation of this, but living here certainly does. When I can keep it in mind, the kinetic philosophy does just fine by me. That doesn’t mean not standing up for things you believe in if necessary or trying to change the things you have control over; that’s a lesson I got from my parents and from Palladino that I doubt I’ll forget. But rather just trying to not getting upset about all the little things that could be potentially upsetting.

There are some of those longer-term things I wrestle with on a regular basis, and which sometimes pull apart my resolve and optimism and make me really wish I could change things I can’t. But in general, time is doing its thing and trends are in a positive direction, quite thankfully.

Books!

Ferrara in particular isn’t so bad. I just don’t feel connected to the city or to the Italians very deeply at all (I am so not an Italian. An Italian-American, yes. An American, definitely. But not an Italian, and ain’t that good.) One of the things I like the most about Ferrara is that it is good for leaving and for returning to – it has easy access to a number of places I want to visit, and is quiet enough that it is reassuring to come back to after a busy journey. But it is a kind of odd city, as I’ve mentioned before, and although it is small and sometimes quaint and interesting, it is afterall a city – an environment which has never been my comfort zone. I am still enjoying wandering around when I get the chance, although I need to remember to bring my camera with me more often.

I also just finished reading one of the two English books I brought with me for refuge-reading. It’s about the classical history of the Egyptian city of Alexandria, and focuses on the dozens of intriguing leaders, philosophers, scientists, generally brilliant thinkers, and the rise and fall of this intellectual capital of the ancient world. I thought it was well written and a fun excursion into history. Yes, it stops before the development of the strong Arab culture there now, but I don’t think that detracts from the entertainment and thought-provoking nature of reading about the original character of the city of Alexander the Great. It’s also been a nice way to get away from Italian when I, say, get really tired of too many “ciao’s” and not being able to catch the nuances of most of what I read in Italian. Rereading Harry Potter 7 for the first time, and in Italian (I Doni della Morte), has been quite fun, too. Unlike last summer (after freshman year and only one year of Italian) when I read the first book and several hundred pages of the 5th in Italian rather slowly, it actually goes pretty quickly, allows me to pick up on idioms and speech habits relatively easily. I can get the jokes! I can pause to think about the more unusual turns of speech and rejoice when I get them! The storyline is easy to follow! The translations of magical terms are amusing! These are all good things, and don’t even mention the nostalgic comfort of the Harry Potter stories. So, I say yay for all of that. Oh pleasure reading, how I’ve missed you so at Middlebury. I like doing scholarly research, but popular history and important-to-kid-hood fiction can just be so refreshing.

So, yeah. These last two posts were pretty big updates on my life in general at this point, and if you made it down this far in the reading, then good for you and thanks for your patience with my rambling! (I think the rambling has been strongly tied to the whole not talking to people much part of being here, for better or worse.) Later on, I will put up my Project365 pictures from yesterday and today. In recap, sometimes things are pretty tough being here, but I try to see that all as being part of the learning experience, and am (for now) doing decently in general and sometimes even doing surprisingly well. Sometimes.

Well, I send you all good vibes, hugs, and to the relevant few of you, some tentacle waves. Until next time.

- Emmons

In which Emmons's current reactions to school and Italian culture are discussed...

This week has so far been without any particular stressors, beyond the depressing memories of the death of a very friendly boy from my highschool class who was murdered a year ago Tuesday… I’ve been sending out good vibes to those who were close to him, but as I haven’t seen any one who falls into that category for almost a year now, I really have no clue how they are doing beyond the occasional facebook status or hearsay. I hope they can find comfort and healing eventually… Rest in peace, Donnie Farrell. For anyone in the Mountain Lakes/Boonton Township area who knew him, there’s a food drive for charity in his memory going on sometime this week – there’s information easily findable on facebook, for anyone interested. Just thought I should mention it for those in that area who might not have heard.

As I’ve been here in Italy for almost two months now I will give a general overview of how I’m finding life here, mixed with recent events.

Approaching Travel Plans

Here in Ferrara things have been going alright, and I’m just kind of plugging along here. This weekend I’m hoping to go to Padova (Padua in English) with Rachele to see the Scrovegni Chapel freschoed by Giotto – basically considered one of the most important starting points of the Renaissance. This is one of those things that tourists get charged annoyingly high prices for entrance to (12 euro for half an hour, part of which is spent in a purifying room, whatever that means… grumble grumble), but to which if I didn’t go I would feel like I was betraying my major and missing out on one the highlight opportunities of living in this area. I hope it’s worth it. It will be good to get out of Ferrara again (7th excursion!) and to spend some time getting to know Rachele a bit better, too. She’s one of two non-Middlebury students in the program, and doesn’t know anyone very well, unlike the other non-Midd girl who went to summer school and has somewhat of a clique already with several of the other students. She’s friendly and seems kind of lonely, so I’ll be glad to spend the time with her.

Oo, that reminds me! One week until I get to see MK and Will! Happiness! We will be visiting him in Mainz for several days, and I am quite looking forward to the trip. There are maybe 6 legs of travel (through Venice, Treviso and Frankfurt) to get to Mainz, but if that’s what it takes, then that’s ok. It’ll be a nice vacation. I just have to write a paper and prepare an oral presentation due literally right before I leave, first. :) It’s only 6 pages, so if I can find something I actually want to write about from the Ferrarese literature course, it shouldn’t be too hard – but I still have to figure out a topic and thesis. That will be my project for the next few days. I’ve liked that class, even if it wasn’t much of a challenge and had plenty of awkward silences – but it will be nice to have one whole class out of the way and one less thing to worry about. The professor wasn’t that good at provoking discussion, but was terribly nice to us, and I think picked interesting pieces for us to think about and which allowed us an important glimpse into the culture of this city and region.

Halfway through Classes

My geography and linguistics classes will end soon as well, with one more lesson for the former and 3 for the latter. They will be replaced with 2 more half-term classes, one on medieval art history and one on iconography, both with the same professor – one with a fantastic but really tough reputation. I just hope they don’t drive me as crazy as my Emilia Romagna class has (which will be continuing through the term’s end). That class usually bores me with what I do understand and frustrates me with what I don’t – and as I can now understand almost everything said in geography and linguistics, I blame my comprehension problems somewhat on the nuanced vocabulary often mentioned out of context, and the prof’s wacky lisp/accent (good recent example that I actually caught: “aristocracy” = aristocrazia in standard Italian; it sounded like (a)istocassa the way he said it… not quite sure how I caught that one). I understand waaaay more than I did at the beginning, but it’s still exhausting to decypher his words, and nearly impossible as yet for me to motivate to do any reading for the class (I’ve been concentrating on linguistics), leading me to worry that I will fail the exam. Which is stressful. I don’t think I will actually fail, especially as I have the house’s library at my disposal right here (we’re expected to just generally educate ourselves on the subject with little direction), but I am expecting this to be a trying process. At least I have some control over the situation, in that I will be studying muchly in the near future. But still. Boohissgrowl.

At least geography and linguistics have been relatively enjoyable, even if the former was at a rather disappointingly low standard for depth. Linguistics has mostly focused on Italian dialects, which is fascinating and somewhat useful. It’s also helped me to be more aware of different accents I’ve heard here, and more easily understand them. My aural comprehension has jumped enormously as a result of so much time sitting in lectures, which in turn helps my reading comprehension – both of which are fantastic. All three of my professors are kindly and want to help the poor foreigner girl, although the Emilia Romagna one doesn’t really know how to very well, given the nature of my problems with the class. The other two are pretty helpful and are often aware of the details on which I would need context to understand the vocabulary, as well as being good speakers (in the enunciation and traditional senses), which is great.

