sad

Apparently David Foster Wallace was found dead yesterday of an apparent suicide.

Here's the New York Times article.

second photo update!

Look at that efficiency! Pix from the second week in Florence.

dailies

Today in Italian class, we talked about our favorite colors. When it was my turn, I asked "Come se dici 'teal'?" and was rewarded with the blankest of looks from my Italian professor. I think this means this country isn't for me. Otherwise, today and the past weekend have been really good. I think I am switching out of one of my art history classes (Art of the Late Medieval and Black Death) and into a class on 16th century Italian architecture instead. Even though I'm real interested in the material of the Black Death class, I absolutely cannot stand the professor and her undying love for her own voice. Whatever. Over the weekend, I went flea-marketting, which was very rewarding. On Saturday, even though it rained intermittently all day, I went to the market at Piazza del Ciompi, where I found the most amazing antique accordion. I've been obsessing over it ever since, which is really bad because one, it costs 150 euros and two, how the fuck am I going to bring/ship home an accordion? I've been playing (and I know I've been playing) a psychological game with myself, asking everyone I know (and plenty of people whom I don't) to tell me that buying an antique accordion of dubious renown when I don't even play the accordion is a very bad idea whilst knowing the entire time that I will (possibly) eventually cave and buy the damn thing. It's a vintage accordion! I think it's made of Bakelite! If I can bargain down to under one hundred euros...

Sunday might have been even better because Katie Wingate, a Wellesley girl on the program, and I went to the monthly flea market at Santo Spirito, across the Arno. There, I did cave in and spent 90 euros (my first big purchase, not including books) on a vintage Fendi purse. Even if it's fake (which I really don't think it is) it's a beautiful piece of leatherwork. I also obsessed over it the rest of Sunday, which we decided meant that no matter what, it was a good purchase. I also bought beautiful clip-on daisy earrings (which match my daisy-chain necklace) and a brown velvet sheath dress that will take me through the entire fall here.

found in translation

Luckily for me, certain cultural institutions transcend all national borders. I am talking of course, about Chinese takeout, which was Kristin and mine's dinner on Friday night due to a miscommunication between us and our host mom. I never thought I would ever have a conversation in English, Mandarin, and pidgin Italian, but I can certainly cross that little item off my list now. Grease, sugar, and pure MSG never tastes as good as after a day of hiking, climbing, and avoiding marble dust. I am talking of course about the site visit to Carrara and Pietrasanta on Friday, which wasn't so much a rock pit as a marble mountain, and a quarry inside the mountain. We... got to wear hard hats? We learned from our droll, British (was that redundant? Perhaps) tour guide, who was also an artist in residence at Pietrasanta, that colored marbles get their pigments from various natural sources, and therefore the pink marble such as the kind used on the facade of the Duomo in Florence gets its color from the shells of fossilized shrimp. It may be a stretch to say, but I'm saying anyways that the Duomo is clad in shellfish. Definitely not kosher, literally! I crack myself (and only myself) up.

Photos

First photo update is finally up on Flickr !

piazza s.s. annunziata

Is my new favorite piazza (it used to be Piazza San Marco, but then I realized that the bus stops really did distract from the ambiance). Yesterday was an interesting day because of my coffee-drinking habits. My body reacts weirdly to caffeine when I don't eat enough at the same time, and yesterday an extra macchiato between classes meant that I was feeling horrible by mid-day. I went home to take a nap, which ended up lasting four hours. Oops. It was five by the time I got my very-hungry self back out to the city. I ended up going to this little vegetarian cafe called 'Caffelatte' out in the San Marco area of the city, on the Via Degli Alfani. And even better, across the street from this cafe was a record store called Rock Bottom. It was wall-to-ceiling vinyl with rare titles and original pressings hanging on display, including a first-press edition of Chirping Crickets (from Buddy Holly & the Crickets) that was on sale for 1,100 euros. Hilariously, a first edition of Placebo's Placebo is worth 65 euros. But the store is awesome and I can't wait to go back.

