Saturday September 25, 2010 Part II

Now I'm going to be less detailed and bring you up to date on some of the things that have happened over the past two weeks.

We started classes on the 13^th and the first week wasn't too bad. I experienced my first assignment of a ridiculous amount of “readings” for a class and realized how much a part of college these “readings” are. The second day of Art history class, we actually met at the Duomo for class and had our lecture there. That was definitely such a unique experience. We'll now have a site visit each week where we will be learning outside of the classroom. Monday's we're in the class for lecture and then Wednesday's we go out into the city of Florence. This past week we met at the Convent of San Marco which was really neat. Also, my Italian Community and Culture class which is every Wednesday met at the Mercato San Ambrogio this week where we practiced our food and clothing vocabulary with the locals. We also got a lot of nice samples of breads and pastries at the end of class. I'm really loving learning Italian in Italy. It's definitely an experience like no other. My professor speaks in Italian for the entire class which is a bit overwhelming sometimes but I know it'll better benefit me in the long run. It's also fun to be walking home from school and overhear a couple of words we just learned in class that day. I'm starting to really believe that I will be able to communicate efficiently by the end of the semester. I'm amazed at how much we've already learned in the first two weeks.

Last weekend I went on the All-School day trips to Assisi on Friday and then Ravenna on Saturday. Assisi was absolutely amazing and unbelievably gorgeous. The church itself was beautiful but what I liked the most was our on-our-own hike up to the fortress at the top of the mountain. We hadn't even climbed to the top of the towers at the fortress and I was already savoring the awesome view of the city and countryside below. I was hesitant at first to pay 3.50 euros to enter the fortress because I was convinced the view couldn't be much different a hundred feet higher, but boy was I wrong. Not only was the interior of the fortress so beautiful and interesting to walk through but the view from the top of the tower was incredible. I could have sat up there all day just staring out at everything below and surrounding me. However unfortunately we were under a time restraint and had to hurry back down the mountain to the meeting point to depart. We stopped in a little cafe before we left though because for the first time we had found Nutella gelatto and there was no way we were passing that by! Needless to say it was so amazing that I am still craving it one week later. Ravenna on Saturday was good but, we were so tired from all the walking we had done in Assisi and the standards had been set so high from our views from the fortress, that we were wanting to go home as soon as our tour guide dismissed us to do our own thing in Ravenna. I enjoyed seeing the incredible mosaics and they were extremely gorgeous but there wasn't much else to do in Ravenna after seeing them and it was raining and we hadn't brought anything for rainy weather with us. I guess you could say it was just bad timing. I appreciated getting to see what I did in Ravenna, but it was definitely not a trip I would have planned on my own and spent my own money on.

And now to the last of the highlights of my past two weeks. I started my work-study job on Thursday and I'm really excited about what I get to do and the professor I'm working with. On Tuesdays and Thursdays for three hours I sit in Professor Kraczyna's office in the Studio Arts building about a block over from the main campus. My responsibilities are basically to be his personal assistant. He is the Chair of the Art Department so he is supposed to send out emails and write things up for the Art Department but because of “the generation he is a part of” -notice how I don't write anything about age ;-) - he is technologically challenged. Also, I came to find out on my first day on the job, that he didn't grow up in the US so his English grammar and spelling isn't very good. He told me his background of where he grew up but it was so scattered and I was reading an email for him at the time that I can't recall everything that he told me. Basically I think he grew up in different countries here in Europe and was born in Poland (his last name is Polish and pronounced Krawch-na) but did do some of his schooling in America but not for a very long time.

Earlier he had asked me how my spelling and grammar was and I told him my grammar was pretty decent and not bad and that my spelling was okay, definitely not one of my strong suits though. I was kind of worried when he asked me this too because I thought he was going to criticize me or say something about how he needed someone who was very good at it and I couldn't lie to him and tell him I was really good at spelling and grammar because that's something that would become so obvious to tell I wasn't an expert at. However, when we were sitting in silence for a moment he asked me why I had said in my interview with him that I was extremely thankful for this job.

