Weekend Update

Just FYI, I wrote this all yesterday, and backing up what I've written below about flaky internet connections, I didn't get a chance to post it because the internet on my laptop died.

I don't know how much I am going to use the internet in the coming semester. A conflagaration of circumstance and laziness may render computer usage, including blog updates, photo updates and Facebook access in longer but infrequent stretches. What I am trying to say is that the only reliable source of wireless access is here at school, in the Villa Rossa complex, which necessitates either hauling my laptop back and forth from school everyday, along with textbooks and other sundry supplies, or using the computers (most of which date from circa 2004) in the basement of the Villa Rossa. Since so many students flood the wireless connection here anyways, it's hard to keep up a consistent stream of web access without copious "page load errors" and "the connection has timed out"s Combined with the uncooperativeness of Flickr, it's a rough life for me sometimes. But not really at all; did you think I was serious? I will beat the internet connection to death just like all 279 of my peers. Now if only the latest episode of Gossip Girl would load. Le sigh. You can't have everything...

This past weekend was termed "Full Immersion" with your host families, which, unfortunately, could mean anything. Some girls I knew literally did spend the entire weekend with their host families, more often than not in said host families' beach houses on the coast, escaping the oppressive heat of the basin that Florence is located within. Seriously, it's supposed to be 35 degrees all week. Anyways, not having the privilege of a seaside escape, my weekend was nevertheless highly enjoyable. I went out with my roommate Kristin, her boyfriend, and a smattering of their friends from the metro-Boston area on Friday night to a bar near Santa Croce, where some random dude (literally, just 'some dude,' all Lebowski connotations intended) ended up buying two rounds of drinks for the entire bar. I still don't really understand. Anyways, that happened, whatever.

Saturday, I slept in and then spent the day exploring the city center (henceforth known as the Centro Storico) first with a couple of friends, then later by myself. I took a bunch of photos, especially in the cathedral Santa Croce, home to Michelangelo's and Galileo's tombs and a monument to Dante. Once I figure out the intricacies of Flickr and possibly find a better/steadier internet connection, the photos will be up. Of course, I found about four excellent, foreign-language bookstores already. There is the Paperback Exchange, located in this little alley off the Piazza del Duomo, where I bought my textbooks and also has a fairly well-curated selection of new and used books, and as the European additions, have different designs than their American counterparts. Tangentially, I love finding different, nation-specific editions of books. Design-wise, one of my favorite books is the copy of Special Topics in Calamity Physics that I bought in South Africa. And dangerously, the Paperback Exchange has a frequent-buyer card that rewards you for every 10 euros you spend up to forty euro, where your four stamps turn into twelve euros' worth of credit. Of course, my financially-irresponsible dilemma is whether to spend the money sooner on new books and get the discount before leave, or to tear through all the books I brought with me before going on a buying spree; not to mention the lifetime of headaches that is packing all of them into my suitcases at the end of year. Other bookstores I found over the weekend include Libera Lef, full of ridiculous Taschen and Phaidon titles; Melbookstore, which looks to be the largest of the bunch clustered around the Centro Storico; and Liberi Martinelli, whose second floor has an adorable and comfortable reading lounge tucked away in the back. There is also a Grom gelateria kitty-corner from the Paperback Exchange, and an excellent wine bar, Coquinarius, where I had dinner on Saturday night, making the ten-meter stretch of the via del' Oche the most dangerous street in all of Florence, at least currently. My Moleskine Firenze notebook has gotten a lot of use in the past few days (hi Carly!).

I didn't end up doing much on Saturday night. Walked back to my host mother's apartment and stayed up reading Time Out Florence, plotting my next move. Sunday was another lazy morning. I walked my roommate out towards the Centro Storico later in the afternoon, since she has had a tendency to get lost on the way to and from the city center. I stopped at the piazza San Marco, currently my favorite piazza, and finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay there before walking back using a different route that took me through the piazza Independenza and by the Basso Fortress, which was less than what I'd hoped it to be. I'm trying out some different routes in these first few weeks to see which one I like the best, and to explore various parts of the city. I've taken in a fair amount of Florence so far, and forty minutes' walk (the time it takes, roughly, to walk from my homestay to the city center) has already become nothing. On Sunday, Kristin and I finally met Gabriele, our host mom's son and our host-little brother. He's ten and very mischievous yet sweet. The four of us had dinner together on Sunday night before going out to celebrate the festival of [LOOK THIS UP ON WIKIPEDIA] out in the streets near the piazza le Cure, the closest big piazza (square) to Patrizia's apartment. I'm not clear on the specifics of the current celebration, but I do know that the tradition holds for children to stay out late and run around, shooting little clay balls out of blowgun tubes, kind of like spitballs but slightly less gross, at paper lanterns and unsuspecting pedestrians.

Yesterday was the first day of classes. Kristin and I walked to school together, which included the slightly-interesting interlude of a first-hand encounter with Italian futility. Our host mom's apartment is located outside of the city center, and we have to cross a set of train tracks to get to school every morning, or at least we did with the route we took today. Either way, Kristin and I get to tracks, see a multitude of would-be pedestrians and drivers already milling about. We wait for about five minutes and see one train drive past, but the railroad gates don't go up. Another seven or so minutes later, no sign of either the train or the gates opening, we both hop the barrier and run across to the side, sick of waiting. Okay, maybe not that interesting but it's an anecdote that kind of illustrates what I've found to be the pattern of government futility that Italians tend to complain about. I've also seen several graffiti-ed icons of Berlusconi with devil's horns. Anyways, that little episode of derring-do also managed to make us late for school, which turned out not to matter much in the long run-- a lot of people walked into the gates after us. It turns out that I got into the section of Italian that I wanted to (at 8:45) and I had my two classes this morning, Italian and Art of the late Medieval and Black Death. I don’t know if I have mentioned this previously, including but not limited to the preceding paragraphs, of the female-to-male ratio of this program, which stands, charitably, at about 4:1. As luck would have it (jury’s out on whether good or bad) both of my Monday-morning classes contained men ! The overwhelming knowledge that they are already fully occupied with their burgeoning harems remains the only reason that I feel comfortable writing about them in a public forum. So, cute architecture boy from my Italian class, and hipster-with-potential from my Black Death class, I hope you never find my blog.