But now that I’m just starting to feel like I’m really learning something and want to get more in depth, both classes are about to end. It makes me glad that we actually get a lot out of our time in Midd’s courses, whether or not they are a lot of work. Indeed, I now have a huge appreciation for the presence of regularly graded assignments at Middlebury – you learn what to expect, what you need to know, whether or not you know it and therefore what you might need to work more on, have the material reinforced, and have more than one grade! (This last one is very important, as the idea of having your whole grade be dependent on one oral exam in a foreign language a month (or three in geography and linguistics’ cases) after the course has ended … well, it’s kind of intimidating, shall we say.) I never would have thought that I would be thankful for those things, and probably when I get back to having tons of homework at Middlebury, I might disagree with my current self. But I will probably still appreciate homework’s gifts, along with many other surprising little things about America and Middlebury, in ways I could not have predicted.

Stereotyping-the-Italians Time!

Living in Italy has made me proud to be an American and grateful to live in America, go to Middlebury normally, and have the family and friends I do. Italy is, frankly, ridiculous. I don’t know how it functions so successfully. No, scratch that. I don’t know how it functions at all as a “first world” nation. Often, the Italians seem to forget that they are a capitalist nation and that if you run your business/organization well or treat your customers with respect and good service, they will like you and come back. Na-uh, not a consideration most places here. A thought that often occurs to me: this place is a mess. A very pretty mess with a lot of history and a musical language. But a mess nonetheless. The stability of daily life seems to balance on the tip of a very narrow and battered mountain peak, nearly pushed off to go tumbling down in the gravel all the time by dozens of little things – so much disorder and inconsideration being the most common irritants, beaurocracy being the next. And people think little of this. I have been told repeatedly (by Italians) that people here are discontent with the disorder, beaurocracy, and corruption of greater Italy, and that people in this region are bothered by the rudeness and apathy of the culture here – but that because they can’t do anything to change the situation, the speakers simply perpetuate the apathy and don’t expect others to stop being rude, corrupt, disorganized, etc. In short, they consider it to be truly Italian to act as such. I know Americans do this all the time, too, but I have never been as aware of this as I have since being here, so I am led to believe that this behavior has a different character and degree than that which at least I have encountered in the States.

Most of these I have learned to just deal with with patience and calm, and am merely amazed by, and have learned to be surprised if I get good service most places. (But sometimes it’s frustrating as hell…) There are a few exceptions of course, and people will be nice if you are introduced. But acting anything but distant? Not so much. Smiling at you, including when you smile first? Unlikely. Going out of their way to help you? Rare, and often considered a really big deal, even if it’s the person’s job to do so. (At least my landlords are quite friendly, although they keep to themselves a lot and are hard to get to open very much.) This might be a factor of living in a city, rather than of the Italians – and I’ve heard it’s exaggerated here in the floodplains, for some strange reason. But either way, these are some of the perhaps surprising trends I’ve encountered here. Not that the Italians suck – just that’s it’s very different and sometimes frustrating, just that I’m glad I don’t have to live here forever and can go back to the North-East of America after this, where I know how to interact with people and rarely get angry glares for smiling at someone and can expect systems to run relatively smoothly.

There are so many reasons why this place has reinforced my identity as “American” and why I am glad to be so in ways I never quite appreciated or expected before.

Then there’s being alone for the vast majority of my time. I have mixed feelings about this bit. And I just realized what time it is and that the tea I drank too-late-in-the-evening is starting to wear off. I think I will end this here and contine on sometime soon, and head off to the land of sleep in the meantime. I guess I should clarify that I am doing alright, before just cutting this off as such. Be well, and have a happy day before Halloween!

Arabic on the Emergency Entrance to the hospital. Unfortunately for them, the Arabs are kind of like the Mexican-Americans of Italy. Apparently, all the signs within the hospital are also in Arabic.

Corso della Giovecca at night near the hospital.

Quidditch

Ok, I lied about doing my essay. Creativity hasn't come yet. So I'm reading Japanese and watching the second Intercollegiate and first actually international Quidditch World Cup, taking place now at Middlebury. For all those of you who have asked me in the past about how this possibly works, you can now watch Quidditch too, even if you aren't at Middlebury! Watching quidditch and studying Japanese is so much better than my essay. Live streaming here:

http://www.collegequidditch.com/

Yes, this is shameless plugging. Enjoy.

Project 365

So, a friend from long ago and far away in the land of Japanese camp, who is now in Japan, has alerted me to something called Project 365, wherein you take a photo a day, sort of as a challenge, sort of as an intentional way of documenting your life not just through the major highlights of your year, but also in the little things that constitute our lives day to day: http://photojojo.com/content/tutorials/project-365-take-a-photo-a-day/

Something about this appeals to me, and so I have decided to try it. I will of course continue to post the majority of my photos to flickr, but I will try to put up a photo here each day, as I can't always find the time to make a real post. I have never succeeded at the do-something-every-day thing, so I don't know how well this will work, but I will try. I will also try to do a post later tonight about how I've been in general here, having had a number recently on just my travels. That is, I will do so after I write a creative essay for my Ferrarese Literature class and finally get to talk to my parents. But in the meantime, I leave you with some very creamy hazelnut and dark chocolate gelato enjoyed in the cool but sunny light of the piazza.

Fume.

I HATE BEING A DINGBAT. WHY CAN'T I REMEMBER WHERE I PUT THINGS?! RARRR.

It's not like I even have much space in which to lose stuff. Or that much stuff to lose here. Or that much mess in which to lose anything. And I manage to do it nonetheless. DAILY. *boohissgrowlrarrr*

Edit: I found what I had been looking for. But I think the cleaning lady stole (read took elsewhere in the house) my tea mug. But everything else is, for now, alright.

Now, off to dinner at Leah's!

Fair Verona

So, as I mentioned, Leah and I went to Verona last weekend, the city that constitutes the setting of Romeo and Juliet. For those of you who read Leah’s blog, she gave a pretty good synopsis of the journey, so I will not discuss the exact same things. For those of you who don’t, I guess you just won’t get all the same details; but as my entries are generally lengthy at any rate, I hope you won’t mind.

For the first time in a while, my trip across town to get to the train station on time did not involve chasing any buses or begging the drivers to let me on. No trains were missed, and so all was well and lacking in stress. Yay! Leah had done the planning on this one, and so I just left things up to her and followed her intentions for the weekend. The hostel, which we found during the day so as to make life easier later on, was rather nice for having such a good price, with stone courtyards and a garden, large kitchen, balcony or two, and very Italian-looking rooms (i.e.: lots of stone-tiling and creamy stucco with wood beams in the ceilings). We got an 11-bed dormitory to ourselves, it turned out later on, as the other two girls with intentions to stay there actually got locked out for the night and came stumbling in in the morning to reclaim their stuff.

Wanderings in Verona

For several hours, we wandered at will through the streets of Verona, coming across what appeared to be an abandoned zoo in the park along the Wall, the old castle (named the same: Castelvecchio) along the way, and exploring the courtyard. A number of buildings in Verona, including the house section of the castle, have vaguely medieval-middle-eastern architecture, which surprised me: scalloped window frames with little carved geometric rosettes between the arches, and most obviously, the use of red-and-white alternating voussoirs – strips of alternatingly colored stone over arches and on the walls of buildings, famously found in, say, the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Not knowing much about Verona’s history or the culture in which those buildings were designed, I really have no clue why this would be so. But it created a once again very different visual character to the city. I think every place I’ve been so far here has had quite an individual seeming personality (both for the structures and the people), noticeable even from my short touristy visits. I wonder if that has to do with how they once were actual city-states and were very separate entities politically and somewhat culturally, and therefore developed such diverse identities?

We ended up going through a part of the Centro Storico (historic center) of Verona, an overwhelmingly crowded shopping district, and finally found ourselves in Piazza Brà, one of the larger squares in the city center. It’s the site of a Roman theater still in use today for the popular opera performances that Verona hosts every summer. We didn’t go inside because of the cost of tickets, but the outside was cool to look at – a miniature coliseum. It would’ve been a great experience to get to actually see an opera while in Italy, especially in Verona, since it’s such a part of the Italian artistic identity, but unfortunately the season has already ended for the year.

We had been headed towards Piazza Brà mainly because we had intended to catch a tour group meeting there… but the group never showed up... Ok, we figured, why not take the little street-train tour we saw earlier, even if it’s not as long as the one we originally wanted? But noooo, even though the conductor was supposed to be giving tours for another hour, he thought that two girls alone, instead of his normal 7-15 people, wouldn’t be worth the effort… and he kicked us out of the train. It was then too late for another tour to be found. So I can’t tell you very much about the history or the historic sights of Verona, although we at least walked past the main ones.

Juliet and Superstitions

And yes, we did visit the “house of Juliet”, which was indeed part of the “Capulet” (Capelli) family holdings, although no one resembling Juliet in Veronese history actually ever lived there. There is of course a statue of Juliet in the courtyard, with which people have their pictures taken, which in turn has led very specific pieces of the Juliet statue to be very brightly polished, while others are left to turn black over the years. So, if you look at my photo of the statue on my flickr, the fact that her right arm and breast are almost glowingly white is not a result of a flash. People just like to touch them a lot. I don’t know how that tradition started, but there you go.

The neat thing about Juliet’s courtyard is the entryway and its walls – hundreds of people leave wishes of love for Juliet to grant, or messages about couples staying together or love notes, etc. A few years ago, in order to preserve the walls, wanted to prohibit people from writing on them anymore, but couldn’t get the visitors to stop. Solution: cover the walls in a thin, invisible layer of plastic on which people could write, not knowing the difference and which then the museum could regularly replace! So the walls get almost every reachable square inch covered in letters, grafitti and gum, and become a rainbow messy wall of love.

Leah told me about something similar in Florence: a fence or something on which couples hang locks under the premise that their love will last until the lock breaks and falls off. Of course, there are so many locks hung that the authorities have to cut them off once a week. So much for that superstition to get good luck. Back in Verona again, there is an archway with a whale rib hanging from the center, with the prophecy that it will fall on the first person to pass underneath who has never told a lie. Leah and I stood under it for a while, but apparently the whale rib thought we weren’t honest enough to grace with its fall. Oh darn. I wonder how often the city checks to make sure that thing’s still screwed in tightly. Which is more valuable, liability or publicity?

The Labyrinth of the Giardini Giusti

My favorite part of the trip was our visit to the Giardini Giusti, famous for its labyrinths and winding garden paths, super-tall cypruses, and the fact that Goethe came up with an incorrect theory of evolution sometime before Darwin based on the leaves of the Gardens’ trees, with a cyprus in particular attributed to this event. These labyrinths didn’t involve David Bowie or goblins trying to delay us or the Bog of Eternal Stench (thank God), and were more manicured than the gardens in the Secret Garden, but I couldn’t help but think of these two favorite stories of mine as we wandered the twisting paths in the filtered morning light (the former references, for any deprived souls who haven’t seen it, are to the 80s movie “Labyrinth”). Some of the sections were actual mini-labyrinths, although only around thigh-high, probably to prevent anyone from getting seriously lost in there. There were also stone and pebbled paths winding this way and that among the trees, with statues silently emerging from the bushes, and not-quite-ruinous rooms of columns or pavilions, and stone benches speckling the corners of the paths. There was what seemed to be an old broken shrine in a strange cave, whose surface was lined with not only stones and stucco but also shards of glass and seashells, and of which I simply could not get a good photograph. There is a snarling face on the front of a balcony aligned with the center pathway through the Gardens, tucked into a wall of vines and sundry plantlife to look down upon those wandering the labyrinths, and a tower that brings you up to the highest plateau of the terraced hillside, leading to a great view over the roofs of Verona.

In short, a great place to spend a morning. It felt surreal at times, as though Leah and I should be ladies of some far gone time, ambling through the gardens in hoopskirts and trailing gowns, arm in arm and speaking of suitors. Or as though little fairies should be flitting from tree to tree, in the half-magical light between the cypruses and the mysterious turnings of the pathways. But eventually we found ourselves back at the beginning, and decided to make our way out into the more expectable world and towards the train station – which was harder than anticipated, as we’d gone off the map. But it all worked out in the end, as it always does. And there were no sketchy men met upon the way home this time!

I’m not planning on going anywhere this weekend, for the first time since my first weekend in Ferrara, so hopefully I will finally get to catch up somewhat on organizational errands, responding to people’s messages, and get to webcam chat with those of you who are available and to whom I haven’t spoken in too long. Tonight though, I hope to be able to do more cooking and hanging out with Leah, which should be a decent way to end the week. It’s very lonely at times not having yet been able to make friends with any Italians, but I am so glad that at least there is someone I’m pretty comfortable with here like Leah. Also, MK and I at least will be visiting Will Tucker in Germany in less than two weeks, so I am very excited to see the two of them. Chatting/email, webcams and ryanair = saving grace while abroad. Joy for the internet. (And joy for the fishies in the deep blue sea, joy for you and me.) Ok, I'm going to stop rambling now. Be well, all.

- Emmons, signing out.

Snow in Middlebury!

I have to say that I am alternately laughing that it is SNOWING IN OCTOBER AT MIDDLEBURY and sad that it never snows here. I also want to laugh at the silly Italians who wear long sleeve shirts, sweatshirts/sweaters, DOWN jackets and winter scarves when it reaches the 50s, or God forbid, the 40s (farenheit) here, and are continuously asking me if I'm cold when... I'm not. And this is coming from the girl who gets cold sitting still for too long. I don't know how people from much warmer areas of the US/world survive in Vermont during the winter, I really don't. It's gotten somewhat colder here in the last few days, after the weeks of end-of-summer weather that followed the cold burst in mid-September (which came on the heels of 100 degree weather when I got here). In general, though the temperature has been quite nice. The fog has begun to fall daily, and even when the world gets brighter, I often still have trouble finding the sun for the clouds. They say it just gets worse and that the fog lasts through November and sometimes December, sometimes becoming blindingly thick... we'll see how that goes... In January, it will *gasp!* likely have an average temperature in the mid/high 30s. That is Ferrara's idea of fall and winter. Ha.

... I am going to be so shocked come February in Vermont.

But for now, I am going to laugh at the return of snow to Middlebury and think of the Champlain Valley and the Green Mountains longingly. Maybe I'll just have to go back to the Dolomites and find snow there to play with in the mean time.

