A Month-Aversary Hodgepodge

WARNING: the following will be a boring assessment of my first month here. If navel-gazing bores you, skip this post.

Allora. Sunday might have been 4 weeks, but the 16th was one month. Thus I suppose I'm supposed to do a summary or something? What? Well. I shall try. I can't promise I'll come to any fascinating conclusions, but we'll see.

Recently, I've been having very vivid dreams. Remember that one before I went to Florence? Yeah? Like that. Like, where I couldn't remember if Trevin had told me he'd cut his fingernails because he was tired of growing them out for guitar in real life or a dream. Trevin says it was a dream. I am not so sure. But that's all very weird for me - I pretty much never have those moments where I wake up and go, "whereamI!?" and it's happening very regularly lately. Which is to say, my brain is trying to bring me back home at sleepy times. Because we've now beat the record for amount of time I've been out of the continent on 'vacation' (let's face it, it pretty much is a vacation - my Art History class requires I write 900 words for the whole semester). So it sort of seems like my subconscious's way of trying to tell me it's a little weirded out and maybe how it deals with not being at home - I'm visiting home in my sleep. Hi guys!

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Things about Italy I have noticed, slash we might have discussed in Reflective Writing ('Group Therapy' would be a more accurate name):

Time. The Italians have a weird sense of time. Lavinia (the boss-lady of the school) and Madisen (a girl from LC on our program) say you have to enjoy the wait, or something. Which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. For example, when you're waiting for the bus, it's nice that you don't have to rush, because generally the bus comes late. That is something that can be depended upon, and it is generally the same amount of time late. Except for when it's early. It's sort of like, the :24 and :55 minute scheduled arrival is the midpoint in about a 10 or 15 minute period of potential arrival (speaking of busses, don't even get me started on the safety issues inherent in wearing headphones and/or texting while you operate a FREAKING HUGE TUNNEL OF METAL DEATH). Which is a little tricky. The same happens for teachers - they don't really have syllabi or schedules (apparently that isn't a word in Italian), so they know on some spiritual level what we're going to learn, but if they're late, or we're late, or we want to talk about idiomatic expressions or what we do with our host families after dinner, that's fine. If we ask really nicely, we can even get una pausa for 15 minutes in the middle of class. Actually, that's pretty much every professor. The time thing doesn't generally bother me, and actually relaxes me when I'm in a positive, balanced place. When I'm frustrated or annoyed or tired, it is the worst. But usually it's just, "Oh Italy! How quirky you are..."

Food. I might have mentioned this to a number of you individually, but food. Oh my god food. A huge number of conversations circle around food. I thought, originally, that my host mom just talked about what she was making me for lunch because she had nothing else to say. Apparently not. So many of our conversations amongst ourselves are, "What did you have for dinner? Guess what I got for lunch." And there is definitely this notion of preserving your hunger. In the N. America, we eat because we're hungry and we don't want to be hungry anymore. Here, eating is done because it's awesome, and food is to be enjoyed. So it's sort of okay to be hungry. Speaking of which, Operation Get Fat isn't really working. Which doesn't mean that I'm going to stop trying, because I am thoroughly enjoying my regular gelato fun. 

Interesting things we talked about in Art History and Anthropology: 

Anthro talks a lot about 'the other' and how social groups are defined, a lot of the time, by who is not a part of the group (E&D Fall '08 anyone?). We sort of branched out into what that meant/means for Siena past and present, as well as modern countries and where we as a species go from here, as multiculturalism begins to die (History of Islam in Europe Spring '10 anyone?). I mention these classes in parenthesis because they are places I've discussed this in the past. Weird weird circular learning going on here. Anyway, it's all very interesting and relevant in my own life as a Canadian (hush, Trevin, I can hear you itching to make a joke) going to school in the States. Silly Americans rarely understand the dynamic of being an outsider, especially because they all assume it's the same for me. Guys, you'll just have to trust me, it isn't. Plus there's Canada's whole mosaic vs. melting pot stuff they've been saying for years, which gets to be assessed a little. Pretend to be interested. (I try so hard to make this blog interactive, you guys are just going to have to hold up your end. I can only go so far...)

Art has been talking about the origins of the Renaissance in painting, which is cool. I feel like a total knob that I never thought particularly deeply about art as being a historical document. Yeah, a lot of these people were paid and bossily told what to do and how to do it and in what colours and when to pick their noses, but they're artists, and 1. what they are told to paint reflects tastes of the time and 2. what they can get away with reflects changing attitudes. And a lot of that stuff manifests itself in ways that way different to see in paintings than in written documents, and in some ways more interesting. In Italian, Renaissance is Rinascimento and means the same thing ('rebirth') only more obviously. Gotta love this language! 

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Oh, what? I'm supposed to look deep within my soul and tell you about some serious shift? Herm. Well. I dunno if that will happen, but I shall try. In some ways, I'm completely loving my alone time. I'm all grown up and tough and stuff. But I already knew that - it's just easy to forget. And I suppose one of the great things about being here for three months is that I get to reconnect with that, with my inner tough girl and my inner awesome. And by 'awesome', I mean that confidence that it's so easy for me to sort of drop by the side of the road, especially (and isn't this weird and paradoxical) with boys in the life, and in the last year or so. Huzzah! But that isn't really a soul shift thing. I'm becoming much more clear about what I want from life, and the future and whatever. And yus, I know I've been fluffing about this since day one, but it's sort of calmed down and become less convoluted. Which is also nice. But mostly, I'm enjoying the heck out of Italy. 

I shall sign off now because tomorrow morning I'm going to Assisi. As in, St. Francis of. He's one of the patron saints of Italy, along with St. Catherine of (you guessed it) Siena. They were both a little crazy in the saintly way, but St. F is known for some of his writing, like Canticle of the Creatures, which is worth a read. It's sort of unique in the way he talks about and personifies natural phenomenon - it's much more spiritual than one might expect. I'm pretty excited - there are some neat churches and awesome art, and near by is a small town called Spoleto with a modern art museum and some Roman ruins, so we're going to take a day trip there on Saturday. It's just four of us - me, Megan, Fiona, and Libby. Our program leader, Karen, is going to come down with us on Friday (she's only spending the day) which will be great because, as previously mentioned, she knows all kinds of awesome things about art. Thus, you can expect an update on Sunday, likely. Hopefully full of fun adventures.

I hope this post was as navel-gazy or non-navel-gazy you wanted. As usual, I miss you, blah blah. It's now less than 3 weeks until my birthday - for anyone wanting to send me things (coughMomcough), do it via FedEx of UPS or something, since it's faster and safer than public mail. Don't send anything they'll want to stop. Your comments, emails, and general affection are always always appreciated.

<3