I’ve been up to a lot, not so much in the way of classes but more when it comes to getting to know the city and the trips I’ve taken. I’m more comfortable around the city now and I can get around pretty easily without the awkward use of my map. My language class is going fine, except for the Nate Greene level of reading that’s assigned. That was of course an exaggeration but it’s still a shit ton to read. I’ve been hanging out with the Italians on my floor more and they’re the shit. A lot of them are from the south and Albania, and upstairs there’s a guy named axel who keeps speaking French to me. I just answer in Spanish and we both end up confused, but its fun. All the dudes just love to hang out, smoke, drink bürhs, talk about movies they’ve seen and the food they like to make. One of them plays the guitar and he’ll just chill in his room and play for whoever happens to roll through. Theme of the trip No. 1: They love grappa and SO DO I. One of them has his grandma send him grappa from their family vineyard in Albania and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. Think strong like Dubra with the deliciousness of Bailey’s, just to give you an idea.
I think I’m going to be taking two classes this semester. Which in the end will give me 4 credits (its amazing how that works out). The language class I’m in right now and the writing workshop they make us take each give me half a credit. I wanna take one class on Italian politics through my program, pretty standard, and then one at the university on American Government and Politics. The University class would give me two credits after I pass the final, which like most others is an oral exam with just the professor asking you questions. Hopefully my ability to bullshit and freakish knowledge of wikipedia will translate into Italian. The class is basically a view of American politics from the Italian perspective. It should be pretty bomb. As much as I like the off time I’m excited to get back to school. My language class finishes Friday and I have a week off, so I’m going to Spain to visit Eleanor and Matteo. I actually can’t wait. I have class until noon on Friday and then I gotta make it to the airport outside Milan by 5 o’clock. Never mind that it’s three hours away, I’ll probs make it (this is where Nigel begins to shake his head as he remembers the end of last semester).
One of the coolest things about our program is the cooking class they enroll us in. We have it at this woman’s house in small groups of about 7 and she is the shit. Rita is a 50 something Bolognese woman with a heart of gold. She calls me carino (sweetheart) every time I do something right in the kitchen and she loves when I speak spanglish. She’s taught us how to make frittatas and awesome desserts. When we went over Italian dinner manners she mentioned that “Quando si dice alle otto ... é veramente otto e quarto.”. Loosely translated it basically means that when people say dinner is at eight, they really mean eight fifteen because if you get there any earlier dinner won’t be ready and the person cooking will be in the shower still. Can we talk about how that could not describe my life any better. It’s like I was born here. For once in my life, time is adjusting to me and not forcing me to do the reverse. Bravo. Today is our second lesson and I’m pumped. We’re making pasta and ragú from scratch. No worries, I’m bringing all this shit back to replicate so we can eat properly after madness nights.
We’ve taken a lot of day trips, both with our program and on our own. Two weekends ago we went to Ravenna to look at some awesome architecture. It was an awesome trip except for two things. (1) The night before I had raged like it was going out of style and I was hungover as fuck. I slept on top of my friend Jessie the whole train ride there spooning a giant bottle of water (I’m expecting all jokes and finding none of them hilarious). When we finally arrived I had an espresso and rallied. The old lady at the café saw me and asked me if I knew what the word sbornia meant. I told her I didn’t and she said that I definitely did because I was living it. I looked it up later. It means hangover, one of the worst kind. I went back at the end of the trip to get another espresso to show her how champions rally. She told me she hadn’t seen a bounce back like that since the celebrations at the end of the war. BOO-YA-KA-SHA.
On the trip we saw the Church of San Vitale and the mausoleum outside and all the awesome mosaics inside. The first time I’d heard of this church was junior year of high school when I read about it in my art history book, and now I’ve seen it. It was bomb. After the tour of the city they let us get lunch and some friends and I went to a cool little restaurant that made its own wine. They sat us in this courtyard that used to be the cloister of a monastery and while we waited for our food they took us around and showed us their cellar with all their wine in it. We ordered wine and I had homemade Bolognese pasta, tagliatelle with Ragú.
One of the field trips we took for class the next week was to a little place outside the hills of Bologna called Paderno. It was a series of hills all essentially made of hard clay covered sparsely with grass and mud that overlooked a single basin. It was a grey morning and kinda rainy and the mist had rolled in. As we walked around we saw a little cassina that used to be a farmhouse but was now a little museum. Our professor started talking about how in that place 64 years ago in the middle of a brutal winter the retreating Nazis had taken revenge on the resistance forces, which were made up of people around our rage, by taking suspected guerillas, walking them across the freezing hills, lining them up along the cliff and shooting them. Their bodies fell into the basin below and were only discovered months later after the snow had melted. A rock with every name of a slain Italian was placed on the cliff and when I look up from the top of the hill I was on I couldn’t see where they ended. They went over one hill and then the next, and then the next one after that. After a walk around we got really cold and an old woman served us hot tea in one of the rooms in the cassina to warm us up. A couple of us started talking to her and we found out that her older brother was one of the people taken away and shot that day. She lives and works at the museum now telling people of how she remembers soldiers coming in the middle of the night to take her brother away. It was a really cool outing and really interesting to see all that.
Anyway, I’ve put of reading for way too long, so I’m gunna peace but I’ll try to check in again before I leave for España.
Pieces err’body
Take me where you are. I want to be there.
ReplyDeleteps
"I have class until noon on Friday and then I gotta make it to the airport outside Milan by 5 o’clock. Never mind that it’s three hours away, I’ll probs make it (this is where Nigel begins to shake his head as he remembers the end of last semester)."
totes.