Also, the first serious (10-15 schools I think) Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup is taking place at Middlebury this weekend! I am so proud of my college sometimes. I also am a little sad that I can't attend Hannah and Toby's awesome sounding Pledge season at Xenia, which is starting this week with Rootbeer Making with Gospel, but will just have to make sure to skype in to events again sometime. I love and miss you all and need to figure out good times to actually have those skype/msn dates with some of you asap, as it has been too long.

OK. Time for foodshopping. Yay for food.

Pictures Update

New pictures of our trip to Verona (with a labyrinth!) and a few more from Ferrara have been added to flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/93629374@N00/

Trip to Florence no. 1, part three

Ok, I forgot to post the rest of the bit about the visit to Florence, so I will do that and then later write about this weekend’s visit to Verona with Leah.

Saturday morning involved me visiting the Medici chapels (very interesting if you happen to run across a knowledgeable guide giving a tour in a language you know), San Lorenzo (not worth it), and contemplating the line into the Academia (where Michelangelo’s David is) on my way towards the Duomo. The lattermost of which then proceeded to take up several hours instead of the anticipated half an hour, although that is of course my fault and my delight, as that time was spent developing a more intimate relationship with the one of the most famous buildings in Italy. Or more specifically with the walls of its steep staircases and with the roofs. :)

The Way Up

I am of course referring to the chance to climb to the top of the Dome and the Belltower, both of which I did after wandering around the general-public area of the massive cathedral’s nave, which is itself relatively plain in design, with nice marble floor patterns and a view of the rather distant painted interior of the Dome itself. (Since many important cathedrals have some kind of a dome, the word for a dome, “duomo” is synonymous with the most important church of a city, and as the dome is the most famous part of Florence’s cathedral, it deservedly is called the Duomo in general.) There was a door around the side of the Duomo saying “Entrance to the Dome” and repeated warnings to not “enter” if not in good health because of the 463 steps. It did not say where within the Dome you went or how you got there, but I decided to try it anyways.

The steps begin on the side of the interior and go into a small stone corridor that leads up into the wall around the sanctuary. The steps in this section weren’t too steep or narrow, with small windows and landings every now and then, and wound in a square in normal square fashion. They were many but not too challenging, despite the required pauses and, uh, preemptive inhaler, because my lungs are lame like that. I thought that we were pretty high up with all these steps, and since I wasn’t counting, I just kind of assumed that I’d gone up all 463 by the time I got to the top of them. Haha, I was wrong. I was maybe half way there. It turns out that this bit of steps leads out onto a protective balcony part way up the Dome right below the windows, from which you get your first real views of the sheer size, detail, and interesting stories of the painted interior of the Dome.

The paintings are in layers, depicting the non-Earthly realms – Hell of course on the bottom layer with the levels of Heaven extending up above, with Jesus/God (I couldn’t tell which) in glory opposite the three-headed giant devil … who is eating people with each head in true Dantean fashion. The scenes of Hell and the sinners and skeletons and demons and whatnot were probably the most interesting, since they seemed more original in topic – in comparison with the expected angels and saints and and sunshine and halos of the blessed, although their scenes were also quite impressive. It was kind of awe-striking at the sheer immensity of the painting and what it must have taken to paint the Dome. Of course, the scale and skill – the whole construction - of such an enormous and intentionally designed and decorated structure was extremely extraordinary to think about at all.

The Conquest

And then when I got to the end of the walkway around that side of the Dome, I noticed that a door and that the German ladies ahead of me were disappearing –up-. Of course, there were more stairs, which I (again wrongly) assumed brought us to the walkway visible right underneath the painting itself. These got gradually steeper, windier, and with strangely tight corners between sets of stair wells and with the blackened stone walls often jutting in awkwardly over the steps – which I only realized later must have been the support for the actual dome as it started to curve in. We were going deeper into the Dome itself, inside the cavity between the paintings and the tiled roof. And the steps just kept getting steeper and the roof juttier and the traffic harder to negotiate. Luckily I went during lunch time, so it wasn’t anywhere as bad as when I came back down a while later.

And they just kept going. I’m amazed at how long it takes to climb 463 steps, although that might have been partly due to the odd structure and the awareness one needs to bring to climbing them. Frankly, it was sometimes terrifying, particularly on the spiral staircase and the last serious one that actually had to be almost straight up with a slight curve as you follow the last big angle of the Dome – if anybody slipped, anybody at all, you would all just keep sliding down and making a domino effect, with a number of very cracked skulls on the stone walls and steps oiled black from centuries of people climbing their way carefully to the top. I’m pretty sure these stairwells must have been built into the original structure of the Dome, since their design looks pretty integrated with the support system of the dome itself, which as far as I know hasn’t ever been completely taken apart, and it would make sense to have such stairs for maintenance. They’re pretty cool, in a strange and practical kind of way. The last leg literally has a –vertical- handrail it’s so steep, but then…

You emerge and you feel like you’re on top of the world. I think you might be on the highest point in all of Florence, one of the most historically and culturally important cities in Europe. And more than that, you are on top of one of the most famously innovative feats of engineering of the pre-modern era with a gorgeous view and a brilliantly designed piece of architecture beneath your feet and nearly 500 dangerous steps behind you. It’s utterly exhilirating. Pun unintended (or perhaps not) I felt like I was on such a high, just hanging out up there for a long while, my back against the cupola, the sun shining down, and me eating my apple and cheese. It’s also luckily one of the few places in Italy I would trust a stranger to take my picture and not steal my camera, as it would be impossible for them to run away with it. :) So I have a bit more proof that I’m actually here in Italy! It was also cool because I got to do some small talk with other tourists over camera exchanges not only in Italian and English, but also in Japanese and French, which was fun, although I have become very aware while here how bad my oral/aural skils in French have gotten relative to my maintained reading ability, which is sad. But it was still pretty enjoyable to hang out up there for a while until the after-lunch crowd showed up – and then on the way down you go back through most of those same narrow stairwells, this time filled with people stuck on their way up, plus a close up walkway of the bottom of the painted interior and finally… freedom into the air of the piazza.

And then I went and did the same, albeit somewhat easier hike, up the belltower of the Duomo right nearby (414 steps), designed by Giotto, who is basically the first major artist of the Renaissance – which then gave a great view of Duomo itself, although that climb wasn’t quite as satisfying as the first. But going up both towers and then back down, if I’ve counted right, should be 1754 steps total, which is pretty good. I am so thankful for some decent shoes and my well-supported backpack, especially as my day wasn’t over.

Rest of Florence

My camera ran out of batteries then, too, which is too bad because the rest of the trip doesn’t make much to talk about, although there were some neat scenes seen by this particular wanderer, mainly in the Loggia and the outside the Uffizi, where people-watching on my way through proved to be very interesting. I will have to plan another trip to visit the Uffizi and the Academia with reservations before hand, as I would feel lacking in my Renaissance knowledge if I never made it there.

I did get to the Medici Palace, which I was too overwhelmed by to be impressed with – it’s enormous, with thousands of paintings out for view at a time (I don’t know if they even follow normal museum procedure and switch them out for preservation/ viewing purposes…) with three up a wall and much of each wall covered in room after room on a path that squiggles from one to another – and it’s easier to find your way out by continuing along the endless maze than to go back. But there was just too much, and almost everything from one of my least favorite periods of art – 1500s to early 1800s (I just don’t get much emotional reaction from it) – and I was exhausted and the few rooms used by the Medici you get to see are only semi-interesting. Pretty, but not that fascinating and almost completely lacking in historical/cultural information. It seems that museum labels here really like to talk about who owned what and then sold it to whom and where things were made and changed and then sold again, and so they aren’t (at least the ones in Florence) weren’t even interesting or informative to read. So the Palace doesn’t get really high marks in my view, at least in comparison with some of the other things you can do in Florence. It was maybe worth visiting, but not returning to, I’ll say that – and then maybe only if you can deal with that much art from what the Italians call the “modern” era (what we call the modern era they call the contemporary one, with modern extending almost a half-millenium prior)… Meh.

