Happy Feet

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The other day two of my roommates decided to put internet in our apartment. They’re really excited to blast into 2009 with new-fangled downloading-at-home capabilities. I came home the other day and Olinda was all in a huff. She told me: ‘I tried to download Happy Feet but instead I accidentally downloaded a porno about a guy with a foot fetish. I sat down expecting to watch a nice little movie about happy, dancing penguins but instead I had to watch some guy sucking on his girlfriend’s toes.’ She was certainly not amused.
The new students have arrived and everything has been going really well. They are a group of eleven girls and I’ve been having a good time hanging out and showing them around Siena. We had orientation in the same place near Pisa where we had it last semester and we visited a small town called Lucca, as well as a town called Montecarlo where there is a famous fortress. Unfortunately, it was pretty rainy the whole weekend, but we got to eat so many big meals on the farm where we stayed. Lucia, another woman who works here, and I had bought matching fleece pajamas at the outdoor market to wear together for orientation, so we had fun parading around the hotel together in our ridiculous pajamas (I will be posting pictures soon).
So basically for the past two weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time with the new students, giving them tours and practical information about Siena, helping them meet their host families and get situated. Earlier this week we had some students from an international student organization that organizes a lot of events and parties for students in Siena come to talk to us at school. I had to sort of mediate the meeting, introducing the students and helping to translate when needed. It all went pretty well except that the one guy who was speaking couldn’t stop staring at the pimple on my forehead and it made me really uncomfortable and made me lose my focus.
Things at home have been as interesting as ever. I just never know what to expect from my roommates because they are so temperamental. Letizia and Olinda act like Italian mothers and are constantly criticizing everything I do, wear, or eat…basically everything. My roommates always sit at our kitchen table and wax their moustaches, and they’ve been trying to get me to join them. They think that everyone should wax her moustache, so I’m really afraid they’re going to try to do it while I’m sleeping. I can always feel them staring at my upper lip. Emanuela, the girl whom I share a room with, is a lot of fun and always keeps things interesting. She’s always singing, dancing, yelling, and just basically doing crazy things. Last Saturday morning I was sleeping peacefully, but I was awakened by a kiss on my cheek. Emanuela was standing over me, kissing my face and saying ‘Buon giorno!’ I really wasn’t ready to wake up, and when I asked her why she had awakened me, she just laughed and said that she just felt like kissing me, and then ran away to the kitchen laughing. I just couldn’t get mad at her. Last night we went to see Revolutionary Road together (there was some blood in the movie that made me really nauseous, and I had to put my head down between my knees and almost had to leave the theatre-Emanuela didn’t understand that I didn’t feel well, she just thought I was falling asleep, so she just kept poking me to ‘wake me up’). We got home from the movie at about 1 in the morning and we were both really hungry for a snack, so Emanuela whipped up this incredibly delicious pasta dish with fresh pesto and prosciutto. I love Italy.

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Comments

[Steph]

I got some serious deja vu reading this blog entry.

[Leslie Britt]

I can't believe you had to put your head between your knees! Haha! I can't wait to see the pics of the PJs.