Weekend plans, weekend plans... I have a class trip to Cararra and Pietrasanta tomorrow, which is mildly exciting, and where the buses leave at seven, which is not. I am also unsure about the weather tomorrow, in the big fucking rock pit under the potentially beating sun. Whatever. What I am most excited about this weekend are trips to several flea markets around the area. On Saturday, I am definitely going to the Sant'Ambroglio farmer's market and the flea market at Piazza Ciumpo near Santa Croce. Sunday is the monthly flea market at Santo Spirito in the Oltrarno, across the river from the main center of Florence, which is supposed to be really, really good and full of little antique treasures and things like that. While it is not necessarily buying from on-a-blanket-in-the-mud, I am sincerely excited for potential treasures. I need a coin purse at the very least, and possibly a new school bag.

you know you love me,

OH MY GOD FINALLY. iTunes, the Internets, the Villa Rossa, and the Entire Fucking Universe finally conspire to work in my favor for thirty minutes. The final product? Both new episodes of Gossip Girl, downloaded onto my computer and into my life. OMG Jay McInerney. Tinsley fucking Mortimer (looked kind of like a zombie, if you ask me). This is going to be the best week, even if the bitches in my Ancient Art class could be the sixth and seventh children of Sarah Palin (wow, am I really that awful a person? Apparently. How long have I known that I am guaranteed a spot next to dear old Brutus in the afterlife? At least since the age of eleven.) and even if it's going to be 35 degrees on Friday when I have my first field study trip, to the marble quarries of Cararra, a.k.a. A BIG FUCKING ROCK PIT WITHOUT SHADE, I know that all is right in the world if Chuck Bass is part of my life. I miss New York summer. I miss cheap street food and getting lost everywhere. Inexplicably, I haven't gotten lost in Florence, yet. I miss shows that actually stop in this godforsaken city. Apparently, Florence is west bumfuck compared to Rome, Milan or even Bologna. Looking at fall concert schedules, people like M83, Duffy (shut up I think she's kind of cool) and Fleet Foxes are touring Italy, but only ever stopping in Rome or Milan. ALSO, Okkervil River is PLAYING IN BOLOGNA (a feasible distance away) but on the same weekend as a field study. The field study is a trip to Pisa scheduled for Saturday while Okkervil River is playing in Bologna on Friday night, which means that it is still kind of possible for me to go, but would necessitate some creative finagling of transportation, because the three cities are in a rough triangle with each other within Tuscany. More importantly, it means hoping & praying that the state-owned rail service doesn't strike that weekend, which it is apparently wont to do quite frequently. It's going to happen, though. It has to.

Tuesdays are my busy days, and even so I manage to have a three-hour break between my two classes in the morning and one in the afternoon. I am way looking forward to my upcoming class, which is a what is called a 'maxi-seminar' on Michelangelo, I suppose because the enrollment is capped at 25 instead of 15. The class and materials should be really interesting, though I am worried about the quality of people enrolled, somewhat. Does it make me a horrible person if whenever I overhear people discussing classes I am also enrolled in, I wonder "do I really want to deal with you in my class? Are you really going to say those things with a straight face?" Probably. C.f.: Sarah Palin references earlier. I am so, so going to hell. Speaking of hellfire and Southerners, this kid J.T., who is a architecture student at the University of Kentucky, has a voice and personality that is a dead ringer for Jack McBrayer/Kenneth the Page. I am actually kind of dreading the day I inevitably call him Kenneth by accident. Reason #254 why I am so glad no one from this program will (hopefully) ever find this blog. Otherwise, once again, oops.

Currently listening to: Jennifer O'Connor.

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.

It Almost Feels Like Italy.

Oh my god I think I'm in Italy, mentally. It took a week, but it happened. Starting on Wednesday, we had three days' worth of Orientation in the Villa Rossa, the big Syracuse University in Florence compound. It's located in a piazza, the Piazza Savonarola, located slightly northwest of the city center. What's kind of really amusing is that today, coming back from buying a planner at Florence Copy (there's a whole 'nother story) I noticed that the Villa Rossa is directly across the street from the Chinese consulate in Florence. I am totally going over there on Monday and saying hello. Well, maybe not, but I am giving the idea some serious thought. Speaking of Savonarola, the piazza is awfully tranquil for such a fiery fella. I like the fact that the school is out of the hustle and bustle of the city center, away from the crowds.