An Immigrant Problem

The other noteworthy occurance of the trip was actually when I got back to Ferrara, and which has justified my previous decisions to not ever return here late at night. I had no food in my kitchenette with which I could make dinner, so I decided to go into the center and give myself one more treat for the weekend. I must have looked very tired, though, because I had –two- men come up and haress me, one on my way from the station but very near to the center and in a well lit area with people not too far away, and the other one actually at the restaurant in one of the piazzas. So not cool. One was Pakistani and one African, and I don’t point that out to be racist, but it was more of that they used that as a talking point to get my attention in the first place, and could hardly speak Italian at all. They each spoke pretty terrible English, but could tell that I understood them enough, even if I answered in my clearly non-native Italian, which I think they could tell also was confusing me.

The first men started by asking me how to get to the train station, which I thought was a valid enough question, but ignored my answer, and started telling me about his apartment and how beautiful I was and asking me questions about my family and where they were and if I knew anyone in Ferrara and uncomfortable things like that, even though I wasn’t answering his questions and forcefully told him to leave me alone. I eventually got him to stop following me and got into the center alright, but then when I was reading and waiting for my food at the (outdoor) restaurant, an African guy, selling bags but mostly not at that moment, came up and started asking very similar questions – and if I were 15 years old yet and why was I so shy and would I talk to the police if there was every something wrong. So not cool, to say the least. Being exhausted I wasn’t very good at getting him to go away either, but luckily I got the waiter to come over and help shoo the man away. And these two incidents were only around 7:30 to 8:30, which was surprisingly early. I do not like creepy people. I do not like being haressed. I am not staying out late or coming back late here in the future. Rarrr. I’m just glad that doesn’t happen regularly in Ferrara during the day and I can usually brush the haressing street merchants off.

So that was an awkward end to the day, but in general it was a very fun trip and a great chance to explore a place both so different from Ferrara and so historically important. And then came classes again and a mild sickness but nothing to complain too much about. And another class cancelled. But, Leah wanted to do a girls’ night on Friday, so we hung out for the afternoon and made falafel for dinner, which came out pretty well for our first attempt. She had been planning on going to Verona for a short weekend trip, and what she described sounded interesting and reasonably-priced enough to convince me to join her. But that will be another post for another time.

Quick comment

I have to say that I love how Gardenia and Giorgio blast excellent classical music from downstairs and how I can kind of hear it up here as I clean up from dinner. Joy. And that one of the house phones has the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as the ring tone.

Also, something that those of you who have ever walked anywhere with me might find funny:

I walk faster than most Italians.

Given that normally I am the slow one in everything, this fact gives me regular amusement, although I can't tell if I'm walking faster when I go out here than I usually do at home or if the Italians really are just that laid-back and slow-at-everything as they seem to be.

Now, back to washing dishes in my utility sink. :)

Trip to Florence no. 1, part two

General Life Comments:

I am so grateful that Middlebury has laundry machines; taking half an afternoon+ to hand wash all one’s clothes would be difficult to manage amid all the work and whatnot. But I can deal with it while here, at least, given that I don’t have an immediate time constraint on most of my assignments for the term. Hah, the other night I was chatting with someone from Middlebury and they mentioned having to spend all day doing homework, and the really odd thing was that my brain went “……….. oh! That’s right, there is lots of very time-consuming work back at Middlebury! I almost forgot!” Given that I’ve never had a lack of homework back at Midd, plus working one or two jobs at a time, plus something of a social life, I’m amused at what 2 months away from that super-busy-ness has done to my memory, even after having been through language school.

Today has been generally uneventful, although I guess I can say that I continue to quite enjoy my linguistics class, I’m getting an idea about the intended scope of my geography class, am still quite relieved that that doctor won’t be living here, and have found that I can once again appreciate listening to some music that was emotionally off-limits for the last half-year, or at least start to do so. All of which are good things! Oh! I also finally received my absentee ballot in the mail! Exciting! I get to be a participating, responsible citizen and vote for the first time! (Ok, that’s too many exclamation points there…) I’ll be heading over to the post office first thing after class tomorrow morning, and will proceed to once again negotiate with the postal workers about the best way to mail something quickly. Goody.

That reminds me: some people long ago asked for my mailing address, and at the time I wasn’t sure what it would be or if I could actually reliably receive anything here. I most definitely would not trust packages to arrive in either a timely fashion (i.e.: before I go back to the US) or in one piece (as I’ve heard enough theft stories), but simple, flat letters should be able to arrive, if anyone is interested in sending me anything ever. My address is: Elisabeth Hahn, Corso della Giovecca 168, Ferrara 44100, Italia. It’s best to have my name like that, since my landlords might possibly be confused if any of my other names/nicknames were on the envelope instead. I also need to get around to sending postcards to people at some point…


Immigrant-Watching in Florence:

So where was I? Oh yes, on the Ponte Vecchio. Something interesting that we observed on the bridge, and then actually intentionally watched for a little bit on the other side was … the immigrants. Sounds terrible of me, I know, but it was true. Let me explain. You see, Italy has a huge issue with illegal immigrants, with the bulk coming from northern Africa and the Middle East, logically enough. This is some of what I know about the immigrant situation here, which I’m sure is not the whole picture, given that I am neither a specialist in this, an Italian, or one of these people. They are usually extremely poor where they come from, young, and the most common way for them to be able to afford the journey to Europe is to make a deal with someone who functions rather like a pimp. This boss gets them into Europe illegally, gives them a place to stay with other immigrants (usually horrific conditions at first), teaches them a bit of the language of whatever country they end up in, and gives them merchandise to sell, focusing on the tourist market. These people then sell low-quality touristy wares on the city streets, and have to give a large percentage of the profits back to the boss – hence the pimp aspect, or perhaps indentured servitude – and get stuck in this position for years.

This is, however, waaaay better than what happens to the majority in Italy that get jobs working for such bosses in agriculture or factories. Unfortunately, the higher the immigrant population in an area, the vastly greater the crime rates, which builds the Italian prejudice against them, making it more difficult to get an education and better jobs, making more desperate idiots resort to crime as an additional source of income beyond their terrible farm/tourist-rip-off payments. This is true of Ferrara, which is surrounded by farmland, and has just enough bustle in the commercial/tourist center to have a few Africans selling fake designer handbags on the streets, as well as a strong correlation in rising crime to rising immigrant numbers.

As Florence is such a major tourist attraction, even for Italians, I saw literally a few dozen groups of these hawkers in a relatively small city area in just one day. They work in teams on a particular block, with at least one person on the lookout on the corners to warn about approaching police (which is what leads to why they can be interesting to watch in turn). I even saw what I’m taking as evidence within these groups of the pimp/boss system: across the variety of neighborhoods through which I walked, ALL the Arabs had the same sets of poster-prints of famous Florentine art which they laid out in rows along the street with the same techniques, almost ALL the Africans had the same kinds of fake designer handbags which they carried in/laid out on square white sheets of apparently the same size, and ALL the Asians each had the same three sets of wares (toy cars, mini camera tripods and woven-grass animals on strings) that they carried in shopping bags. Totally and absolutely divided by race, not even talking to each other and never having the same products as the other kinds of immigrants, although they did give each other the warning signals when on the same street.

