Ciao Italia!

I love Italy! I am so excited to be here at last. My experience so far has been everything I thought it would be and more. I am so glad that I decided to come and spend a semester in this beautiful city. It took a long time to get here. First, I had to drive from my house to the airport in Raleigh, which took about three hours. Then we had to wait in Raleigh for our plane to leave. We flew to Newark, had a four hour layover, and an eight hour flight to Rome. We had fun getting through the airport in Rome. We got on a automated people mover shuttle not really sure where it was headed, but we wound up in the right place to go through passport control, baggage claim, and customs. We met our bus driver right away and began the four hour drive to Sansepolcro.

When the bus pulled into Sansepolcro and up to the Porta Florentina, my mouth dropped open. I could see the old city walls, street, and buildings. It was so exciting to finally be there. I had seen pictures of the town before I came, but they were nothing compared to what it was like to stand at the gate, see the sparkling sunshine, and feel the cool Tuscan breeze. We hauled our luggage down the street and passed a friend of Dr. Webb’s who had cookies for us. What a wonderful welcome to Italy!

Once we arrived at the Palazzo Alberti, we were enthusiastic to see our new home. The Palazzo is a wonderful living space. I live on the third floor (second in Europe) in a room with Molly, Emily, and Laurin. The second floor is where our two classrooms are. The dining hall and student kitchen are on the third floor. On the ground floor there is a pizzeria and a button shop. My room has five beds. We each have a night stand, lamp, closet, and set of shelves. The ceiling of my room is old wood beams and the walls are a very light green color. The palazzo doesn’t have any air conditioning, but it isn’t really needed. I enjoy getting to keep the windows open. The windows in my room are one of my favorite parts of the Palazzo because I can look out over the roof tops to see mountains and I can always see what is happening below me on the Via XX Settembre.

There is always something going on in Sansepolcro. People are outside walking around every night with their friends and family, eating gelato or stopping for a café. I like to walk around the town after dinner. I think it is a fun thing to do and I enjoy spending the time outside. People in America don’t spend so much time in public places after work. After dinner, we tend to stay in our houses and do our own thing. Everyone stays out late at night, even little kids. Most of the town’s events don’t even start until 9 o’ clock at night, and the restaurants are open until on past midnight. Now I understand why the shops close in the middle of the day and everyone goes home for a nap!

Now that we have gotten settled into life in Sansepolcro, we are getting started with our classes. I am taking six hours of Italian. Many Italians in Sansepolcro don’t speak any English, so it is important to know some of the language to get around. I am excited to be learning a new language and I am looking forward to being able to use it. So far, we have learned the alphabet and how to pronounce and spell words. This comes in handy when ordering something, even if we don’t know what it is. The girls who work in the gelateria complimented us yesterday and said that our Italian pronunciation is better already. I am looking forward to being able to have basic conversations in Italian. I get to practice the language every time I go outside.

Using Italian can be really interesting and fun when you have a very small vocabulary. I went to the gelateria a few days ago and saw a flavor called pesce-mango. We had just learned the word for fish “pesca” in class that day. I mixed the “e” and the “a” up and thought for a minute that they might be serving fish-mango ice cream (ick!). However, “pesce” means peach.

I also had to ask for directions in Italian. On Sunday, Emily and I headed to the grocery store. We got lost and asked an older lady for directions using Italian. We were feeling really good about ourselves when we understood the basics of what she said and were able to make it to the grocery store without any problems. When we arrived at the grocery store, it was closed. We realized that the lady had been trying to tell us that the grocery store is closed on Sunday when she gave us directions! It was an adventure.

My other classes are Travel to Learn, Italy Today, WWII in Italy: Justice and Liberty, and Educational Psychology. I am looking forward to the things that I will learn in all these classes. I think that at the end of this semester, I will have a thorough knowledge of what Italy is like, how its history has shaped its present, and how I can get the most out of my experiences traveling this semester and in the future. I have already learned so much about this beautiful country. Did you know that Italy has only been a unified country for a hundred and fifty years? Before that Italy was a network of city-states. There is such a rich history to everything here. Our oldest history in America is only around two hundred and thirty years old, while the Palazzo Alberti is from the sixteenth/seventeenth century!

I am excited about getting to take Educational Psychology while I am here. I am taking it over skype from Raleigh. I am getting a secondary science education licensure and I think that this will be a good opportunity to see what other school systems are like outside of the United States. I will be spending time in a classroom at a high school in Sansepolcro for this course. The high schools are different in Sansepolcro than they are at home. Each school has a different focus and students choose an area of specialization before they go to high school. Most students in the United States don’t begin specialized instruction until college, and even then our first year is spent primarily on general education. In a way, I think this system is good because students have a stronger background in their subject area. However, students need to have an idea of what field they want to go into at a young age. I am hoping to do my practicum in the science and technology school here in Sansepolcro and I will be exploring differences in education such as specialization as the semester goes on.

I am also really excited about all the things I am going to be learning about the Italian culture. For our Italy Today class, we are reading the book La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind. In the first chapter, the author talks about foreigners’ perceptions of Italy and what they think it will be like. He says that our “Italy” and Italians’ “Italia” are two different things. On the surface, Italy doesn’t seem extremely different from what I expected. However, I expect that there is a lot more cultural difference going on than just the obvious. I hope that as I live here and interact with people that I will discover some of what the true “Italia” is like.

I feel so blessed to have been given this amazing opportunity to be here. I would like to thank everyone who helped make this possible for me. Check back in for updates! My next post will be on the Balestra, the market, and the procession that our Ragazze Americane was invited to join.

Ci vediamo,

Meredith