Let me take a tangent to “briefly” explain another event that happened over the past two weeks. Last week I think in about the middle of the week I got an email from FASFA saying my Federal Pell grant had been adjusted now that they had received all required documentation. I then emailed the Syracuse Financial Aid office asking what had been adjusted and found out a couple days later that my Pell Grant had been reduced by $3,500 this year and there was nothing I could do about it because it was final. I also hadn't gotten an email from the lady here in charge of Work Study so I went in the day after I found out about the Pell grant knowing that I absolutely had to get a job. When I sat down to ask her if there was something wrong with my application or something I needed to do to find out about which Work Study job I'd be placed in, I found out that technically I wasn't guaranteed a job and they had run out of jobs and I was simply just not going to get one and they weren't going to inform of this. For a moment I started to panic because I had just lost $3,500 I had been counting on and now I was about to lose $1,600. I looked at the lady with begging eyes and simply said “Is there anything that is available? I desperately need a job. I don't understand because I turned my application in right on top of my roommates' and she already got called in for an interview and has a job and I know I'm just as qualified as she is.” The lady shrugged her shoulders and looked at me apologetically and said she'd still look around and write my name down but she couldn't promise anything because there simply just weren't enough jobs and too many people needing a job. Just as she was about to get a sticky note to write down my name she noticed a small paper and picked it up and told me, “Hold on. I just got an email last night from the Studio Arts saying they need someone in the office doing secretarial work. These hours are the same as you indicated so let me email him and see if he wants to set up and interview with you to see if it would work out.” I took a deep breath and said a silent prayer of thankfulness. That was definitely divine intervention right there. Needless to say in my interview with Prof. Kraczyna I couldn't keep back how thankful I was for this opportunity and just a job period. At the time he just kind of nodded and shrugged it off. I didn't think he thought anything of it.

Now back to where I was. After he asked me about my comment, I told him my story about how my Financial Aid had been so dramatically reduced and how I had worked so hard to earn as many scholarships as I did, thinking I had reached the amount I'd be responsible for covering and now finding out I'd have more and then almost not getting a Work Study job and how that would have made my financial situation even worse. He then told me that he had asked me about my spelling and grammar because he was currently writing a book about his wife who passed away last year. She was a puppeteer and the book would mainly be pictures but he was writing somewhat of a narrative to go along with it and needed someone to type it up for him and check his English spelling and grammar. He said he'd pay me extra and I could work on it while I was doing my Work Study in his office and didn't have things to do. I of course enthusiastically said yes I'd love to do it and told him how I just published my school's literary magazine pretty much by myself so I had experience with putting together a publication of pictures and text. He asked me how much I charged per page and I said I simply had no idea and that really any extra money is enough for me at this point. He's going to ask around and find out a price but I honestly don't care how much it'll be. Not only am I just thankful for now having the opportunity to earn a little extra money, this will also be an interesting experience getting to hear and read about his wife's life and I'm sure I'll get to hear more private stories about his life with her. He had me walk with him to the store to get a copy of the key to the building made for me to have so I could lock up on days he left early and on our walk from the Studio Arts to the store and then to the Printmaking Studio, where his car and (I found out on the walk) his dogs waiting on him, he started to tell me bits about his life and I told him about my life as well. I found out he studied abroad here in Florence and never left and he now has children and grandchildren that live here in Florence. This reminded me of my grandparents and I told him how I love living in the same town as my grandparents and how close I was with them. It made me a little homesick thinking about them and being around this man who reminded me of them but I let it pass because I couldn't cry and scare this professor on my first day of work. Anyway, my first day of work was so interesting that I can't wait for the next time I work and the things that I'm going to learn and experience throughout the rest of this semester in my Work Study job.

Those are really the highlights of my past two weeks and hopefully I won't go so long without updating again that I have to write such long entries. Now that I've taken two hours out to update my blog, I'd better get on my homework and try to get all of that done. Thanks to everyone who is following and reading!

Talk to you again soon!

Saturday September 25, 2010 Part I

I apologize for not having updated my blog in two weeks. These past two weeks have been absolutely crazy and now that we've started classes, my free time on the computer has mainly been filled with doing homework and responding to quick emails and messages.