Being illegal immigrants and not allowed to harass tourists or local citizens for their wares as they do, these people seem to be absolutely terrified of the police, who in turn seem to enjoy terrifying them as though it were a game – the cops slowly drive around the block again and again, and every time the car is spotted coming, a signal’s given and the panicking sellers scoop up 20 feet of posters in one smooth move (they’re overlapped carefully for this purpose) or wrap up their sheet of bags or toss the toys and tripods into the shopping bag in maybe 5 seconds.

It’s frankly impressive to see a street lined with such sellers frantically and suddenly disappear into the crowd in 5-10 seconds as a cop car pulls around the corner, and then reemerge a quarter block down, quickly set up, and soon after repeat the whole process. I feel bad for these people, but I don’t need to waste my money on pieces of crap that I don’t need, were probably badly made, and are probably damaged by the constant movement, so of course I didn’t buy anything. Nor did anyone else I saw in the streets for the whole day and a half; and I only saw one succeed in selling some cute toys to a family with kids in Venice (the sets of merchandise are different in Venice, and the sellers less common). All that seemed to be missing from the similar situations we talked about in the Global Economy and Italian 252 was the famous line “Vu compra?” that is the stereotypical immigrant butchering of the Italian question “will you buy?” or “do you want to buy?”

So yeah. That was interesting to actually get to observe, having heard from the distance of a Vermont college classroom about this European underclass and their organization. The rest of Friday night consisted of a delicious dinner, talking more with the family, and my first ever by-myself ride in a taxi or stay in a hostel.

I’m going to split this up now, in case I get too tired to finish tonight and to make the pieces more easily identifiable for those of you who read my super long posts in installments. Next up: 1754 stairs and a most satisfying view.

Trip to Florence, no. 1, part one

(pictures from Florence are on flickr under the Duomo set)

I managed to massacre my dinner tonight while trying out a new recipe from my mediterranean cookbook … But hey, really screwing up only once in 5 weeks of feeding myself (although I admittedly haven’t made anything terribly complicated) is not a bad record, right? :) Besides that, today went alright – I spent most of it working on an essay for my Ferrarese literature class, had two classes, and couldn’t find the third. Meh. It happens.

YAY! I just found out from Gardenia that the doctor is actually not going to live here! Turns out it’s too expensive. I am so very relieved, I truly am. There is apparently a 30-ish woman now also looking at room, but not in the immediate future. I’d rather have the little fridge and little bathroom to myself, but as long as it’s not a strange man sharing the space, I can’t really complain at all, especially given the economy and that I know extra money would be useful of course for Gardenia and Giorgio. So… that is a huge relief that that man won't be here. Yay for good luck for me. May he find somewhere else suitable to live - just not with me.

Ok, now onto Florence! As I mentioned in my various “where’s-Emmons-now?” posts a few days ago, I went to Florence for Friday night and Saturday, prompted by the presence there of my grandma and two aunts, who were finishing up their 2 week visit to northern Italy (they’re all Americans, although this is the grandmother who is full-blood Italian, just for the record). Gina didn’t make it this time, but that is understandable, as it would be quite a trip for her; I’m glad to be living somewhere where I can easily get to the disparate locations of Gina’s, Venice, and Florence, among a handful of other smaller but also cool cities which I am planning on visiting eventually, like Padova, Rimini and Ravenna.

I don’t think I’ve talked much at all about the vagaries of the Italian transport system yet, beyond my difficulties on my initial journey into Ferrara. I can now say that yes, the trains here do sometimes run late, but not as often as we are led to believe. I have actually had a train leave early (gasp!), and have several times literally had to chase down buses because they left the stops early (and when I was about one building away…). I have also had buses come 20 minutes late, or have the busride doubled due to traffic leading me to miss my train by no-joke FIVE seconds (the door closed in my face), and a train shut down and sit waiting a tiny bit outside the station for half an hour (all of these last few happened when trying to go see family in the last week. Great timing, eh?) There are sometimes funny things that happen with different kinds of tickets, and some you have to validate and some you don’t, too. It’s been interesting to have to figure out, but it really isn’t too bad. That is, if you have to patience to wait an hour for the next train when the above things go wrong – which I have definitely learned to do by now.

Rising up around Florence are small mountains, which I think are part of the general ridge of the Alpinini that run N-S down the lenth of the penninsula. It is so reassuring for me to see mountains I’ve realized, being in the flood plain of Emilia Romagna and being made much happier when I’ve gone enough to the east or north-west to find any increases in elevation. These particular ones were quite lovely, still very green, and spotted with lots of little villages and graded terraces for agriculture, which is something I remember seeing in Sicily when little. Of course, I couldn’t really see these in the city for the buildings, except when I climbed the Dome and the Belltower, but I’ll get to that in a bit. Regardless, it was a very scenic trainride east.

Beyond a build-up of small transport mishaps on my way to Florence taking away some time with the family members, all went quite smoothly for the rest of the trip, in part because I can thank-God read a map, and was able to navigate my way to where Lynne was, and then the next day get around the city on my own. Getting off the train, I was immediately struck by the immensity of difference in the scale and energy of Florence in comparison with Ferrara. It is one serious city, as well as very much tourist-geared. I of course only got to see the historical/cultural center of the city, so that might be a slightly biased view, but from what I’ve been told much of the city retains that personality – there are several score museums across the city, and every few blocks is a piazza that had something famous or other occur there. I can also see why there can be 130 study-abroad programs situated in Florence, 128 of which do not require knowledge of Italian – there were of course plenty of Italians speaking Italian, and I bet many of whom didn’t know (much) English, but there was also a large enough population of English speakers evident everywhere so that reasonably many signs were in Italian on the top and English on the bottom. Most definitely not Ferrara. This place is way to quiet to be comparable with Florence, but at the same time, I was so incredibly glad to come back here after a busy city like that, and know that I made the right choice in picking Ferrara over Florence.

After meeting up with Lynne, Grandma and Kathy, we made our way over to Santa Croce, which is one of the major churches in Florence. I don’t know how much it’s used for actual services any more, but it is pretty on the outside, encased in a similar style of white, pink and green marble that is the great Duomo. Within, the main attractions are the tombs and monuments of such notable persons as Galileo, Michaelangelo, Donatello, Marconi, Fermi, and many others of whom I had never heard, but I assume were decently important when alive such as nobility. There is also an intended tomb for Dante Alighieri: he was exiled from his native Florence during life for his political views, and his body remains in the city of his banished days. However, sometime after his death, Florence realized how brilliant and historically important Dante was, and has been trying to get him back ever since, even building a tomb for his bones in anticipation. Needless to say, I was amused by the irony.

Also perhaps needless to say, I was somewhat in awe at the idea of being next to the tombs of such great thinkers and creators. For me, living in Italy feels like being a pilgrim, paying homage to a land of history, art and centuries of innovation and wisdom. And so, beginning my visit to Florence, one of the historically greatest cultural centers of Europe, by visiting the tombs of men such as Galileo and Michaelangelo felt very fitting.

