Week 1: Routine, Drinking Age, and Dreams

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Let me provide you with a layout of my daily schedule.

7:45 - 8:00 : Wake up
8:00 - 8:30 : Breakfast (just me at the table, while Mom-Cristina pours my tea and makes sure I get my bagged lunch before I leave)
8:30 - 9:45 : Walk to school
8:45 - 9:00 : Get lost on the way to school and end up discovering an entirely new, spherical way of getting there
9:00 - 9:10 : Arrive at school drenched in sweat, because Siena and my body heat regulation system are NOT friends
9:10 - 9:30 : Realize that I've forgotten an Italian homework assignment and attempt to complete it before class, which usually fails
9:30 - 12:30 : Italian Advanced class with Roberto Fineschi, a Sienese Insegnante, and my classmates, Katy Kirkpatrick, John Dinh, and Samantha Cibelli
12:30 - 13:30 : a disorganized meandering of students to various locations in the city to take their lunch, including the Piazza del Campo, I Giardini di Siena, e Le Scale (don't know if they're anything special in reality, but they are THE Stairs for us).
13:30 - 17:00 : This section varies a bit. It includes a 3 1/2 hour, horribly boring culture class, meetings with the Siena staff regarding Permessi di Soggiorno, our host families, etc, and lazing about with the other Siena students, either in the lounge or out on the town. It's often a sweaty experience, like the morning, because its super hot out and Siena is so freaking hilly, it's impossible for your pores NOT to start crying
17:00 - 19:00 : A disorganized meandering home, sometimes accompanied by a gelato pit-stop (Oh, My GOD, So Freaking Good)
19:00 - 20:30 : Busying myself before dinner
20:30 - 22:30 : Dinner takes a long time in Italy. And you wouldn't want it to be any shorter, trust me. It's like getting a free 2-hour massage every single day
22:30 - 1:30 : Finishing the day. This varies.
1:30 - 7:30 : Dreams.