This week I actually got a “replacement” laptop from the company that sets up the wireless internet at the school and they are being so kind and letting me borrow it until my grandparents come with a replacement at the end of October, FREE OF CHARGE! They had to build it from scratch and install everything but it is actually a much better laptop than I envisioned when they were telling me “it's a corpse.” It has Skype (no webcam but I can still do messaging), Wireless Internet accessibility, and a program similar to Microsoft Word which I can type my papers in. For some reason right now the wireless on this laptop isn't working at home but hopefully this week those people can look at it and see what's wrong. My awesome and generous roommate is still letting me use her computer for the internet and Skype but it's still hard only having one computer with internet access at home when it comes time to do readings for our Liberty & Power class or research on the internet for our papers in Art History. Don't get me wrong, I am very thankful to have a laptop at my disposal period, but I'm hoping this internet issue will be fixed soon because my classes require so much use of the internet. Still having limited internet access time also explains my inability to update my blog daily. I'll try to get better over the next few days about at least writing up an entry and just uploading it later on when I can.

So, because it has been so long since I last wrote about my life, I have quite a bit to update you on. I'm going to start with today because I can give the most details and in my next blog entry I'll go backwards to two weeks ago.

Today. Today was such an amazing day and it's only noon! I can't stop smiling because I got to meet the Mayor of Florence, have a picture taken with him, and be filmed for the Florence TV news station. How have I suddenly reached such a high level of popularity and importance? I simply decided Wednesday that I wanted to volunteer this weekend doing something called “Angeli del Bello (Angels of Beauty)” which in the description said, “working with local Italians and cleaning graffiti off the walls of Florence.” It sounded fun and simple and I didn't have anything else planned for this weekend since our class trip to Venice got moved to a different date last minute. I also like volunteering and I figured it'd be something interesting to tell people about back in the US. Little did I know how big of a deal it was as  Meghan and I walked up to meet Vittoria (the volunteer program coordinator for SUF) at the train station. As we waited for Vittoria's assistant and the other student who signed up as well, Vittoria started explaining “Angeli del Bello” and what we would be doing. Apparently there were many organizations and schools that wanted to do the “graffiti cleaning” part of this event but it became extremely strict and regulated by the local government and only certain “groups” were allowed permission participate in this particular part of “Angeli del Bello” and Syracuse University was the only American University allowed to participate. At this point I had been thinking that “Angeli del Bello” was just a “graffiti clean-up” activity but after learning from Vittoria that it includes other “clean-up” activities, I still was under the impression that this was a “one-time” deal and pretty casual.

You can imagine my surprise then as we walked up to the Piazza Santa Maria Novella and saw these banners and signs with “Angeli del Bello” printed on them and news trucks and about 100 people gathered in a crowd. As we were walking closer to the crowd, Vittoria turned around and casually said, “Oh and the mayor might be here and you may get to meet him.” We turned to each other with this look of, “Really? Okay!” She then starts to tell us about how big of a privilege it is for us to get to participate in this event and specifically the “graffiti clean-up” part because so many American students are coming to Italy and giving a bad impression with their binge drinking and partying and by doing this volunteer activity we are trying to show that American students can do good things while being ambassadors for their country and showing that we aren't all bad. At first I hadn't thought about the fact that American students are making such a bad reputation for us that it would make sense for the local government to be hesitant with letting American Universities participate in an event like this that is so near and dear to the locals' hearts. I started to feel how privileged I was to be participating and how important it was that I was doing this.

Then, as we approached the fringe of the crowd, out of nowhere, the mayor walks up and starts to introduce himself to us. I didn't know what to do! As I shook his hand I said “Ciao!” realizing immediately that I just used the informal greeting with the mayor of Florence. I wanted to slap myself on the forehead. Oh well, maybe he'd understand because we're new here and all. He then started to talk to us in English much to my relief. He asked us where we were from, how long we had been in Florence, and how appreciative he was of us coming out to do this for his city. As he's talking to us photographers and cameramen start to come around us and I can't keep the smile off my face as my stomach is flipping over and over because I'm standing here talking to the mayor of Florence! After our little conversation he asked to take a picture with us and I was still in awe as to everything that was happening so quickly. He then went down the line to shake our hands and said goodbye and then headed off to great another group of volunteers. I turned to Meghan, my eyes huge and a smile from one cheek to the other, and we just laughed.

