Weeks 8 and 9... What happened again?

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ah! i don't even know how to start! i have like 50 days of life to try and indulge you on in the course of a single blog entry! freaking overwhelming! i'm gonna try and break some things up for you. first, i'll fill you in on the week(s) before Fall break. then i'm gonna write a whole separate entry for my adventures in Pisa and Dublin, and THEN i'm gonna write ANOTHER entry for all the time since (roughly... 30 days). i'm doing this for a few reasons. One, in order to humor myself, because i am a hopeless perfectionist and need my blog to go in order. Two, it will be easier to remember things as they happened, and not leave out juicy details. and three, because I feel guilty for not writing in over a month, and this way it will SEEM like I was on top of it the whole time.
good, so here goes...

interesting. problem is, i don't actually remember what i did between October 21st and October 31st. okay give me a sec...
October 20th was a wednesday. that means - ah, okay. well, i'm going to dub thursday as 'lost to the abyss', and start with friday, which was our first art history trip to Florence. we went to the Uffizi gallery, and a couple of churches, and saw the Baptistry doors, and talked about Michelangelo in the main piazza. note how i don't know the names of any of the churches or could even recall to you what we saw in the museums. it's for this reason that i find guided educational tours completely useless. i would rather wander around on my own, sketching and seeking out the pieces i like the most, the ones i've already researched, so the trip ends up meaning something for me. if you're my tour guide, i will smile and nod at you, but 10 seconds will go by and i will forget everything you just said. thus, worthless.
one worth..full... thing from the day, besides the art exposure, was our people-watching experience in the piazza. this is one of the best things about traveling. you learn so much about people. like how asians take more pictures than they do breaths. or how americans waddle and gape with their mouths half-open (no wonder we get pick-pocketed, honestly; we're idiots). you can even observe the routes that beggars take through the crowds, or watch how people make wishes before flipping their coin into the fountain, or note how those three gossiping italian girls seem like strange foreshadows of those three old italian women walking home in linked arms. these are the things i like to notice, the things that make me smile. (unfortunately, i don't find that many other people think about these things on a regular basis, so i tend to be the odd philosopher out... Such is life.).
anyways, the following week was lost to cyberspace, given a few things. (before i go on, Steve and Kelly, do you remember that weird Cyberworld computer game we used to play? that game was freakin weird. didn't you buy pets at the pet store or something?) So anyway- the few things. first, i wrote my first ever short story. (just like that. i've been trying for years to follow through with one of my writing concepts, and this time i did. given, it sucks; however, i can take all the time in the world to edit and rewrite, now that i finally have a tangible something that is editable and rewritable.) second, i had to finish buying all of steve and my's tickets/hostel reservations for the end of semester trip. and three, i had to figure out plans for dublin, getting to/from, etc, all those pesky trip details that come up the week before departure.
that next friday, the 29th, was another art history trip to florence. for me, though, it was less of an art history trip than a doctor's visit and a 'humiliate yourself with your poverty' day.. you see, unfortunately, someone decided they wanted me to suffer with some kind of undiagnosable illness throughout my entire study abroad experience, and it's for that reason that i had to see a 2nd european doctor on this friday. this doctor was british, and his name was Dr. Stephen Kerr. (seriously - what are the chances?) this doctor also adhered to the general european medicinal practice, which is the much-acclaimed Trial and Error method. europe has this thing where they won't give you a throat culture, they just prescribe you every single possible medication that MIGHT solve a throat-related problem, and then charge you 80+ euro for the whole thing. well, i'm not going to indulge you on the visit, because it's not worth the retelling, but please, take my word for it -- Avoid going to the doctor's in Europe at all costs. You will lose money and come away wondering what they actually did for you in the first place.
i'm going to take a little moment now and insert all the bitching i've been wanting to do since i got here, and as the semester's been going on. if you want to keep a happy, pleasant view of my experiences in Italy, i encourage you to skip this section and read ahead about my trips to Pisa and Dublin.

No, but seriously. Do not read this if you like idealization. I wouldn't read it if I were you. It's unpleasant. I just gotta write it for me, because it's part of my trip, and without it, I'd be pretending it was all hearts stars horseshoes clovers and blue moons, if you know what I mean.

Last warning. You can click the Back arrow and go read about happy things like Pisians (?) named Luigi and giant Guinness beers and Irish protest marches. It's all there, one click away.

I warned you.