I have a throbbing headache at the moment. I actually just woke up from a 3 1/2 hour nap, which was much needed, today especially. Believe it or not, it's the first siesta I've taken since I arrived in Italy. That fact, more than anything else, has been thoroughly disappointing to me. I was really looking forward to naptime every day.
As you can see from my daily schedule, I'm currently in a state of routine that I have never, EVER experienced before. Never mind that, but I've spent the last 3-4 years ensuring that every single day for me is completely, ridiculously different from the next. Of course, I don't find that particularly healthy, and routine is much better to some extent (body-health wise), but my brain is NOT enjoying the flipped switch. I'm already restless and exasperated with monotony, and I've only been in it for 5 days. On top of it all, I'm tired all the time, and having a simultaneously restless and exhausted brain is very dangerous with regard to mental health. Especially subconscious mental health. I'll indulge you later in this entry.
Italian class is pretty cool. I was actually super proud of myself for making it into the advanced class, and I've been enjoying it ever since. Roberto likes to play a LOT of games in class, involving memorization and repetition, etc, and it's fantastic - it's like an in-person Sporcle game (if you don't know what I mean, type http://www.sporcle.com into your browser now and go to town, it's highly entertaining). There are two required textbooks for this class. We've gotten one so far, and guess what? It's a children's picture book. Yup, drawings of everything under the sun and their Italian names written on the side with a number key. I think I wrote in my last entry that I feel like a child here...
Well, now you know why.
Anyways. So yes, class is good. Wanna know what other things are good? Birthdays. Especially 21st birthdays, those are pretty sweet.
I spent the majority of my 21st birthday (this past Tuesday) in classes, because I had 3 hours of Italian and 3 hours of Culture. Culture, BLOWS (please excuse my language). Regardless, it was a long day. After school, some of us went out and got Gelato, and that was a wonderful birthday treat. Then I came home, and host-mom had made prosciutto e melone for dinner, along with various other things that I can't now remember but should because they deserve to be remembered because they made my stomach grin from right gastric artery to left gastric artery, and THEN she made me wait at the table outside, where I chatted with Eduardo (host-dad) for an hour, until she brought out a GIANT fruit-cake, with 21 candles in it, AND a birthday present from the family. They had written me a short card and bought me a fairy necklace, that brings good luck. I was taken aback, and so grateful. You can't possibly understand how good this fruitcake was.
After dinner, I ran to the Piazza del Campo, because I was late for my own birthday bar date. Around 6-7 of us, including Fabio and Anya, went to a bar called Buona Vista to celebrate the big 2-1. They make 3-shot mojitos. I had one of those and a heineken. Hannah and I had a hilarious conversation with Fabio and Zac, who were explaining how after every argument with their girlfriends, they always have to say 'you're right baby, I'm sorry' or 'let me buy this for you'. I mean, it's only to be expected. Men ARE always wrong.
Drinking here is weird. Why? Because it's legal. Friday night, the entire piazza was full of kids 16-23 just sitting around drinking. Every single one of the students at Siena School had a drink in their hands, no big deal. Right out in public. The other day I walked into a Vineria with Zac and Lisa-Ray and just browsed the wines. Why am I allowed to do that?
Thursday night, my class and I went for a cooking lesson at a restaurant called Fonte Giusta (fountain of truth) here in Siena. We made tortelli, tortellini, pici, and biscotti. So much fun. I have to remember to ask David for the recipes, because who knows - maybe one day I'll actually feel the urge to learn how to cook.
Maybe.
And then there's my dreams. Like I said earlier, I think my mental health has been compromised lately. On Tuesday night, I had a nightmare and woke with sleep paralysis, and the only reason I even remember that it happened is because I had turned the light on at the time, and it was still on when I woke in the morning. Wednesday night I had a dream that Mr. Chomka and I and other friends of mine were in a dining room, and Chomka was standing opposite me, and we were staring at each other, trying desperately not to burst out in laughter. His face was turning red and he was nearly crying; he was trying so hard to hold the laughs back. I won't even comment on that one. Thursday night I had even weirder ones, I think some regarding flying, being chased around an apartment, I'm not even sure anymore.
And then came Friday night.
Friday I was out at the Piazza with Fabio and the others, and I came home at 2:30 and went to bed. An hour later, there was a ghost of a little girl who looked like my host-sister standing on my bed, staring at me. I screamed, and screamed, and screamed. I leapt up and ran straight for the door, where the light switch was. I stood there in blind panic, feeling the walls and trying desperately to find the light that would steal me out of this dream. 10 seconds, and I'm about to start crying I'm so scared, and I find nothing. I turned around and meant to walk back to my bedside light, but instead I found my computer. I flipped it open and saw that I was NOW facing the door, and had been facing the opposite direction before. Where had I come from? I looked down. The floor was covered in pools of my blood. I looked at my foot, and as soon as I did so, I felt it throbbing powerfully, bleeding steadily. I was panicking, I was scared out of my mind. Finally I went to the bathroom and tried to wash my foot in the sink. The blood went deep, wedged beneath my nail. I had nothing to clean with, so I tried to use toilet paper to clear the blood from the floor. It was already drying and wouldn't come off. I sat on my bed, and fought back vomit, and tears, and I thought I was going to faint. I finally worked up the nerve to cross the pitch-black apartment with my computer and skype Dad, who told me to wake my host-parents. I felt like an idiot. It's 4:00am, and I'm 21 years old. "I had a bad dream and I stubbed my toe," is something a 4-yr old is supposed to say. But I don't do myself justice - it really was horrifying. It was also impossible to explain to my host-mom. I didn't know the words for blood, floor, bad dream, hurt, or ghost. Luckily, she was amazing, and helped me clean my foot with alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, and host-dad cleaned the floor of my room. She even turned the TV on for me and propped my foot up with a pillow. (I don't know why I'm admitting this, again, I sound like I'm 4 years old...)
The worst part about the whole thing is that I have NO idea what happened. Where was I when I had the dream? I don't know if I was even in my bed at this point, because I ended up completely backwards to where I should have been. Had I been sleepwalking? When did I cut my foot? Did I cut it while running to the door, and just not feel it because of the adrenaline, or did I cut it before I woke up? And HOW did I cut my foot? Nothing besides the floor had blood on it. Everything in the room is basically child-proof. What the hell happened to me?
Freaky stuff. I am now very intimidated by my subconscious, and worry that it will happen again.
I guess that's the update on my week. I've gotta run to dinner, so I'll try to write after the weekend.
Ciao!

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