Our day continued to get better. We put on the bright orange vests, red “Angeli del Bello” caps, and standard black work gloves and headed to our street which we would be cleaning. As we were painting a cameraman came up behind us and started filming and at first I didn't realize he was there. Vittoria had us pose and paint close together so we could all be in the frame together and told us afterward that  he was a cameraman for the TV news so to have our host mom watch the news tonight because we would probably be on it. I couldn't believe this was happening. I woke up this morning with the intent of just painting over some graffiti in Florence because it was something I hadn't done before and I had nothing better to do on my Saturday morning. I never ever imagined I would meet the mayor, have my picture taken with him, and be on the Florence evening news.

September 10, 2010

We moved into our host family yesterday! Our host family is this 70-year-old lady who has 2 daughters (37&38yrs old) who both still live at home. One just had a baby, Matilde, who's 3 months old now. They have two cats as well, named Mojito and Bloody Mary! :) The older lady doesn't speak any English but the two daughters speak English pretty well. Both of them work. I think one is a psychologist and one works in sales (at least that's what our Host Family Description said).

Our "apartment" is really nice! There's nice artwork all over the walls! Our room is bigger than what we thought it would be. We each have our own wardrobe, desk, and I have a small chest of drawers and Meghan has drawers underneath her bed. The ceilings are really tall and we have a pretty snazzy view out our window.

We live about a 15 minute walk away from the campus and we get to pass by the Piazza della Liberta on our way. The whole walk is really nice and completely safe the whole way plus it'll be good exercise for us everyday! Oh, and their floor is the 3rd floor so yesterday when we were moving in we had to haul ALL our luggage up 3 flights of stairs because there isn't an elevator. We were pretty pooped afterwards.

Today, we only had two meetings and I'm about to take my laptop to a computer store and I think they're going to back up my hard drive for me. Once I do that I'll package it up and send it home! That might be Monday though just depending on how long they take to back up my hard drive. It's been a pretty relaxing day but I had a lot of emails to send and things to reply to on facebook. I'll try to update my blog as much as I can and keep in touch with people but right now, without my laptop, it's so hard for me to get on the internet and reply to everyone all the time. Not being so dependent on technology is actually kind of nice right now but I'll do my best to keep in touch.

September 9, 2010

Wow. What a crazy last couple of days. Where to begin?

Well, as of yesterday(Wednesday) afternoon I no longer have a laptop. Literally 10 minutes after I got my wireless set up, I was sitting outside on a bench and it just slid off of my lap and the screen is now completely shattered. I wasn't even being carelss. It was such a freak accident. And I have dropped it plenty of times before but this time I guess it just wasn't my luck.

So when this happened I kind of just sat there in shock not believing this just happened. I did cry a little for probably 3 minutes but I pulled myself together and realized me crying and freaking out wouldn't change anything so I just had to suck it up.

I was so proud of myself for reacting the way I did. Six months ago I would have freaked out and had a panic attack, but yesterday I reacted so maturely. Yea it sucks cause I hadn't backed up any of my stuff yet but I'm hoping and praying that backing up a hard drive is a pretty common practice. The main thing I'm worried about is my college application essays because I worked so hard on them. And all of my documents, pictures, and videos of course. So I just have to keep praying that things work out and I know in my heart that God will protect me through whatever I go through.

I'm going to ship my laptop back to the US where my parents will hopefully be able to send it off to get fixed and then send to me via my grandparents when they come at the end of October. In the meantime, my awesome roommate Meghan is being so kind and letting me use her laptop when I need to and I'll be able to skype on that. The school luckily has computers as well and I have my external hard drive and a flash drive so I'm fine with working on the school computers and just hanging out in the basement in the computer labs instead of up in the garden on the wireless.

Now to back track a little, I have to write about every other obstacle that has been thrown in my way. When I got to the hotel and started setting up my laptop I realized that I didn't have an adapter that my laptop charger would fit into. So the battery was already dying on it and I was not happy with myself about not checking the adapter before I left.

Later, when I was going to take a shower, I went to turn it on and the shower head started spraying water on the wall and spilling out everywhere on the sink next to it. So then I quickly swatted the shower head to turn the other way and I thought it was fine until five seconds later and I realized that it was spraying out of the tub and flooding the floor. I shut the water off and just started laughing out loud. I guess I had just reached that point of hysteria from sleep deprivation and unbelief at all that was happening.

