So I've managed to go the longest since I've had this blog without writing in it. I guess when I was alone in Malta I wanted to write a lot about all the things I was doing, but I had to buy my internet there incrementally so I didn't.
After only 2 weeks, I hardly know where to start about bologna and my entire study abroad experience. It's crazy. Every few days there's something new or surprising about being here that I couldn't have expected but at the same time I feel pretty prepared and calm about new stuff. I guess what's really getting under my skin actually is lack of music/practice space, which seems to be my problem in life in general. Since I've been in italy, i've little to no contact with music, and literally zero opportunity to actually work on anything that's been brewing in my head. This happens to me every once in a while, like when I'm in california or during midterms at wellesley or when I was really busy at middlebury. Anyhow, I feel like I have no right to complain about it since I'm living in italy quasi-free and I've been having a really good time otherwise, but it's just a little bit scary that my life/mood are so greatly affected by how much i'm playing music and how productive I feel. I have a hard time being happy with myself when I realize i've had almost 3 months of no real musical contact.
BUT! In more exciting news about acclimating to this crazy country, I can say with confidence that living here for a year will be no issue. It's not all peacehes and cream, there are social problems that remind much of the US, and a city is a city is a city with racism, poverty and crime, but at the same time it's just been a bottomless pit of wonder for me to actually live in a metropolitan setting (and bologna is much smaller and safer than most cities) because everything, the food, the people, the nightlife, the buildings, the art and the sounds all amaze me. I think this one other student and I have become infamous in our program for constantly borderline overreacting with enthusiasm and wonder at everything we experience, but i'm trying to maintain some authenticity amongst it all. It's hard though, I mean really, this is all just blowing my mind so far.
Highlights of the last 2 weeks are to many to enumerate. Like actually. When I got here, I moved into my apartment which is for 5 people, 2 double rooms and one single, and my roommate is a 22 year old girl from the south of italy (crap I can't remember which region, I suck, I think Campagna? Or Basilicata) anyway, my roommates name is angela. I didn't really meet anyone in the house until the 5th or 6th day I was living there because I was spending so much time doing my 'permesso di soggiorno) permission to be in the country and orientation and starting classes that I didn't really get to have conversations with anyone. Other things in that initial few days included an incredible family style dinner, to which a girl from welleslsey who has done this exchange program in the past came to (because she lives and works in bologna since she loved italy so much when she was here for the year before), and I had talked to her so much while she was still at wellesley about bologna that she took me out to coffee afterward and walked me back to my apartment together. We switched numbers and have been going out to coffee pretty regularly, so through her I've met a group of italians and albanian people she knows, and they're all soo nice and awesome to talk to. I can't even explain how hard it is to meet real italian young people just when your walking down the street, so the fact that I had a connection with a young person in this city from the beginning has just been so amazing, and I've ever started bring other americans from my program to meet some other people so they can talk to and meet italians also. Anyway this girl's name is Katie or Katia, in case I mention her again later.
So, then as I got used to being here, we all just sort of explored the city and tried to get a feel for how the city transportation and streets work. Bologna is a medieval city (spelling?) and so the streets don't form rectangles or squares like in manhattan (quadrata is what the italians say). This means I basically always have to have a map because I can only navigate the main drags in the city without a map and when you try to explore and get lost on lots of tiny alleyways and side streets its a little confusing. At the beginning it was worse, obviously, but now we've figured out the bus system to get around, which let me tell you, is sooo italian.
So in bologna there are like 5 million bus routes that go everywhere. Any street that is straight with 2 lanes has a bus that comes every 5 minutes or so during normal business hours during the day (less frequent at night) and the way the tickets work is you buy them in tabacco shops (or similar stores) and they're these little 1 euro tickets, but when u get on the bus you don't have to pass the driver or validate your ticket at all. You're supposed to validate it in these little orange machines that are attached to the poles in the bus, and there's a specific date and time printed on the ticket that says when you used it, however, the only way someone knows where or not you have a validated ticket for that specific ride is if a controller gets on the bus, arbitrarily, and starts checking tickets. I have yet to see a controller and I have also yet to see an italian get on the bus and validate his or her ticket, which means that everyone is riding these public buses for free. Even when I get on an uncrowded bus and the driver watches me get on, not validate a ticket, and then get off, there's never a problem. They don't care, they don't say anything. So this was my first fiscal/governmental example of how senseless and dysfunctional italian organization can be. I mean really? They're paying drivers and controllers and tons of other bus employees without making a profit off of the thousands of riders that ride for free everyday. Anyway, interesting, but of course I'm not opposed ot free things, especially as a student who lives pretty far outside the city, so I ride them all the time and have yet to buy a ticket, but even if a controller gets on, you canjust get off at the next stop before he/she gets to you, because the buses stop every 500 ft.