Funnily enough, the hotel that we stayed in during orientation was the same hotel that I stayed in the last time I was in Florence, with the Latin trip. Sadly, I did not remember this until the second morning, when I recognized the subterrenean taverna that the hotel relegated the group travellers to during mealtimes.

The planner: I finally bought the right planner, after two false starts. The first Moleskine planner I bought ended up being a monthly planner; and the second started in calendar year 2009. Now, finally equipped with a 18-month Moleskine Weekly Planner 2008-2009, I can start the vicious cycle of color-coding and labelling that has gotten me a fair share of loveable mocking already. No matter how frustrating the multiple purchases were, I really appreciate the fact that the third planner I purchased came at the third time I went to Florence Copy, the store having been in siesta the first time I went and closed the second. The symmetry really pleases me.

I met my host mom and roommate yesterday afternoon. My host mom's name is Patrizia Frigau, she is a 45-year old single mother with a 10-year old son named Gabriele. My roommate, Kristin, and myself don't get to meet Gabriele until Sunday, though, because he is spending time with his father this week. Kristin, my roommate, is from Sudbury (MA) and is an economics major at Trinity College in Hartford. She seems like a really nice girl. Our room in Patrizia's apartment is really quite awesome, even if the location isn't, necessarily. She lives even further north of the city center than the school, and it's about a forty-minute walk to the Piazza del Duomo, Piazza Signoria, etc. It will be hard to get home after the buses stop running at night, I think. BUT the room we share is really great. She lives on the top floor of a five-story apartment, and the two of us have the second floor of her own apartment, in a big attic/loft space, with our own bathroom and everything. There are two futons and just a ton of space. Patrizia is a math teacher and psychologist and an excellent cook. I am really excited to live with her for the next four months! I think meeting her and unpacking all of my stuff was really pivotal in making me feel like I'm staying here. I'm going to be walking around the city and taking the same meals and (hopefully!) speaking the language for the rest of the year. It's both daunting and the most exciting thing that I've ever experienced. Much like New York this summer, I hope I can feel just a little bit like a local at the end of this experience. Doing so in New York was easier than I thought, but I have a feeling achieving the same level of comfort in Florence is going to be harder than I can imagine now.

I also registered for classes this morning. My last name was in the second-to-last registration block, so I feel really lucky to have gotten into all the classes that I wanted to. I'm taking four classes, three art history and one introductory Italian course. The art history classes are: Ancient Art: The Etruscans & Romans; Art of the Late Medieval Period & Black Death; and a seminar on Michelangelo. Additionally, each class comes with required field studies, which means that I am "required" to go on trips to Siena, Carrara, Assisi, Arezzo, and Ravenna, "required" to have a private tour of the Sistine Chapel and "required" to go on a three-day journey to Naples, Pompeii, and Herculaneum. Coming into this program, I expected everyone to be Art History majors, which turns out isn't the case at all. The people I've met have been English and Economics and Sociology and Chemistry and Psychology and everything-else majors; I've actually met the fewest fellow Art History majors.

This afternoon I have a meeting where I turn in my permesso di soggirno (permit to stay) forms and then I think I'm going to a used-book store called the Paperback Exchange to look into buying books for my classes. Also earlier this week, I re-found my favorite store from the last time I was in Italy, this tiny little mercantile that seemed to ply trade only in antique postcards, off the Piazza Signoria. Later, hopefully, I'll be going back into the city to experience the nightlife with some friends. I've made friends! They don't seem to hate me (though only time will tell) !!

actually (finally) italy

(c) e.b. andersen 'too many capital letters' bartels. i am SAFE and SOUND and using a VERY unfamiliar keyboard in italy. it took me five minutes to find the apostrophe key. it's been that kind of day. italy is very, very hot (still in the low nineties) and... i don't have much more of an opinion of the country beyond that right now. talk to me in a week, perhaps?

housekeeping things:

my address in florence
ami d. li
c/o syracuse university in florence
piazza savonarola, 15
50132 firenze
ITALIA

my cell phone number (florence is 6 hours ahead of eastern standard time)
+39 3493 39 1615

my skype name (this is also free)
ami.li10