Throughout all those major obstacles and the little ones such as waiting in lines, blisters on feet, and losing little things, I'm keeping a positive attitude and not letting all these things bring me down and I'm very glad I'm going about my attitude this way. I felt God working in my heart and in my life over the past few months, challenging me, teaching me, and helping me grow to be the Christian He wants me to be, and these last few days have truly been a testimony to that. At home, those changes weren't quite so apparent and some days I questioned whether or not I really was progressing and changing. Now, here in Italy, I know I'm really starting to become the person I'm meant to be.

Already the first few days have been amazing, full of crazy ups and crazy downs. I can't wait to see what else happens and how much more God is going to work in my life this semester.

 Ciao!

Day One or wait is it Day Two now?

Tuesday September 6, 2010

3:24pm (Florence)

I'm at the hotel now. I pulled out my laptop and converter and realized my converter doesn't have 3 prongs so I’m going to have to buy a new one here. Darn it. I'll wait until everyone gets here and see if other kids are going to buy converters and just go with them when they go. I only have internet for 24 hours and I have to come down to the lobby to check so I’ll check every hour or so. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I was really planning on watching movies on my laptop but now that wont work :( At least I know for next time I guess... And you know, I can just sit here on their public computers to access the internet and maybe watch Hulu. I'm not going to worry about my laptop right now. I just can’t Skype on this computer. But this is better than nothing!

Ugh. Just realized these computers don’t have Adobe Flash Player so I can’t watch Hulu. Guess I really am going to have to read a book.

I took a 20 minute nap on the plane ride from Rome to Florence, which turned out to be only 30 minutes long... I'm kind of thinking taking the train would've been MUCH better. BUT I did meet these girls from USC(California) who are in the Syracuse program too and this old Italian guy was creeping on me and I had no idea what he was saying and stuff and then I heard this girl speaking Italian and English and she was behind me at baggage claim and I asked her what he was saying and she helped me, then we found out we were all in SUF (there was another girl too) and then we ended up splitting a taxi together and they dropped me off here at the hotel first cause I don’t know any Italian. God is definitely good! :D

But anywhoo, I think I’m going to maybe go upstairs to read. I might get a sandwich later but everything is so expensive!! Luckily, they have a little restaurant here at the hotel that sells snacks and food and whatnot. I can get a sandwich for like $7.

9:57pm (Florence)

I just had an AMAZING nap(from 6ish to 9) and an even more amazing ham and cheese "toast". It was the cheapest thing on the menu (€4) and it was so good! I ate it very slowly and enjoyed every bite!

The hotel is pretty busy now. Actually, really busy. The lobby is now pretty filled with people and these public computers are all full. I luckily got the last one and I am going to be selfish and sit here for a while. :)

There's a group of about six 45-55yr old American women sitting outside on the porch drinking their glasses of white wine and it made me think of Grandma and her girlfriends when they go on their trips :)

I ordered my "toast" from "The American Bar" and the guy there spoke English and was very very kind to me. I was definitely thankful for that! This hotel is not as super nice as the pictures played it out to be but it is definitely very clean, I feel very safe, the staff speak a fair amount of English, and its not on that busy of a street. I haven't heard too much honking :)

Susie, the girl who is sharing the hotel room with me tonight should be arriving soon. I hope we'll go to sleep though not too long after she gets here because I want to walk to the campus in the morning and explore. They said they'll have snacks all day and I'd rather hang out there than here at the hotel. AHH!! I'm going to my first college campus as a college student tomorrow!! :D

The rest of the group arrives around 2ish and I can’t wait to meet everyone! My (hopefully) roomie, Meghan should arrive around 1 and goodness gracious am I excited to finally see her! Meghan saw what I wrote about my converter and said I can use hers when she gets here. She’s so nice. I really pray we're roommates. We just get along so well from what it seems so far from our email conversations.

I left home with a stinky cold and it is still persistent. I sneezed a bunch on the flight. And OH MY GOODNESS I thought my nasal cavities were going to explode from the pressure when we were flying. At one point the pressure became so great I felt a "pop" (at the top of the bridge of my nose in between my eyes) and my nose started to run and I was afraid I got a bloody nose but it wassnot. Was snot. Get it?! :-P But still. Flying with a cold definitely is no fun. Especially when I tried to sleep and couldn't breathe out of my nose and was drooling everywhere before I even really fell asleep. :-O I'm going to take some medicine though and definitely hit up that Benedryl tonight before I go to sleep.

