Chocolate!

When I read about the city of Perugia in my guidebook before I left for Italy, I knew I had to go there. Perugia hosts one of Europe’s largest international chocolate festivals, Eurochocolate. I am a huge fan of chocolate and this went on my list of things not to miss this semester. Perugia is only an hour and a half away by train, so Dr. Webb decided to take us for our group excursion this weekend. I have never seen so much chocolate in my life. We took a local train from Sansepolcro to Perugia early in the morning and arrived to streets lined with white tents filled with vendors selling different varieties of chocolate from around the world.

The festival reminded me of the state fair. I was sad because I was missing the fair this year. However, Eurochocolate could have been the state fair except for the fact that it was on streets surrounded by ancient palazzos and filled with chocolate. There was even a Ferris wheel. Perugia was rather crowded, but the festival was a fun experience. We walked through the streets fighting the crowd and tasting all types of chocolate.

I think there must have been some of every kind of chocolate ever made somewhere in Perugia. We saw all types of milk, dark, and white chocolate. There were chocolate bars probably bigger than all my textbooks put together. We saw chocolate bars with everything in them from hot peppers to honeydew melon. I bought a chocolate bar with rose petals in it. There were also many types of hot chocolate. Italian hot chocolate is very different from American. I like the Italian kind much better. It is thick and rich. It is more like heated pudding than a drink and I almost needed a spoon to eat it! I can’t drink much of it because it is so rich! We saw some familiar brands that are sold in the United States, such as Lindt and Toblerone. However, most of the chocolate can’t be bought in America. We saw all kinds of truffles and chocolate covered things. I even saw a box of beautifully hand painted chocolates that cost 50 euro (75 dollars)!
One interesting thing we did in Perugia was seeing where chocolate comes from. There was an exhibit on Mexico and the original forms of chocolate. We tasted some pure chocolate, which is very much like eating cocoa powder. I ate a real cacao bean, which is where cocoa powder comes from. It was disgusting! I don’t know how people ever figured to turn it in to the treat we eat today, but I’m glad they did. I bought some chocolate pasta to take back home with me and got a chocolate map of Perugia!

I would like to go back to Perugia sometime when there is no crowd, but I don’t think that will happen before the end of the semester. Perugia is situated on the top of a hill and was an Etruscan town. Perugia was conquered by the Romans, and eventually was owned by the Papal state. The Papal state remained in control of Perugia until the Italian state was formed in 1860. Today, Perugia is the capital of Umbria, one of the regions that border Tuscany.

I have been here for seven weeks now, and it is strange to think that the semester is half way over. I have adjusted to so many different things this semester. Only a few months ago, I had never taken public transportation, didn’t know a word of Italian, and had never been to Europe. Now, these things are typical for me. I am used to and beginning to cross the language barrier. I feel accomplished and knowledgeable. Here I am, successfully living in a foreign country, navigating culture, taking the train, and talking with people I have met.

The first time I went into a restaurant in Italy it was a pizzeria called Carpe Diem. I didn’t know anything about what to do in a restaurant. This is really a complicated thing to figure out. There were so many questions we didn’t know the answer to that night. Is it alright to seat yourself? Should you wait before you sit down? Will the waiter bring you a check? How do you get a box for leftovers? While I have now learned the answers some of to these questions, I still feel awkward sometimes. After I had been here for two weeks, I told Dr. Webb that I was tired of feeling out of place all the time. Now I have realized that even if I lived here for years, I would still look stupid sometimes. Now I know that the important thing is to try to learn and interact with others and to laugh at myself. I have learned so much about my culture from this experience and have been able to learn more about the real Italia. I have found many things about this culture that I really like, and some that drive me crazy! I know that there is still so much more for me to observe and experience.

I am really excited about the next several weeks, since this experience is still far from over. In my Italy in WWII class, we have been reading different novels and memoirs from the war. I am currently reading Iris Origo’s account of the war in her diary, titled War in Val d’Orcia. I am excited to be visiting the Val d’Orcia soon to see the places in this book. Iris Origo was an English-American woman who lived in Tuscany with her Italian husband. She housed many refugee children and helped partisans though the war. Her account details the experience of many Italian civilians during the war. One of the greatest things about studying abroad is getting to see history come alive by visiting the places where important events took place. Some things just have to be experienced.

