First Days of Class

So today was the first day of class! Hooray! Just like going to the first day of school, I got up extra early, took a shower, put on a nice dress. Mama always sets the table for us before she goes to bed and puts out cereal, bread, jam, and cookies for breakfast. I had the amazing homemade blackberry jam on bread and some yogurt too then headed to the epic five minute walk to school. Students in my program live from five minutes walking to a forty-five minute bus ride. However, the home stays that are farther away tend to be larger homes with perks like wireless internet!

My first class was Art and Identity in Renaissance Italy with Professor Jonathan Nelson. He was suggested by a fellow whittie so I knew he could not be too bad. The class is so interesting! It is somewhat similar to a course I’ve already taken in Renaissance Art with Dennis Crockett but this class will be focused more on Florence and more on paintings. Professor Nelson has blue eyes that sparkle even behind his spectacles and he calls me Sarah D (we have three Sarahs in the class…thank you again for your creativity Mom & Dad). I think I am really going to enjoy this class. He demands a lot out of his students has he frequently called on us during class and it was actually a dialogue (instead of a professor saying it’s a dialogue and then talking at the class the whole time). He is a little arrogant (as all art historians/college professors seem to be) and he assigned one of his newly published books in our reading material. My favorite part of this class is that about half of the classes are in the classroom while the other is at various sites around the city. We also have “mandatory” field trips to both Venice and Rome. I don’t think they have to make these mandatory, actually I would like to see them to stop me from going. Apparently, in Rome we get a private tour of the Sistine Chapel. I have also already made plans with my friend Becca to stay in Venice for an extra day and explore the city.

My next class was Italian…probably the most directly relevant class and also the most frequent (two hours a day, four times a week). My professor’s name was Constanti which was a good sign because as you may or may not know I am a big believer in a name and Constantino is the surname of a very good friend. However, once I reached the classroom which was on the third floor in a building across from the main campus, I was overcome by gloom. I think the idea of taking a language class brought my memories back to the dull days of high school Spanish class. So I just sat there in class as we went over the basics—Mi chiamo Sarah, Come ti chiami? You can guess what that means. We did this for 90 minutes. Then we did numbers for 30 minutes. The teacher actually asked me to smile, when was the last time a teacher asked me to smile? Probably the dull days of high school. Anyway, I actually did like our teacher she is like an Italian version of my favorite Spanish teacher from high school (who can best be summed up as extremely animated). On a side note, the second and third days of class haven’t got much better or harder. This is hard for me to believe of myself, but I cannot believe how easy our Italian class is. We really need to expedite the learning process here because my mama and I just had a conversation on how she needs to stop speaking English and only speak Italian. Ahh.

On the second day, I had my two other classes. The first was Renaissance Architecture in Italy. I am excited for this class because I know some little about Architecture technically I thought it would be a nice accompaniment to Art and Identity which mostly focuses on frescos. However, I learned today that this class is listed as not only a fine arts class but also as an architecture course. I am not really sure how this works because supposedly it’s an introductory course but there are architecture undergrads and graduate students in this class! I don’t know who I can compete with them (actually I’m sure I’ll figure it out). Architecture is similar to my art history class as half of our classes are in the classroom and half are around Florence. In fact, on Thursday we are meeting in the city. The professor seems okay she bashed her undergraduate business major (so not cool) but has a history in both architecture and art history so that will definitely be useful. She also definitely likes to hear herself talk (again, pretty common with college professors) but has a little trouble listening. All my classes are small; this one and Art and Identity have about fifteen students. Italian has eleven. My next class was Beginning Digital Photography. Not much to say about this one except I need to get a better digital camera. Our class only has nine girls in it but we have two professors that are great and really knowledgeable so I think it will be a great introductory course. It meets twice a week for three hours; we got out two hours early today, so that was definitely nice.

A quick note on the dinners on these two days (Monday and Tuesday). Monday was quite interesting as Mama was teaching a cooking lesson to four Japanese students. So our dinner table consisted of four Japanese girls, two American girls, and two Italians. We spoke a mash of English and Italian but it really is amazing how much you can communicate with gestures. Plus, when there is so much good food—who needs to talk? We had fresh bruschetta (by the way, much better fresh) with tomatoes, onions, olives, and whatever else is in bruschetta piled on fresh slices of bread. We had penne zucchini pasta which is Cosimo’s (mama’s son) favorite dish. For dessert we had this grape cake, the grapes were freshly picked this weekend from Mama’s friends Villa and were so delicious and sweet. We also had breaded potatoes, zucchini, eggplant, and lemon chicken. This was very good and tasted very similar to Japanese tempura. Also, it tasted very, very fattening (I have been trying not to think about this fact). Someone told me that the food we are eating isn’t that bad because it is just fried in oil. I think he is fooling himself because it is still fried in oil. Oh, and we had some fresh onion rings. I love that they make onion rings in Italy and that they still look gourmet and authentic Italian.

Tuesday night we had a traditional Sicilian pasta dish. This might be the best pasta I have ever had. Let me explain. Mama used fresh spaghetti and covered with a mixture of water, flour, and breadcrumbs then she fried it in oil with garlic. I ate fried spaghetti! They finally figured out how to make spaghetti worse for you—by frying of course! But it was so delicious. Melissa and I ate the entire bowl. But we kept it light for the next course just salad, meat, potatoes, and fruit for dessert (and yes, that is keeping it “light”).

After dinner, my friends were DJing at this small Irish pub that is a little off the beaten path and popular with Italians. We enjoyed our leisurely thirty minute walk and when we arrived at the bar received free pint size beers and they went to learn about the audio system. I sat with three random girls and to my relief they spoke English. They were from the Czech Republic, Finland, and Australia. I hung out with them most of the night and talked to them about traveling. My roommate showed up a little later and we ended up hanging out there until 1:00 am (on a school night)!