Here are some pictures:
My hotel room #1Hotel room #2
Balcony view from hotel room

So Ta-Ta for now and I’ll update soon!

Day One

September 6, 2010 10:35am Rome Time (Feels like 4:35am Georgia Time)

I have arrived. Well really I’ve been here for 4 hours now but you understand my point. After months of anticipation I can’t believe I’m sitting in the Rome airport waiting on my connecting flight to Florence where I will begin one of the most exciting times of my life. Even here as I sit in Italy, it hasn’t quite hit me. The reality of the situation is just so great that it’ll probably hit me in December when I’m actually leaving. I feel like I’m living in someone else’s shoes. I keep having to tap my face to make sure I’m not dreaming (and to induce blood flow in my face to keep me awake against this jet lag).

Speaking of jet lag, my body is definitely rebelling against me right now. I have the sweats and my head is pounding. I’m not hungry but in the back of my head I feel a bit nauseous. I’m doing everything I can just to keep my eyelids open. On the flight over I had the privilege of sitting behind two Italian ladies who definitely didn’t spare the assumption of Italians liking to put on a show. Needless to say, my TV screen and lap desk in front of me went through many bouts of shakes due to their over-exaggerated laughter and conversation and if I turned up the volume in my headphones any louder I would have busted my eardrums. I luckily did find about an hour of quiet time where I managed to get some sleep, but other than that I just sat there frustrated beyond belief at my luck.

Still, life went on and even my lack of sleep couldn’t damper the huge smile on my face as I walked down the steps from the airplane onto Roman grounds. And to lighten my mood even more, God blessed me with getting to watch the sun rise. It can’t get much better than starting off my trip with a better welcoming gesture than a sun rise in Roma.

Since my flight landed at the crack of dawn, we were some of the first passengers in the airport. Nevertheless, as I walked into the different gate areas, the wonderful smell of coffee and pastries and all things good that are Italian overwhelmed me. I looked around at all the cafés and took in all these beautiful, wonderful looking breakfast items (I haven’t yet learned the names of all these goodies). As tempting as they all were I refrained from any purchases because after all I am a poor, starving college student now.

Because my next flight was after noon, it wasn’t yet posted on the Departures board as to what gate I needed to go to so I found the waiting area where a couple of other groups of people were sitting as well. I found a nice row of chairs and settled down. I got out my phone and my laptop and also to my fortunate luck, neither were working. For some reason my phone wasn’t “roaming”, the internet here was not free and my debit cards have not yet been activated for international usage. So I found myself worrying “how in the world am I going to let my mom know I made it safely. She’ll be up late worrying and if I don’t contact her before I get to Florence (which wouldn’t be until 18 hours after my departure from Atlanta). I went on a search and found a phone where I could make a collect call and foot the bill to daddy’s wallet- that’s what it’s for anyways right? At first I was afraid the call didn’t work but eventually it did and I talked to my mom and John. Whew. Problem number one of this trip solved.

After my collect call, I went back to the waiting area and situated my bags so that I could lie down on them and sleep a little. At first my nerves were eating at me so much that I couldn’t really relax so I pulled out my MP3 player and watched The Fantastic Four. After that I fell asleep for about an hour and woke up and to my surprise the airport had become pretty busy. I decided I should probably get a move on to my gate (even though I still had 3 hours until take-off) and began my trek through the Rome airport. I didn’t realize how big this airport is until I finally arrived at B19 sweating like I had just run outside. Much to my not surprise I was the first one there so I set up camp again and decided this time to finally get a start on this blog which brings me to my present time now.

It is now two hours until boarding and a few other passengers have arrived. A few “Hispanic” (I’m pretty sure Mexican) men are having some conversation that I can barely pick out words from. An elderly couple whom I can’t quite pick out what ethnicity are sitting over in the corner. Three middle aged Italian women are sitting across from me. I haven’t figure out there story yet but I imagine they took a girls weekend like my mom and her girl friends do sometimes. Wouldn’t it be neat if that were actually true?

So there’s not much to report anymore at this point other than, I miss air-conditioning.