Ok! Well I have not been writing in this for a while, because things have been happening so quickly with very little time in between for doing the houskeeping stuff. Emails have been put on the back burner as well because of all the stuff going on- especially in the last few days were here! Only 5 more days till our semester ends here, and I can not believe it! Before we get to that part however, let me tell you some of the junk that has happened to get us to this last week.
Like I said, the week after Spain, was pretty boring and pretty cold/rainy around here. Nothing too special happened, just going through the school motions with class, homework, the venticinque bus up to campus (urghhhhh not going to miss that part of Florence!). On thursday of that week, I had to give a presentation in Italian (in Italian) about a topic of my choice. I chose to do a quick comparison on Powerpoint of Florence and West Hartord. My teacher, Grazia, loved it! She thought some of the pictures of things like Westfarms Mall and my house were very interesting. She lives in Fiesole, if you remember that place north of Florence, so as an Italian woman with two children, she lives a fairly different life than I do!
Friday of that week we took a quick trip to neighboring Prato, which is home to not only the largest population of Chinese immigrants in Italy, but also home to biscotti! Biscotti is of course an Italian cookie, which is made relatively quickly for how stale the product actually tastes. I am not a fan of traditional biscotti which has almond chunks in it, but we visited a factory in Prato which makes several different typs. And by factory, I mean small storefront with a large kitchen behind it! We were taken behind the counter to see the machines and ingredients they use to make biscotti, it was super interesting. They mix, kneed, cut, bake, roll, and wrap their own kinds. They also have two different intents, one for local consumption, and another for their global line which can be shipped anywhere FedEx goes. They gave us a bag of the local intent for free, and then we could buy any type we wanted after that from the front store! Mothers Day made easy, as it turns out. Biscotti of course everywhere is eaten as an after dinner kind of thing, but in Italy, it meant to be dipped in a special type of wine which is also made in Prato. I bought some of the wine too, US Customs help me out on this one!
That weekend was pretty boring, didnt go anywhere in an effort to save money and recover from Spain the weekend before. I did get a bit of homework done however, which was great. Six whole pages of the twelve due for my Berlin DADA paper…so lame I hated that topic. The weekend was also a brief break in the horrible weather, with sun and warmer temperatures, so I wound up going to campus for the day on Saturday to do homework and be in the sun. Lets move on to the next week!
This week was also fairly bad weather, my friends Silva and Simone in the front office told me that La Nina in the southern Pacific also effects European weather, and this is a La Nina year so the spring is unseasonably cold. Whatever Italy! This week I also picked back up on my Melrose Place addiction. On Monday I gave my second presentation in Topics in Modern Society on Berlin DADA. It went remarkably well for putting in virtually no effort…the teacher even said “nice job” at the end and other students commented on how well it went too. wow!
On Tuesday I sent my official CAS Petition to New York, asking to be allowed to study at GWU next spring and have my credits transfered. It was about 13 pages of whining, sappy begging, and sylabi from GWU. Hopefully they will say yes! I have yet to hear back from them, but I need to tell GWU yes or no in about a month, so hopefully I hear soon.
Towards the weekend, the weather finally broke for the better, and we at Casa Fiorentina decided to make the best of it! On Friday, we left early in the morning for a place called Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is now a national park and an EU-recognized heritage site. Built over thousands of years by people in the region, Cinque Terre is a series of five small villages built into the sides of the hills that descend into the western coasts sea. Between the five villages, there are walking and hiking trails, inlcuding the first one which is paved and called the “Via Dell’Amore”. These were five of the most beautiful towns I have ever seen in Italy! I went with some of the people from Casa Fiorentina on Friday and spent nearly the whole day on the beach in the furtherest town to the north, Montarosso. We had dinner at a local trattoria which specialized in fish, however….as we all know I HATE fish, so I ordered the only terra-origin secondo piatto, pork. Anyways, I left to go home very late (while the others sayed in a hostel for the night). I quickly found that the trains running to Cinque Terre dont run so oftern after 10PM. I wound up taking a 12AM train from La Spezia (the main Cinque Terre station) to Pisa, where I took a 1AM bus to Florence. One fun thing about that bus was that the driver had music blasting the entire way, and was pulled over for 30 minutes by the police for speeding in a rotary. Cool!
Saurday I woke up late, obviously, after going to bed very late. I decided I liked Cinque Terre so much that I would return! I got back at around 3PM and hiked a few of the town’s conecting trails before it got dark and I had to get back on the trains to go home and avoid the disaster from the night before. It was SO pretty and I got SO many good photos (in spite of my horrible camera).
