Fitting In

So I want to apologize again for the lack of blog posts but I promise I have an excellent reason this time…I am having so much fun! I am busy all the time and I am finally fitting in here in Florence. It is really true what they say about once your settled in, its time to leave! I absolutely love my host family, my friends, even my Italian class! My host brother Cosimo’s girlfriend Alex moved in with us last month. At first it was kind of strange, I didn’t even know Cosimo had a girlfriend and then as I like to put it she came to dinner and never left. But she is great, from Austria and speaks fluent English and prefers English to Italian which she is just starting to learn which means we speak mostly English now at home. Although this is not good for my Italian, it is really good for bonding and getting to know each other because we can actually have real conversations because my host mama Fiamma is very good conversationally in English and Cosimo is practically fluent. Alex also brought Melissa (roommate) and I closer with Cosimo because she was so relaxed with us that he became too. He does a great impression of me—he basically just says whatever and loser all the time but then adds the hand motions (which I definitely don’t do). In turn, I make fun of Cosimo for living with his mom at 28 and being a slacker. I even ended up changing my return ticket to the U.S. so I can stay for a few extra days. I did this for two reasons: the first being that I didn’t want to leave 18 hours after my Italian written final and secondly Cosimo’s exhibition that he has been working so hard was the Thursday I was supposed to leave and I really want to see that! Alex also has many jobs planned for me to help with the exhibition.

Mama Fiamma and I have also been bonding a lot lately. Funny to say but it mostly occurred after my roommate stayed with her boyfriend for a week because Fiamma and I spent a lot more time together. And she is hilarious! We have so much fun talking and making fun of people. Haha. We even talk about Cosimo and Alex and I try to teach her about American things/concepts like Facebook. We talk about her old host students too. Mama is selling her cookbook at our school and yesterday I rode on the back of her vespa to go to school! It was so fun and one of my goals here. It was only slightly scary for the first minute or so because I was scared of balancing but after that it was just fun! I am excited to ride Daddy’s vespa when I get home! I am also having lunch at the house today--and this is unusual because we usually don't get lunch but since I am leaving for Munich tonight she wanted to feed me!

Mama is still keeping me well fed. Fortunately, I joined a gym shortly after fall break. So now I am just working out enough to maintain my weight (which pretty much means I have to work out every day I am not traveling). My gym is great, there are classes every hour (and sometimes two) and also a personal trainer available at least 2 hours every day. I go to the total body workout at least three times a week which is very fun and helps with my Italian! Although, I am also learning that you really don’t need to know what the instructor is saying. I wish I would have joined a gym as soon as I got here but my knee injury early on prevented any exercising for a month.

I am even enjoying my Italian class! My class dwindled from 13 to 10 (lost one because he is an architecture student, another was just auditing and just stopped coming; one went home because of a shattered elbow). And usually one or two people don’t come every day so it’s a very close class! You really get to know the people in your class—probably because you are with them 8 hours a week mostly just talking about yourselves. Today in Italian class was quite fun. First of all, none of the boys showed up (all four). So it was just us six girls. We were cooking part of an Italian meal so the first thing we did was made a list of ingredients we needed and then we “facciamo la spesa” (went grocery shopping) at the nearby supermarket. It was so fun and since the boys weren’t there to tie us down we were very efficient and thrifty! I was in charge of the money (naturally, haha) and we came in 10 euro under budget (thank you very much). Then we went to the kitchen where Donatella our profesoressa was waiting and she instructed us on how to begin. We made pesto (from scratch, duh) pasta and tiramisu. It was surprisingly pretty easy and also fun! We listened to Chirstmas music and sang and cooked. We finished by 12:15 so had 35 minutes to relax and enjoy our food. We had about ¾ of the tiramisu left so Claire (one of my classmates) and I brought it to our following photo class which is full of nine girls who always love chocolate.

Speaking of photo, I am loving photo class! It is pretty much just a big three hour party every class and everyone looks forward to going. There are only nine girls and we all like each other. That is because lately we have been getting ready for finale critiques and the art show so all we do is print off our photos, listen to Christmas music, sing, gossip about students and celebrities, watch funny you tube videos (kids seeing a version of T.I.’s “Whatever You Like”) last time, and of course upload pictures to facebook. We also have a lot of photo paper left so we have been taking advantage of it and been printing photos for our photo albums! From not knowing if I would be able to stand our professor from absolutely loving her crazyness has been great. She loves me too…she “loves my irony in person and in my photos” haha. She also took us to this modern art show at the one place that shows contemporary art in Florence and like encouraged us to give our opinions. Well, of course I have no trouble giving my opinions and they were mostly negative yet insightful about the value of a lot of the pieces. She told me after that she loved my comments and that they were just so logical (I am an econ major).

Other things I have done, I went to Rome last weekend and Venice the weekend previous to Paris. I went to both cities with my art history class which I love. I only don’t love that I have to memorize 90 images for the final! Ah!

Oh and I have made some great friends! I have mostly been hanging out with Lisa and Elissa who are in my photography class. Lisa is from Maine and goes to Bates and Elissa is from Aspen and goes to Bowdoin. Good liberal art schools—that is really what I need to stick with! They are so fun and positive and we have been having a great time together. I went to Paris with Lisa last weekend. Elissa ran the marathon last Sunday (and Lisa ran 20/26 miles with her) so it was really fun to go out and support them. Elissa had a great quote about the marathon…“in any other circumstance I think I would lose weight while training for a marathon however that is not the case in Italy I am barely staying the same”. There you have it, if you don’t want to gain weight while living with a host family for four months in Italy, train for a marathon.

Even in regular Italian life I have been doing a lot better! I can go to the supermarket, cafe, tabacci with ease. I don't let Italians push me over in line (although did I ever really?).

Other news from home, I have been elected Recruitment Chair of Kappa Kappa Gamma! I also have been elected CEO of Whitman Investment Company that manages about 1% of our endowment (about $300,000). So I have lots to look forward to when I get to school! Not to mention seeing all of my friends and professors again! And ohh Whitman (efficient) administration.