Afterwards we wandered down to the Ponte Vecchio not long before it closed. The Ponte Vecchio is the bridge you always see in pictures of Florence, with the layers of shops sticking out the sides and the covered walkway going overhead. The bridge was on the route from the Medici palace on the other side of the Arno river into the city center, but used to be covered in butcher shops, the smell of which apparently displeased the Medicis. And so, they passed a law that only fine jewelry shops could be situated on the bridge, and they also built the long enclosed corridor that extends not only over the bridge but a ways into the neighborhoods on either side, so that the family would not have to associate with the common folk of Florence. What I thought was actually pretty cool about the shops on the bridge was the way they closed up for the night. Of course, several dozen gold shops all lined up must have fantastic appeal for theives, and so not only do the shops remove and lock away all the pieces in their displays, but they also envelop their shop windows and doors in thick wooden walls that can be pulled out of the roof. The result is that they all look like enormous old travelers’ chests or toy boxes, or as it were, heavy-duty jewelry boxes. It was neat to see them all start wrapping themselves up at 7 prompt, as the moon was rising over the Arno and the light all turning purple and gray for the evening.

And this update should have been finished and posted hours ago, but as I got distracted and ended up chatting with someone from Midd instead, and it is now very late, this will have to do for now.

Until tomorrow!

Runaway Linguistics?

Pictures are up on flickr.

Also, my linguistics class this morning? Disappeared. The door was locked, no professor, no sign saying it had been moved, no students who knew why we couldn't find our class, and the office that's supposed to be able to tell you where your class is had no idea why it wasn't there. This makes the FIFTH lesson in 2 weeks among 3 courses that was cancelled. At least the others gave warning. I feel like a bad student here - almost no written homework, still don't have books yet (the post is slow), classes are language-wise challenging and material-wise not so much, and the classes keep being cancelled. Very strange and so not Middlebury.

Oh Italy, how did you develop so differently? ... Hey, at least I got a walk outside for a while. Now, back to essay writing.

Pictures of Florence (many of the Duomo, and some of the Arno River, the Ponte Vecchio and the church of Santa Croce) are currently uploading slowly to my flickr page (rishao262) and will hopefully be all up sometime tonight. My camera battery died, so I didn't get photos of all the places I went, several places wouldn't allow pictures, and many were inside with dim lighting (no flash allowed) or in shaded areas, so I apologize for those that are blurry. However, once they all are finished, you certainly will be able to see many shots of the Duomo and the view from the top of the Dome and the Belltower, both of which I climbed (so incredible!). It is midnight, so I will write about the trip some other time, hopefully tomorrow night. But enjoy the pictures for now!

Hi! I'm home from Florence, and had a great time. I'm exhausted, so I will do an update about it tomorrow. Just thought I should let people know I'm back and safe.

Good night!

Hello all! I'm in Florence, had a good time with family last night, stayed safely at a hostel, and will be adventuring here today before heading back to ferrara tonight. Just thought i'd let plans be known.

Tigre Contro Tigre

Tonight was quite fun. Andrea is leaving tomorrow for a month in Rome to work with his horses, and so Flavia (Gardenia's daughter) made dinner for all of us. Her house is a few blocks away and has art covering almost every surface. The dinner was very yummy and consisted of too much good food that was piled onto my plate for me - grilled veggies, polenta, tagliatelle al ragu', beef and chicken stew, and baguette, and a local specialty with chocolate and almonds for desert. An exciting thing was that I could understand almost everything that was said over the few hours, which was great. Flavia's husband was difficult to understand, as is Giorgio (my landlord/Gardenia's husband), but I think that's because the former is from southern Italy and the latter... is old with bad teeth, a former-smoker's voice, and some use of dialect. I'm not sure what started it, maybe the fact that we had been exchanging tongue-twisters (and no, I don't remember any yet, but will!), but Giorgio decided as a joke at one point to start repeating "tigre contro tigre" over and over as fast as he could - one of those "say this ten times fast" kind of things. Which he continued to do on and off for at least the next ten minutes among everybody joking around and joining in the joke with occasional things about tigers. This part I didn't catch everything of, but it was still amusing, and good for getting everybody laughing.

Something that did seem a little odd, although it could have just been coincidence, was that the men all sat on one end of the table, and the women/girls on the other, and Flavia's husband (I didn't even catch his name) seemed nice but said almost nothing to me, or to the females in general. When the puppy and Aurora were running around for a bit, too, they were just ignored and allowed to run in this crowded, art-filled living room almost knocking things over, and they didn't even know if Angelica was going to make it home for dinner or not - a different family dynamic than what I'm used to, at least.

Aurora, the 11-year old granddaughter, is quite amusing, and seems to really like me, as she gets really excited every time I see her. I've met Angelica, the 18 year old (last year of highschool) granddaughter a little bit before, but saw her more this evening. She seems really nice, too, but we didn't get to talk much, since she came home late from a long dance practice and was tired/ still had homework to do. Gardenia and Flavia want me to do weekly english conversations with Angelica for practice for pocketmoney, a proposition with which I have no problem. I've already occasionally helped Aurora with her English and French homework when she's been over here; it's very interesting for me to see how the English is taught (it's British, of course, although they speak with semi-american/semi-british accents), as well as the French. Angelica said that sometime we could hang out and she could introduce me to some other italians, which was good to hear. I don't have a problem with getting to know people who have a few years difference from me, as evidenced by the range of people whom I call my friends. Also, their family has a 3 month old puppy, Arturo, called Artu (said like R2, which always amuses me... which in turn created more such in-my-head entertainment since they didn't know to what I was refering when I mentioned that R2-D2 is the robot in Star Wars in explanation for my amusement...). Artu is SUPER hyper, and has a bit of a biting problem as he was bred for hunting, and hasn't gotten any proper training yet. Hopefully he'll be trained somewhat before getting big and actually being able to do more than just little scratches with his teeth.

Gardenia has almost never asked me questions about my family, home, school, anything - which is really weird, since it's not like she's been unfriendly or distant or anything. Tonight she did a bit, though, almost mostly as follow-ups to things Flavia or Andrea were talking to me about. But hey, conversation is always good. She also said she would be glad to teach me how to cook some traditional food, which was fantastic news! That is something I was really glad to hear her response about. Yay! I'm going to have to pursue this, to make sure that I don't let the opportunity slip by. We had been talking about the changing situation in Italy with dialects versus the "standard" Italian language, and Gardenia expressed the sentiment that although it's very important to be educated and learn the standard, that most of the generation of even her children Flavia and Dario not only don't learn the dialects (they're considered a sign of lower class or provinciality), but don't learn many traditional recipes and skills, and how it's a confusing and saddening situation for the loss of culture.

Gardenia has one of the accents that is more understandable to me (thankfully, since I talk to her more than others) since she's well educated, but I think she also knows the dialect of her mother. Andrea has been teaching me different ways of saying "let's go" in various dialects, which is fun. This came out of my comment that I have trouble understanding old people I run into in town, probably because they use some dialect, and teenagers, because they use some dialect, a lot of slang, and just plain don't speak "proper" Italian with good enunciation (no surprise, it's the same in any language, I guess...).

As a record for myself, I'm going to list the ones I remember of what he told me on here. So, "andiamo cene" would be the imperative, and "cene andiamo?" the interoggative, for "let's go" and "shall we go?", respectively. Napolitano: Iammo scenne. Genovese: Scianemmo. Piemontese/Milanese: Anduma. Ferrarese: Andem. There were some more that I forget... And some other things, although I don't remember which dialects they are from: ca vulite fa = cosa volete fare (what do you want to do?), c'ammo a fa = cosa vogliamo fare (what do we want to do?), insci = cosi (this way), te vuri minga = io non ti voglio (I don't want you).