On Sunday, I woke up very early to join my friend in going to a beach for the day. We rememebered going to Viareggio for Carnavale in Februrary, where we were told there is a very nice beach. When we went for Carnavale in February, the day was so horrible weatherwise, that it was hard to picture every going there to swim and sit in shorts out on the sand. However, when our train finally got us into town early in the monring, it was already getting warm! We stopped at Conad Supermercato for essential beach provisions and went down to the water to claim a piece of beach for ourselves. It was a great day! Viareggio is the best! All along the water, behind the beach, are designer stores, gift stores, and palm trees. There are also some gorgeous hotels as well. Further behind that “boardwalk” road, the town of Viareggio was pretty quiet on Sunday, when everything is closed. We got up only to use the bathroom, and get dinner at a Bar, before coming back to watch the sunset over the water…but we were short changed with a huge cloud bank over Corsica so that we couldnt see it hit the water.
THIS WEEK! This week was pretty good weather wise, with lots of sun and warm weather. As Florence has improved, we have seen the weather in the CT/NY area decline as well! Hahaha. This past week was also out last week of classes, cut short by the Italian holiday on Thursday (Labour Day/ Giorno di Lavori). Lots went on this week too…
Monday night was a special night for NYU in Florence. We had our End of the Year Semi-Formal. It was just like Prom, and filled just like Prom was with laughter punctuated by people talking about how sad it will be to go home in a week. The music program on campus played jazz for us all night long, as the event itself occured in the normally-closed off gardens of Villa La Pietra. It was pretty gorgeous as the sun set, everyone was dressed up, and there were catered anti-pasti. It ended quicker than many would have liked however, as we all have a lot of work to finish before leaving the country.
Tuesday, my partner and I delivered our presentation on Kosovo to our politics class, and it again went very well. The teacher asked for a copy of the Powerpoint for his own collection after we finished! We were rushed however, as we were the last ones to go. Later in the day, the weather shifted pretty quickly, and sun came out as the cloudy morning left. This big shift in weather gave me a sinus migrane, and I was down and out for about an hour recovering in one of the villas before going to my last class. The teacher understood and told me apparently that happens frequently in Florence because of the pollen and humidity? Alright…
Wednesday was our official last day of classes, and we had a Festa in Italian class and held class out in the gardens, playing games. At night, when all of the Casa Fiorentina people were home, our Resident Italian Marco, gave us a cooking lesson for dinner. We learned how to make Mushroom Risotto by hand, and a very delicious pasta/meat sauce dish. Along with wine, bread, and cheese, we all ate a great Italian dinner together! We also all went out to get Gelato afterwards at our local Gelateria, La Carreia, which has the BEST gelato ever.
Thursday was a pretty boring day in contast, I went to campus to get sun and work done, because nothing was open, not even the bus system was running, on Labour Day. That night, for my roommate Mark’s birthday, we went out for a very nice dinner at a famous restaurant called La Giostra. It is very expensive, but has hands down some of the best food in Florence. They gave us a huge platter of anti-pasti for free at the beginning and a glass of Perseco each. We all ordered a Primi Piatti, mine was a pasta with cinghale (wild boar) sauce. For Secondo, Mark and I split a HUGE steak, a Florentine specialty, called Bistecca Fiorentina. They cook it in herbs, salt, and lemon…and when I say cook I mean wave it over a flame of similar size to the candle that was sitting on our table. It was SO raw and drippy, but I havent ever had steak as good at that was. By the end, we were all SO full that the giant bill didnt seem to matter so much.
Friday the only thing interesting that happened was a trip up to Fiesole brielfy around dinner time to watch the sunset over the Arno Valley for the last time. It was very beautiful. I was still full all day from the meal the night before, but by around ten I was able to go for a run up to Piazza Michelangelo to see the reverse view of Fiesole, by night. Very cool day.
Saturday, a friend and I decided to go to the beach again! This time, we chose a beach-town in the Emilia-Romangna regione, located on the east coast called Rimini. Rimini took about 4 hours to reach by Regionale trains, but was very worth it. Again, Emilia-Romangna is the richest region in the country of Italy, and the city of Rimini certainly looked expensive. The town is very modern, as it was heavily bombed during the end of WWII by the allies. Now, the beach part of the town is lined with resorts and restaurants. There was a natural food fair going on which brought in lots of different vendors from several different regions in Italy…also Vodofone had a tent there? Ha I dont know. The day went by very fast as we sat on the beach. Towards the end of the day, we went into town to explore the few interesting part left over from the Roman and Byzantine Empires, which included the Tiberius Bridge built about 2000 years ago and an Arch from some Emperor…the town itself was very modern which was a change from Medival/Renaissance Florence. We went home via train, arriving around 1030PM.
Now we have about five days left, Sunday is already almost done and it is scary how quickly I feel this next week will go by. Lots of souvenir shopping to do in the various markets around Florence, and a few finals to take at some point. I will try to wite my last Blog for this semester on Thursday night, when I plan to pack to come home. I will be landing in Boston on Friday afternoon, home in West Hartford on Saturday morning.
