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.
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