A brief overview for those of you who did not get a phone call (that is to say for all of you except my parents, haha). I had the unque experience of going on a study abroad with someone I know, my fiance. Kevin and I flew from Cleveland to JFK without a hitch, really. Our flight was delayed slightly, which is pretty normal. Then at JFK three different air desks were tried when we were looking for directions before the fourth had a helpful person standing behind it. There were heaps of escalators, a lot of those handy-dandy moving runways, and a “Disney Tram” to get to the counter. We waited for 4 hours to board our plane because our flight to Paris was delayed. We had McDonalds, which was our last hamburger for a long, long time, we assume. We met some other USAC-ers while we waited, and as usual, my first impressions of them turned out a little wrong. I’m not usually a good judge of people’s personalities when they are putting on their “good faces.” Anyway, this is supposed to be brief. In Paris, a girl on our trip who is from New York decided that since she had the least flight experience (I had the most of all the East Coast kids) that she would be pushy and bossyand make us almost late for our flight. She insisted on making us do all sorts of unnecessary walking through security, customs, etc, when we should have been able to follow the signs that Kevin pointed out as “what to follow.” (Kevin was the only other person who had flown internationally in our group, who had also been to Charles de Gaulle before... did I mention that we were in Paris and Kevin speaks French?) That was a massive headache. Needless to say, I avoid the New Yorker like the plague. I probably got about 2 hours of sleep in tiny spurts on the flights to Paris and Rome, which means that I was basically awake for about 30 hours before I finally got to sleep with a nice pillow and a warm bed.
Somewhere between Paris and Rome, Air France lost Kevin’s luggage, mostly because of the layover that we had. His bag got mis-marked. It was very strange because our bags were chekced together, and mine was not mis-tagged. Three other east coast kids lost their bags as well. While Kevin was in the airport, the director made me go sit on the bus with the other students. I'll be honest, I'm not the best at meeting new people, and this was a little more frightening than I was expecting. Why, you ask? Because the girls on this trip are so boy-crazy. One of them even said she had dibs on 2 of the guys (including Kevin) until I told her that we were engaged and that she should back off. He was neither on the bus, nor had she seen him yet, and she was placing claims. It really ruffled my feathers. Kevin came back without his luggage after 2 hours or something. No worries, Kevin’s bag was safely returned to his custody on Wednesday morning when he was wearing his last clean pair of socks! Whew, that was close, eh? But I am getting ahead of myself.
We stayed in a hotel for the first night and I roomed with a nice Aussie girl and three very pushy girls. I have discovered that Kevin and I are quite likely the least spoiled and most poor people on this trip, which was no surprise. Even the nice kids seem like they have had everything handed to them. Such was most definitely the case with my three other roommates. My Aussie friend is a sweetheart, but she too is affluent, though she seems British in that she does not flaunt it like the other “Daddy’s girls” on the trip. Again, I am getting ahead of myself. The first morning in Italy, Kevin had a cappuccino… and liked it! Can you say “This coffee fiend is proud?”
We toured the city a little bit and were given our apartment. It is just the two of us here with a really large bedroom with a queen bed, a set of bunk beds, a closet, a dresser and a wardrobe that fills an entire wall. We could go shopping for weeks and weeks (which is possible with all the cute little stores around here) and have unlimited funding and not be able to fill all the space with clothing. The draw backs to our apartment? We have a tiny kitchen, radiator heat, and although this sounds odd, newly remodeled EVERYTHING. The new renovations were finished before we got here. There is construction dirt everywhere, and the worst part is that the walls weren’t given time to breathe. Most of Viterbo is constructed with pepperino stone. Our apartment building is 500 years old, and since they did not invent Vodafone at that point, no one knew that the pepperino stone could block cell signals. So, it takes a little while for the plaster on the walls to learn who to work in its new environment. We learned this the hard way: by finding puddles all over the place. The puddles are formed when the humidity in the air is trapped by the newly-sealed, not-yet-settled plaster, terra cotta flooring and paint. The humid air stays on a cold floor without circulation and there is condensation. It starts out small like the beads of condensation on your lemonade glasses in summers in Ohio. You know the ones I’m thinking of: they’re the kind the make those rings on your mother’s antique table that you got put in the corner for creating when you were seven… so it didn’t happen to me, but maybe it happened to you? I digress. After the little beads form, they attract other beads, which turn into puddles under your bed. And that was your lesson in science. My father’s science/math-based family will be so proud.
Our first night in the apartment was Sunday, so no stores were open. We ate at the oldest restaurant in Italy—Tre Re—Three Kings. Good food, but you know what it is like to be truly embarrassed when all the people you eat with are ugly Americans who don’t know how to respect a new culture or shut up and not ask the same questions over and over again. The people we ate with that night have become most of our favorites on the trip. Kevin and I want to get a “meal exchange” program working between apartments so we’re not cooking every night.
I’ll write more about it later, but our city is very quiet and picturesque. Being here is like walking through a postcard. Our doors outside are giant-like outside and tiny inside, and the windows are small, and usually shuttered. If you are going to school at Capital, or any other university that has quiet hours, consider yourselves lucky: here in Italy, quiet hours are a national law that could get you kicked out of housing, out in jail, or if you are on a visa, thrown out of the country, even after only one violation. Italians do not have large gatherings in their homes in the cities. They go for long walks and meet friends in the evening. Dinner rush is around 8:30/9pm, so from the time the shops close (7:30, usually) until dinner, you’ll find most everyone walking around the piazzas. (Squares) of town.
We live in il centre (downtown) in the renaissance part of the city, inside the walls of the city, and very close to the medieval center of town, San Pellegrino. One of the biggest walking areas of the city because we are close to one of the main festival piazzas, and fountains, which were at one point, the only running water in the city. In fact, there was a battle over a nearby fountain when a cardinal asked some servant boys to wash his dog, and the boys washed the dog in the fountain. It was the only drinking water for the entire neighborhood. Many of the neighborhoods and areas of town are named after the churches or fountains you find there.
I am currently struggling through my Italian language class because it is so close to Spanish, which I took in high school and retained fairly well. Hmm… what else to tell you all… my Culture prof moved here in the 1960s, and she’s an interesting lady. She is a complete contrast to my language professor, who is in her early 30s, and could be a bikini model or something. The boys are all basically in love with her. I say all, but wthere are only 6 men on the trip. We’re trying to get her hooked up with our program director. Maybe our director (a native of Turino) will understand why Viterbo is nicknamed “the City of beautiful fountains and beautiful women,” when he meets our instructor. They would be an adorable couple. There is only one year of age difference between them. Leave it to me to play matchmaker in a foreign country.
Anyway, now you know that I am alive. I have experienced a little bit of culture shock, and I still do not have everything I need for my classes. I have a different packing list to give to the Office of International Education than what they suggested, because finding things like folders and notebooks in Viterbo is no small feat unless you have a car to drive out to the ipercoup, and then you would have to expect someone to speak enough English to tell you which of the 40 stores might possibly have the random object you are looking for. I will head out. I give my best to all of you. Mom, don’t forget to water my plants!
Ciao!