Advertisement
Published: December 22nd 2008
Edit Blog Post
Siena
Having breakfast with Ben outside the Duomo Well, I am officially terrible about keeping this updated. My goal for next semester is definitely to write more. I decided rather than trying to write everything that has been going on these past few months, which is impossible, I would include some random photos from various trips and things throughout the semester, from the first days to the last.
The semester ended last week and all of the students sort of trickled out. Everyone is gone now, even most of the professors and other people who work here. I leave tomorrow evening for Austria on an overnight train and I'll be there for a week, until New Years. Then I'll be back in Siena to celebrate with a friend and her family in Siena. It's definitely hard to be away from home right now and I miss everyone so much!
The semester flew by so quickly and I really can't even believe it. We went on some great trips with the school- one weekend we drove around Tuscany and visited a lot of little towns, another we took a bus trip and went wine tasting at a castle, went to hot springs, stayed overnight at this amazing farm
Siena
Ben, Will, and Sam all came to Siena! where we picked olives, made fresh olive oil, and fresh ricotta cheese, then ate it all for dinner... it was one of the most amazing weekends of my life. I was in charge of stirring the pot as the cheese was forming... It was delicious. I spent a wonderful week in Corsica with Leslie (I attached some pictures!). Let's see... here are a few other random stories-
The students and I went to the cinema to see the new James Bond movie. The beginning takes place in Siena (!) and the whole theatre got very excited to see images of the city on the big screen. They even had shots of the Palio. It’s funny because everyone here keeps asking me to explain what the title, ‘Quantum of Solace’ means in English. My roommates sat me down for a serious conversation because they didn’t understand it. I had a friend over at the time and neither of us were able to explain it at all to them. I started out trying to explain in Italian what ‘quantum’ means, then what ‘solace’ means, but I really just couldn’t do it. Now my roommates definitely think that we are stupid and
don’t know hard words in English.
Olinda moved out of our double room and into a single room across the hall after that girl left. Then a girl named Emanuela moved into the room with me. She’s absolutely fantastic and we’ve been having a great time together. We just sit in our room or in the kitchen and talk for hours every day. We both love Limoncello and Baileys, and she’s not totally nuts like Olinda (I’m even completely allowed to put wet laundry in our room!). I’ve learned so much Italian from her already- she’s incredibly patient and is very good at explaining things. Although I have learned some legitimate, respectable Italian, I have also learned so many dirty words. One night I had a friend over at the apartment and we just sat around with Letizia and Emanuela in the kitchen for hours sharing the dirtiest, nastiest, most offensive words and phrases we could think of. We would teach them in English and they would teach us in Italian. The funniest was when one of us would say something and then have to describe what it meant to make the other team (English vs. Italian!) understand. I
was saying unbelievably crazy things that I would never actually say in English because they’re so offensive. I can’t repeat anything I learned. It was really quite the linguistic exchange.
I planned various activities throughout the semester for the students- we went to a soccer game, had a 'Pizza and Disney movie in Italian' night, stayed late at school one evening to order Chinese food... and just spent a lot of time exploring Siena. The new students all arrive in Pisa on the 22nd of January, so I'll be doing everything again and I'm really excited about it!
I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Buone feste e tanti auguri!
I'm sending home lots of love, hugs, and kisses from Italy and Austria!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.301s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 66; dbt: 0.093s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb