Here is my first blog post from Italy:
So it's been pretty awesome so far. I've already become a loyal patron of a local pizza shop and a local cafe. I've been taking ridiculous routes to an from different places so I can better understand and navigate the city (as a result I got hopelessly lost on my way back from Italian class the other day). I've found a great market to shop at with really cheep, fresh food, and really cheep clothes. My apartment and my house mates are awesome. Four bedrooms, three full baths, a good sized kitchen, a terrace, and 6 fantastic girls. I have yet to visit the inside of the Duomo and the Uffizi gallery, but I have time....
Today I visited Piazzale Michelangelo and wandered around an awesome Romanesque church and cemetery at the top of the hill. I sat there drawing the view for a while. It was very peaceful It's on my list to go there at night, the view in the daylight is great.
For my homework for one of my classes, I have to keep an illustration blog and post my homework on it. That makes having this blog very convenient :) So here goes part of my homework:
I had to do 10 ethnographic studies, but instead of posting them all at once, I'll post them as I complete them. It will make blog posts shorter and I can go in depth on my pictures, sketches and observations.
First are my observations of similarities and differences between living in Italy verses living in the States. I'm not sure where to start really... There are many noticeable and subtle differences, the language being the most noticeable difference. Obviously the language is very similar to the Latin language, but I noticed that the language was grammatically more similar to Latin than other romance languages. This makes it interesting for me, having studied Latin for 4 years in high school. It also makes learning the Italian language easier because it is like picking up Latin again without all the crazy declensions. I like the way the words are pronounced also, they roll off the tongue in an almost musical way.
Another difference is simply the age of the buildings that I am surrounded by. At home I'm used to being surrounded by buildings that are a little over 100 years old. Maybe 150 years, max. And then my college campus was built in the 1960's, so its relatively new. These buildings in Florence have seen and lived through at least 600 years of history. To think that I'm living in a building that was built when some people still thought that the earth was flat is incredible.
Some more subtle differences is how people here eat dinner later than people in the States. I've adapted by eating a small breakfast and lunch and snacking on a pizza or a sandwich between lunch and dinner. I also noticed that in restaurants or cafes the offer sparkling water more often as an option. I do see sparkling water offered in cafes in the States, but I've never seen sparkling water offered this often.
I noticed that people working at restaurants like to receive exact change.
A similarity between my experiences living in the States and in Florence are the tourists, though not to this magnitude. I unfortunately and fortunately grew up in a town that brought in a lot of tourists during the summer. This brought in a lot of money for the city, but us locals also had to put up with traffic and tourists that drove like idiots, and drunk tourists stumbling in from of your car at night downtown. I noticed that at night there are a lot of drunk American students also. I find this embarrassing because I think that it gives a poor image of Americans, students especially. I notice that when I'm at home, foreign tourists are usually polite. Most of the tourists that I've met at home generally are polite, just a bit clueless. The tourists I've met at home are usually families vacationing for the week or thirty or forty somethings there for the racetrack and the bars.
Another big difference I noticed was that there was a general strike the other day. People aren't happy with the government, so they strike. I would much prefer the inconvenience of busses being out of service for the week to the apathy that I see among people in the States. People are not satisfied with the United States government right now, but are there strikes? Marches? Do people take action? No, people are either too busy, or they do not care and have settled to just deal with the problems that the government fails to fix. You'd think that with the advances in social networking today, people would find it easier to organize......
I'm ranting.....
...
Allora.... What else... I didn't notice any suburbs like we have in the states. From the top of the hill behind Piazzale Michelangelo I saw only city and countryside in the mountains. Perhaps there are similar suburbs elsewhere, I have yet to find them.
One last similarity before I get kicked out of the computer lab:
American clubs and bars. I went to a couple, and I felt like I was back in the States. Except I am legally allowed to buy alcohol (my rant about the drinking age in the States is for another time). SO MANY AMERICANS. The streets around Santa Croce are crawling with them at night. Very strange to me. I came to Italy to experience a different culture but I keep getting stuck in a little America.
Anyway... I am getting kicked out of the lab. Pics to come!!
Ciao!