***ALYSSA'S BITCHING SECTION - DO NOT READ IF YOU APPRECIATE BLISSFUL IGNORANCE!***

Okay, here goes...
Things To Bitch About:
1. Food. Isn't Italy supposed to be about it's amazing food? Guys, let me map out what I'm eating on a day-to-day basis. Every single morning, a cup of tea, and 3 cookies. Every single lunch, a rotten apple, a juice box, a small packaged pastry, and a sandwich, usually consisting of a slice of salame and a wet, smushy glob of mozzarella, pressed together within a stale burger roll. I no longer eat the sandwiches, because the smell of salame now makes me want to puke, and i don't like seeing cheese-water drip out of the other end as i bite into it. Then, for dinner i have two courses. Every night, the first course is white pasta, doused in oil and store-bought marinara sauce and, if i'm lucky, pesto. After that, 4 nights a week it's pre-packaged fried chicken, with a side of either peas or spinach. The other three nights alternate between canned noodle soup, a steak sandwich with mayo (or rather, just Mayonnaise, with bread and steak on the side), or pizza. Unfortunately, I seem to have gotten the short end of the stick in the food department, because my colleagues are eating fantastically well. But hey, it is what it is. And who am I to judge, really? If I were in charge, it would be Honey Nut Cheerios, hummus and crackers, chinese food takeout, or ollies waffle fries. (Steph, you can attest to this, I think.)
2. Cold. Okay, so you think New England is cold? Well, yes - you're right. However, at least New England has heating. Italy doesn't do that shit, they're too good for heaters. My school building is the same temperature inside as it is outside, ie, 45 degrees Fahrenheit. I wear 3-4 layers of shirts and 2 pants to school every day, plus scarf, gloves, and double socks. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
3. Boredom. Study abroad is great for a break from schoolwork. I have never had this much free time in maybe 4-5 years. But there is no point to having free time if you have nothing to do with it, and unfortunately, that's the case in Siena. Sure, there's the occasional Discoteca or Tea Room visit or stroll around the fortress with Fation. And of all people, I appreciate the time to be alone and do my own thing, since that's one of my greatest pleasures. But it blows having such a limited social life. I can't wait to just talk to people, do puzzles, bake cookies, go to Ollies, find frat parties, go on dates, do extra-curriculars, go GPSing, apply my mind to society. i have this decaying wit that is desperate to be exercised.
4. Money. This is a constant in my life no matter where I am, but it needs to be mentioned, because it's a huge stressor. First of all, there is nothing fun about taking 80 euro out of the bank and finding out that that translates to about 120 dollars. Hard earned cash is just, whoops!- out the window. It's disgusting. And it can't buy more, either. A 20 dollar pair of jeans in the US is a 40 euro pair of jeans in Italy. Needless to say, I avoid markets. I never cared that much for material things though, anyways.
5. Reality. No matter how much you idealize it, Italy is not a fairy tale. When you get here, with all those ideas of seeing great artwork and incredible architecture and tangible history on every street corner, at first you will be awed and inspired and thoroughly disbelieving. It will feel incredible. But soon, you will have a regular path that you follow on your way to school. Families are watching the same stupid TV shows, with perhaps more emphasis on soccer and news. Students are poor and liberal, the government's criticized by the reporters, the office work goes slowly, the people small-talk with their visitors. You wake, you eat, you work, you eat, you waste time, you go to bed. The tediums of a tedious life do not discriminate by country, and Italy finds tediousness as easily as America does. The tower of Pisa will look like a smaller, uglier, slightly tilted version of another tower you saw the other day through the center of town. Renaissance becomes monotonous and Medieval becomes typical, and everything looks the same, everything is the same, and it ends up having no more meaning than suburban pastel Scizzorhand houses in identical US neighborhoods.
Don't misunderstand me. Italy is truly incredible, and beautiful; I've never been so delighted by scenery or architecture or vision as I have here in Siena. However, with familiarity inevitably comes disillusionment, and I assure you that nothing will ever seem as majestic to you after you've finally seen it. When you spend your whole life envisioning the grandeur of something, it is rare that it will meet or exceed your expectations. The problem is that a place becomes 'real' to you after living in it; and though that offers other wonderful things that you didn't imagine, you no longer have the freedom to romanticize, to glorify, to indulge your idealist fantasies. It made me sad that Pisa was no longer this incredible, far-off ancient city that I studied about in textbooks, but instead just a neighboring, relatively dirty city, an hour away by train, with little to offer except the main square and a train station. It's like fucking Natick. And even parts of Rome were like that, too. A typical city, with pick-pockets and everything over-priced and a dark metro and angry drivers. My literature professor at the University of Siena, spoke my feelings in class today; he said (rough translation), "Italy is a sad, horrendous place. Our only metropolis is Milan, maybe Rome, too. We are poor and in an economic crisis, our education suffers... in reality, Italy is pleasing only to tourists. They are the only ones who like it here. We have some sun, some old monuments, and some gelato; but other than that, Italy has nothing to offer."
Such is the state of our time, I suppose. I do hate losing my freedom for idealization though. It's like finding out the Easter Bunny isn't real. Suddenly, there's a little less beauty in your world.
6. Host-family struggles. In general, they're wonderful. However, I hate living in someone else's house as a guest. Just personal preference, but I can't stand being indebted to others like this. And dependent on others. And a perpetual intruder in their lives. And host-mom has a tendency to drive me off the freaking wall by repeating herself 1000 times for no reason. And Dafne somehow forgot my name a week ago, even though she talks to me every single day. And my host-sisters told me at the beginning of the semester that we could all go see Harry Potter VII together, so I caught up on the movies since i figured host-family bonding was more important than my "i-prefer-the-books" boycott, and they went and saw it without me. (That one hurt a lot. I'd been looking forward to it all semester.)
7. Illness. Doctors = waste of money, and I have not improved in the slightest. Achilles tendon = no running/exercise. Think I might need 2 surgeries when I get home. This all blows, but I guess it has nothing to do with Italy, really.
8. Missing friends/family. There's a reason I confide in you and enjoy having you in my life. It becomes more clear when you're suddenly absent.
9. Simple pleasures are gone. McDonalds, highway drives, family catchphrase, girls nights, new england seasons, country music, sporcle competitions, drinking games, lunch dates. These don't exist conceptually in Italy the way they do in the US. it's just not the same.
10. Have you ever been at some evening outing for hours and hours, and then just been struck with the need to go home and recoup, to kind of recenter yourself? This is a 5-month long outing.

Okay, well, if there are more, I'm tired of complaining about them, so I'm going to move on to better, less pessimistic things, and if you read all of this and kind of feel crappy, DON'T! Because life is a big fat mix of horrible things and wonderful things, and just because I grouped all the horrible things in one place doesn't mean that Italy is not absolutely wonderful, too. Read my other blogs if you want a refresher on that stuff.
Alright well, off we go to Dublin...

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