So other things to write about, so much has been going on it's hard to write it all down. First off, I found a job thats very play-it-by-ear with a wellesley alum babysitting her three amazingly adorable bilingual boys. I have my first session with her next week for 2.5 hours, and I'm happy to do it because they're so cute and I could use the money. She offered to give my name to other italian families in the case that I would like more work, which I would but I'm still trying to find out my course schedule and that will change/depend on a lot of things. My courses have been probably the single most frustrating and time-consuming thing about italy so far. My real classes haven't even started but chosing them is like a puzzle, as it is at wellesley too, but i've been offered this chance to take a class at the conservatory of bologna, which would be wonderful, because their jazz studies aren't that presitigious which probably means I could take theory and ear training without being intimidated out of my wits, but it's all up in the air right now, and no one has decided or said anything about whether or not it will actually happen. So at this point, i'm like a fish out of water waiting to see which pool i'm gonna be thrown in, because I'll either end up being able to do the conservatory course, in which case I'll only take one course at ECCO (the home base consortium for our program that teaches 5, easier, middlebury like courses) and one course the university of bologna itself. If the conservatory thing doesn't come through, I can still just take one course at university of bologna and one at ECCO the consortium I'm studying at. I'm thinking the class I'm taking at UniBo is il sistema politico italiano which is 2 classes in one, so there should be a lot of reading but I've heard the lectures are really good.
So the other night, something else really fun that happened was my roommate, who i'd hardly ever talked to, invited me and a friend from my program out to aperitivi (drinks) with her friends, and we left at 7 and didn't come back till midnight. It was probably the best night i've had in italy. We didn't go dancing, we didn't do much of anythign but drink and talk, but we walked all over the city, we only spoke italian, and we went out into the city and wandered. It was pretty awesomely fun, and also, it was so convenient, because I was starting to get really disconcerted that I wasn't meeting young people, but instead, this has opened up door after door after door to meet more italians. You always meet friends of friends in this country, which is interesting as a social structure, because getting ahead in italy is based on like who you know and having connections, so the more outgoing you are the better? I duno, anyway, so I go out with these 6 other italians, and that night they were all talking about how they want to eat american food and meet other americans, and so I proposed having an american party at our apartment, because 2 of our other roommates are really awesome, and they are down to, so Friday this coming week, we're making brownies, pancakes, hamburgers, playing beer pong, chocolate chip cookies and playing american music (something that is not uncommon in italy as it is-seriously, its so crazy how they only american pop from every era in the stores here. I guess that's the thing to do?) Anyway, I invited katie, the girl from wellesley, and her friends to the party because they have bought me so much coffee every time we go out to cafe' and its my time to get them back, and then my roommates, and then also this other girl giulia pancani was the assistant in the italian department at wellesley last year while I was applying to go abroad, and she's back in bologna now. She invited me to apperitivi at her house, so i'm inviting her to this party, especially since she's fluent in english and spent the last year in america. I'm so excited, though, because it's my first like attempt at bridging the cultures and introducing my friends to the all italians I've met.
I love the other people in my program on the states. My one/biggest dilemma is getting too attached to my lovely american friends, who have become like family so fast, it's scary. We cook together more often than not, and usually it's been in the company of italians, so that we can start to speak the language more regularly, but sometimes, it's just so nice to know that we can hang out whenever. In fact, I think a group of us is going to switzerland together in november, and I'm really excited to travel with them, cuz i guess i haven't really done anything like that before
So I started writing this blog post in the most incredibly beautiful public park in bologna, giardina margherita. I spent about an hour in the park, just looking at the greenery that doesn't really exist inside the main part of the city. I guess I should explain the ambience of bologna a little, since I will be living here for so long and it is after all, my new home. It's a gray city, not with smog, but it's usually overcast. When it's not, there's a sort of pale autumn sun that shines down on city streets and sidewalks and into windows through the kilometers upon kilometers of porticoes that line every building. When it rains, you only get wet when you cross the sidewalk, or if you walk down a street without porticoes, because the entire city is just lined with these beautiful medieval covers of all the sidewalks. Lately this has made me feel really strange, I've never been in a place with so little visibility upward, and sometimes it makes me feel like I'm not getting enough sun or that when I'm outside, i'm not really outside, 2 very confusing things. I've also been getting used to the building differences-in the city, every thing is high ceilinged-It's probably a sign of richness in all the buildings, but each floor takes about 12 feet before some usualy very pretty ceiling signifies the beginning of the next floor. We've been in apartments, restaurants, shops, and homes, all of which has increidbly tall ceilings, and a certain grandness to each. The city is built in a sort of octagonish shape, a type of circle I suppose, and we live on the northwest corner. The garden is in the southeast corner of the map and outside the city “walls” where the medieval wall that lined the city used to be even though now there are only doors (or portas) to the city left. In the city, because there are so many cobblestoned streets, tall buildings, and porticoes, there are literally no plants, and so the garden made me feel so....refreshed? Balanced? I duno, i'm missing northern california, vermont, even wellesley for all the greenery. I love the city, but I guess I love my beautifully pampered preferia “subburbs) as well urban life.
So things are going and i'm sure i'll have so much more to write as time goes on. Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment