Tids and Bits

It’s been an inconvenient week to bring my computer to school, and since there are only two computers in the lab at LinguaViva, I don’t exactly have time to post much. There really hasn’t been much exciting stuff going on anyway. We’ve learned past tense in Italian and just started possessive adjectives today. I feel like I’m learning really quickly, but since we still don’t even know prepositions or anything, I still talk like a caveman in restaurants and stores. I went to buy a hair dryer the other day, and that was a new and exciting experience. Instead of picking out the one you want and paying for it at the counter, you pick it out in the window, then tell the clerk and they get it for you. (I guess it’s a pretty old fashioned system.) I had my whole speech planned out—“I would like the So-and-so hairdryer for 15 Euro, please.” (Vorrei il Joycare Asciugacapelli per 15 Euro, per favore.”) But I mispronounced hairdryer right at the start, so I just gave up and pointed to it—“Questa.” (“This.”) She did understand what I wanted, but I still felt really stupid.

We also went to the supermarket earlier this week for the first time. We spent about ten minutes in the soap aisle trying to figure out what conditioner was called, and if Italians even use it. We finally took a gamble on something called Balsamica (or something like that) that turned out to be it. I bought some brie and crackers for lunches at LinguaViva and REAL Greek olives. They are amazing. And I naturally bought some Nutella and pretzels, since that’s probably the best thing since peanut butter (which, ironically, they don’t have here). I didn’t buy any fruit, but they have this cool system where you put on a glove and then weigh and price your own produce. Since Anna gives us fruit every day for lunch I didn’t worry about it, but it makes a lot more sense to me than the American way.

Dinners at Anna’s have been getting way weird lately. We had locks (sans bagel) and salad this one night, and then last night we had a plain omelet with big chunks of onion and unsalted potatoes on the side. And walnuts for dessert. I was starving so I ate it all, but it’s definitely not the best thing I’ve had since I’ve been here. (Seriously. Chunks of onion.) We’ll see what’s on tap for tonight.

Being in Italy has opened up some kind of weird thought processes in my mind, as I keep having these strange ideas that seem simultaneously profound and idiotic. Today, for instance, walking around the side of the Duomo I had this thought strike me: “Man, somebody in a thousand years is going to be wondering what it was like to live during my time, but here I am right now thinking the same thing about somebody else long dead!” Who knows—maybe seeing Brunelleschi’s death mask triggered something in me.

I’ll post next week about my trip to the Duomo today and Pisa tomorrow. The forecast predicts no rain, so it should be better than Siena! Saturday I’m going to a football game (Florence vs. Torino, I think), and then Sunday a few of us have planned to take the number seven bus to Fiesole, an Etruscan settlement nearby. If I can figure out where to plug my camera battery in to charge (long story), there will be plenty of pictures!