On one hand, I'm glad that I can talk to people usually well enough without having to learn the dialects, unlike in Arabic, but on the other hand, they are really interesting, especially since they can vary between towns that are only 10 minutes apart by car, sometimes, and are often unintelligible if you only have my level of experience with the standard. The more unintelligible ones I've been told are not above, since I couldn't even remember them yet. I'm regularly amazed at the diversity of how the same basic phrases transform in the dialects. I'm taking a class on linguistics and dialects of Italian, which looks like it might be kind of hard, since I'm not a native speaker and don't have anywhere near the appropriately wide reference vocabulary nor a sense of a dialect. However, it also looks very intriguing, the professor is friendly and unlike Leah's other linguistics prof. didn't freak out at me for being a foreigner in a linguistics class, and taking this will likely help my understanding of the structure, development and vocabularly of Italian = I'm sticking with it. I've always loved linguistics, but have never gotten a chance to study it formally or learn a huge amount about it, so this should be a good opportunity. I can already tell that my previous experience with French is going to be a help, as so far she's given a number of examples in class comparing the development of the various romance languages to the original latin. This will certainly be interesting once we actually get into Italian dialects, for the above knowledge reasons, for bad and very good. So, I'm happy about the start of that course.

I can tell that my comprehension skills have jumped hugely in the last two weeks, which is fantastic, as it means less stress in class. I can understand waaay more than I can say, and I still make grammatical mistakes (agreement, subjunctive - especially in hypothetical clauses...), but less so than before, even if most of the others in the Midd program are better than I at speaking. But I realized something - I am one of the very few (or maybe the only one?) in the group who neither has 3 years of experience, went to language school for level 2 or 3, or lived in the Italian house. Which was something of a relief to notice, because it makes a lot of sense that everyone else has, duh, a lot more time-experience speaking in Italian, even the others who only have 1 year during the year and 2nd year during Summer School, like Leah. I of course want to keep improving, but at least I can accept being behind them somewhat, having realized this. As long as I can do alright on my finals and make significant progress while here, I'll be happy, given that I won't be able to get fluent after only 5 months here.

I can tell that a communal, delicious meal, as well as getting to talk to Will a little earlier today and seeing some extended family last weekend, in Venice for dinner on Tuesday, and tomorrow in Florence is all doing a lot for my mood. It's very easy to feel isolated here, even with Leah here and me getting to know the other girls in the program a little better. Hence me being so homesick last week. I am so glad that this week has gone less stressfully, between being around other people more and having less trouble with my classes. I like alone time, but also need good conversations and regular interaction with other people, as being here is making polished and shiningly clear. Affection and more hugs would be preferable, but you can't have everything all the time, can you? More social interaction, though, should become a higher priority.

Geography class feels like a joke sometimes, so I'm thinking of finding another class that starts in the second half of the term and doing that instead. We'll see. On the good side, I can understand almost everything that the professor says, despite a lot of words I've never heard before (they're similar enough to things I have heard or to English). On the not so good side, the extended-storytime style of giving examples without going into much depth means that we take a very long time to cover relatively simple material, the reasons for some examples or points aren't clearly delineated from the examples (admittedly, this could be partly due to my language level, but I don't think it is completely), and the concepts we are going over are mainly common sense and many of which we actually talked about in middle school or in high school history side-notes - which is highly uncool in my view. The teacher is friendly, and often pretty funny, and it's nice to have one class in which I can understand most things and just enjoy learning new words and noticing cultural differences. Maybe the increased ease for me when I eventually can find the textbook and have to study for the exam, which would therefore facilitate studying for the other 4 exams, would be worth not getting as much out of this one class? What do you guys think? I had been looking forward to getting to do a geography class this fall, but this is the only one in the Faculta' di Lettere (where we are encouraged to take our classes), and so it's not like I even have another choice of a geography class. It's sometimes interesting, but conceptually so easy it feels bizarre, actually... Any opinions?

Also, there might be a 28 year old doctor coming to live in the room connected to mine, a fact about which I am not so happy. He hasn't confirmed yet, and so I'm hoping he will decide it's too expensive to come here 3 days a week while having another apartment in Bologna. It's the whole man-potentially-having-access-to-my-room and sharing my spaces thing that makes me uncomfortable - and there are some uneasy things one has to get over when in another country, like certain customs or food or whatever, but this is something that I think falls into the make-Emmons-uncomfortable category for common sense and intuition reasons that would apply in any country. Yes, I should be able to lock the door between our rooms, and yes, he's a doctor, so he probably won't be here much. But. But.

When Gardenia asked me yesterday morning if it was ok to show him the other room, I had unfortunately just gotten back from 3 hours of traveling from the early morning (I had stayed with Gina in Sacile for the night, since after dinner in Venice it was too late to come back to Ferrara), and hadn't had much sleep the night before - and was not very good at thinking about what she was saying or responding. So I didn't decide to talk to her until late last night, at which point I was also not very good at expressing myself. However, I wouldn't know how to explain quite why this makes me uncomfortable in English, in a polite way to someone who is my landlady first and my host second.

I guess, in some ways I have some common sense reasons for it (or at least I think I do). If someone I trusted completely could emotionally hurt me and betray my trust more deeply than I imagined possible (at least from that person), as happened this summer, why should I trust a strange man to not be a creep? Also, one of the things Gardenia said, amid assurances that he seems trustworthy and nice and that she wouldn't put me in harm's way, was that he is from a respectable family, is well-educated, knows her son, has a girlfriend in Bologna, and would have his reputation as a doctor (in the hospital across the street) at stake if he did anything inappropriate.

La Signora Gardenia has obviously never seen Law and Order.

I, on the other hand, have seen waaay too many, in addition to hearing real life stories, to believe that those qualities would ensure him being actually respectable. She didn't want me to be uncomfortable, but thought she couldn't just be rude and call him up and say "sorry, I told you that the signorina was ok with this, but she isn't actually, so you can't have the room," but said that if there was anything wrong, that I should come to talk to her immediately. I understand this, and I was hesitant to talk to her in the first place about it, because they're an old couple living on a fixed income in this worsening economy, and it would be some extra money for them. But I don't have a good feeling about this, and am glad that I at least said something. Maybe I'm just over paranoid and have become more distrusting recently. But I'm still really hoping that he will decide to not live here.

So... as it is very late, I have an early class tomorrow morning and this is already another long post, I will be ending here for the evening. I need to get around to posting about my various daytrips, as well as responding to my backlog of emails, sometime soon. And doing that little thing called laundry. And writing an essay for the Scrittura/Ferrarese Literature class. Sooooo... lots to do in the near future, but that's ok. It's not like I have been able to even find my assigned textbooks to be able to start reading them, but for one. But it'll all get done somehow or other, preferabily sometime soon.

Well, I guess I'd say that in general I'm doing well, but of course unforeseen problems come up all the time, and the only one of those that is currently bothering me is this mystery man. Oh, and just so people know where I'm going, I'm going to be in Florence tomorrow afternoon through Saturday night, with the relatives again on the last leg of their trip in Italy, will have my Italian cell phone with me, and will be staying here:

Hostel: Plus Florence Address: Via S Caterina D'Alessandria15 ,Florence 50129, Italy Telephone: +390554628934 Email: reservations@plusflorence.com Website: http://www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/italy/florence/30145/

Ok, to bed with me. Be well, all. I know some of you are finishing up midterms before heading back home for fall break, or have already done so: thus, friends, good night and good luck. And have safe travels and enjoyable days.