Ci vediamo,

Meredith

Education in Italy

I woke up early on Monday morning with a strange nervous excited feeling that I hadn’t felt in a while. Why was I nervous? Monday was the first day of school. I was excited to go to for the first official observation for my teacher education. I have been looking forward to starting volunteering in the schools and doing observations since the beginning of the semester. As the service learning part of the course, we will be volunteering in English classrooms in Sansepolcro for the rest of our time here in Italy every Monday morning. I am also taking Educational Psychology. I am excited to do my practicum in the Italian schools to see how the theories I have been learning in class are applied in the schools here.

Students in Italy are required to go to school from age six to age sixteen. There is a kindergarten that students attend from ages three to six. It is paid for by the state, but it is optional. From age six to eleven, a child will go to primary school. In primary school, students have the same teacher all day. That teacher teaches a little bit of all the subjects. Students go to middle school from eleven to fourteen, and then high school from fourteen to nineteen. In middle school and high school, students take eight of nine classes year round. They have a different teacher for each subject. Students stay in the same classroom all day. Teachers move from one class to the next. Students in Italy start university at twenty.

All Italy’s schools are controlled at the national level and the curriculum is the same everywhere in the country. Private schools do exist, but most students go to public school. Most school days last from 8:30 to 1:00. Students go home for lunch with their families. However, Italian children go to school on Saturdays. By high school, students choose an area of specialization and go to a specific school based on what they choose. In Sansepolcro, there is a scientific high school, an economic high school, an art high school, and a professional high school which teaches a trade. There are more choices in some larger cities. Students can attend classical schools and communications schools if they live in a town such as Arezzo.

In order to become a teacher in Italy, you must attend university and pass a state exam. The test is only offered every few years. Teaching is considered a very important profession and teachers receive a lot of respect from the community. However, once teachers are hired, they cannot be fired. Even if teachers do something really bad, they can only be moved to an office job in the school. This can be a problem because there is no way to ensure that teachers are doing their jobs. Teaching is a very desirable job because it is a government job and is very secure. Teaching comes with good benefits such as summers off.

The challenges faced by schools in Italy are not very different from the challenges faced by schools in America. There are a lot of students in each class. There is limited funding for education in the current financial climate. There are many students who do not speak Italian and have to learn it as a second language. Technologically, their classrooms seem to be less advanced as those in America. The classes I was in did not have computers or projectors. However, the students do have to develop computer literacy and must pass a test in information technology in order to get a job.

I am volunteering and observing in the economic high school. It is about a ten minute walk from where I live. I visited the school for the first time on Thursday to meet the English teacher I will be working with. She is extremely nice and I will enjoy getting to spend time in her classes. Dr. Andreini came with me to explain what types of assignments I needed to do for Educational Psychology. There were students passing by us because it was a transition time. Although the school was in an old historic building, it didn’t look much different from my high school.

For the first lesson on Monday, I introduced myself to the classes I will be helping in. I made a power point presentation and showed them pictures of my house, family, and pets. I talked about my life and they asked me questions about the United States. I discussed my daily routine because the class was working on the vocabulary for their daily routines. It was really exciting to speak to all of them. I enjoyed answering their questions about my life. Spending time in this classroom reminds me of all the times I spent in Italian and Spanish language classes. My experience with learning another language helps me to understand what types of things to talk about and how to speak slowly and clearly.

I am looking forward to going back next week and discussing holidays in the United States. We are going to talk about Christmas and Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Italy. Some essentials of thanksgiving, such as sweet potatoes for example, are not available here. I am excited to get to tell them about one of my favorite holidays. I am preparing a slideshow on why we celebrate it and, of course, what we eat. Maybe I will even include corn, every Meredith student’s favorite!

The experience was fun and educational. I am excited to see what is in store for the rest of my school visits. I think that this service learning project will strengthen my commitment to learning and volunteer work. I am glad that we have such an excellent way to give back to the community of Sansepolcro, which has welcomed us. A lot of exciting things are coming up in the future. This Saturday we are travelling to Perugia for the Eurochocolate festival!

Ciao,

Meredith

On Our Own in Venice

I am feeling really good about myself right now. I have successfully traveled to another city five hours away using public transportation and a foreign language and gotten safely back to Sansepolcro again. My friend Emily and I booked two hotels, planned a train schedule and an itinerary, and saw Venice, Verona, and Bologna this weekend on our own. We did not miss a single train. It is really exciting to be able to do this all on our own. I have been in Italy for five weeks now and in this time I have learned all kinds of practical information. I feel as if I could travel almost anywhere. I was even able to help some American tourists get to the train station on time with my knowledge of Italian transportation!

We departed Sansepolcro for our first independent travel break on Friday morning. We took a train to Bologna first and then had several hours to explore the city before our train left for Venice. Emily and I found a restaurant. Bologna is known for its food, especially its Bolognese sauce. Bolognese sauce is a tomato and meat sauce for pasta. We had a wonderful lunch and were happy with the fact that everyone in the restaurant was a local except for us. If the locals ate there, it had to be authentic. We also walked through the Piazza del Nettuno and saw the Basilica di San Petronio. The Basilica was closed, but we could see from the outside that it was huge. We read in our guidebook that it was originally going to be bigger than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome but that the Vatican wouldn’t allow Bologna’s cathedral to top theirs.

After our brief exploration of Bologna, we continued on to Venice. I really enjoyed Venice. Even though I had seen countless pictures, I wasn’t prepared for how much I would really enjoy the picturesque canals and the beautiful blue-green water coming right to the front doors of ancient Palazzos. I bought a student vaporetto pass allowing me unlimited access to the waterbus transportation and set out into the city.

Venice has a magical atmosphere. I as if I was on the Titanic because Venice is both extremely romantic and elaborate. Venice was first settled when Rome fell because the people were hiding from invaders. They moved out onto the island where Venice currently is in order to escape. Originally Venice’s main income was fishing. However, because of its location, it became an important trade center. It was ruled by a series of Doges, who were local dukes. Today, the city’s main income is tourism. The local population is small compared to the number of tourists who visit.

Emily and I had only three things on our list for our time in Venice. They were:
1. Get lost
2. See glass making and go shopping on Murano
3. Go to the top of the campanile, which is the bell tower in Piazza San Marco

First, however, we had to figure out where to stay. We started planning our trip well in advance, but for some reason just weren’t having any luck finding a room. We had found a place to stay for Friday night and decided that we would hope that place would have a cancellation for Saturday night. They didn’t have a cancellation, so we went to the tourist office and got a booklet full of hotels. We called 40 hotels before we found a place to stay! Thankfully, other Meredith students in Venice already had a place and were willing to let us sleep on their floor just in case, but we didn’t need to after all.

I enjoyed spending several hours on Murano. Venice is on islands away from the mainland and there are several islands surrounding it. The glass artists used to live on the main island of Venice, but were sent to Murano because they started too many fires on Venice. We went to the Glass Museum and saw the process of making glass. As a chemistry major, I was interested in learning how the glass was made. The main component of glass is silica, which is found in sand. The better raw material a glass maker can get, the better the finished product will be. It is made in a wood burning stove. A fluxing agent is added to the glass in order to lower the melting point so that the artisan can work with the glass over just wood heat. Different compounds are added to achieve different colored glass. We saw some glass cups from the first century! We also got to see a demonstration and do some shopping on the island before we went back to Venice.

It was nearly time to get lost, but first we rode the elevator up the campanile. It was a good view, but it didn’t compare to the view from the Duomo in Florence. We learned that prisoners were hung in cages from this tower in medieval times for people’s entertainment. Then, we got lost on purpose because we had heard that getting lost is the best way to see Venice! We hadn’t got lost yet, so we put away the maps and just started walking in random directions and making turns whenever a street looked nice or whenever we wanted to go a different direction. Pretty soon, we were strolling through the back streets away from the crowds walking over tiny foot bridges and crossing small canals. Getting lost was my favorite part of the trip.

When we were tired of being lost, we got out our maps, figured out where we were, and then got on a vaporetti to the island of Lido, where our hotel was for the night. I really enjoyed staying on Lido. It is only a twenty minute boat ride from St. Mark’s square, but since it is away from the main island of Venice, the hotels aren’t as expensive and it doesn’t have a tourist feel. While on Lido, we meet some locals, which is rare for Venice. We had a really good pizza and watched Shrek on television in Italian.

On Sunday, Emily and I met up with Meredith and Patsy, who had been traveling with Meredith’s parents. The four of us took a train to Verona. We saw Juliet’s house and the Verona Arena. Verona was full of tourists, but it was a lovely city. The recent movie, Letters to Juliet, has made Verona a very popular stop for Americans to visit. We wrote letters to Juliet, but it is now against the rules to put them on the wall. We left them in the entry way. It was really cheesy to write letters to a fictional thirteen year old character to take to a house that is part of a legend, but we had fun going and I would have been disappointed not to go and see what Verona was like. We also got some McDonald’s food in Verona. It was my first American meal since I have been here.

We had a great time and now we are all looking forward to a weekend here in Sansepolcro. The Palazzo Alberti is having a party for the first anniversary of the program on Saturday. I am hoping for a little time to relax.

Ciao,

Meredith