first days in firenze

Today is my fourth full day in Florence. AMO LA CITTA!!! ...a lot.

Florence is absolutely beautiful (duh) and just walking around is an amazing sensory experience. There are definitely aspects of the city that surprised me, but that's to be expected. I'll get to those later. Let me fill you in on some of the adventure so far.

We arrived in Firenze by bus and were immediately shoved into cabs to take us to our respective homes. Since I'm living in a homestay, I was alone in the cab, and that was the first time throughout my days in Italia so far that I have felt insanely nervous. My nervousness was completely unrelated to the fact that I was in a taxi alone; the driver was perfectly friendly and easy to understand. He laughed when he saw the huge green rain boots I was lugging around (the same ones I had to tote through Heathrow Airport because they didn't fit ANYWHERE). I'd stuffed important papers and some extra clothes inside the boots, I guess just to make myself and my packing methods look as ridiculous as possible. After a few more basic Italian phrases he began speaking English and I told him he could continue to speak Italian, but he told me he wanted me to feel ''welcomed.'' So that was nice. I made the mistake of saying ''Yes sir'' when he asked me a question, and he was totally taken aback by this. ''We are in taxi, not army!'' he said. I explained to him that it was the polite way to address people in Mississippi, and then he understood. It was also nice that he was speaking at ALL...I've never ridden with a cab driver who seemed particularly ''chatty'' or ''friendly.'' Nope, my nervousness was more tied to the fact that I was heading to my home for the next 3 months and had absolutely NO idea what to expect. AIFS had given me some ''preliminary info'' about Franca, my host mom, but it pretty much consisted of ''She exists, and this is her address.'' I felt like I was going on an extended blind date with a 65-year old woman. Except I wasn't even sure of her age.

Franca was standing at the top of the stairwell to greet me when I arrived, and my nerves were (somewhat) calmed at this point. At least she was smiling. Immediately I could tell that communicating with her was going to be an adventure. She showed me to my room. I'll post pictures on here eventually (I know, I know, I keep saying that, but right now I'm on a dinky Stone Age computer in the school lab because I don't yet have Internet in my homestay-working on it). I have more personal space than ever. My room's a little smaller than my room at home, but with way less stuff in it, so it feels bigger. I have my own bathroom, which I've never had before because I've always shared with Isabel or a roommate/suitemates or co-counselors at camp or an entire hallway (woohoo Quintard common bathrooms). There is a door that divides my space from the rest of Franca's apartment, and a little teeny hallway (I don't know if ''hallway'' is the right word...it's more like a boxy elevator type area that just doesn't move) that leads to my room/bathroom. The short version of this paragraph: I have a lot of space and privacy.

I could tell within the first few hours that Franca will not be an intrusive host mom at all. It seems like our relationship is one that's going to be up to me to define, which is cool. I would love to just be a fly on the wall in our relationship because I'm sure that we're hilarious to listen to when we ''converse'' with each other. Franca speaks all Italian and occasionally throws in an English word or two that she knows. I speak all English and occasionally throw in an Italian word or two that I THINK I know. Sometimes Spanish comes out, or if I don't know an Italian word that I think I SHOULD know after my 2-week foray into the language in Lido di Camaiore orientation, I say the Spanish word, and every now and then it's the same. Key words: ''Every now and then.'' So I wind up speaking this convoluted word-vomit combo of English, Spanglish, and occasional Italian, and it probably comes out like gibberish (I also think of it as Caveman Italian...I say things to Franca like ''I go now. I eat food in restaurant. I go class.'') It's fun. (It actually is...I'm not being sarcastic. I just hate that I can't be clearer with her, but I'm hoping I'll pick up more Italian with time-and I'm still enrolled in the Basic Spoken Italian class at school).

Franca leaves it to me to initiate conversations and interactions. She is a very sweet and welcoming woman, but clearly recognizes that college students want their independence and privacy. However, if I want to talk to her she is always happy to chat. I'm never really in the apartment during the day because I'm either in class, running errands, wandering/exploring, or eating (the AIFS meal plan gives us meal vouchers at tons of restaurants and cafes all around the city. HOLLA. However, I do have a bone to pick with them: I would much rather have a Gelato voucher than a Breakfast voucher. Just saying.) When I come home at night, Franca is usually watching TV, reading, on the phone with her sister, smoking, or sleeping. If I want to stop and talk with her, I do, but I don't feel obligated to. Right now I usually do because I want to be friendly and to get to know her better, but I'm sure there will be days later in the semester when I'm just too lazy to bother with conquering the language barrier. I'm equally sure, though, that there will be just as many days when I feel up for the challenge.

Flash back to Saturday, 20 minutes post-arrival at Franca's. This is a story that needs to be told. Franca had just showed me to my room, and my head was spinning in a thousand different directions. About half of my thoughts were along the lines of ''OHMYGOSH I can't believe I'm here, this is AMAZING, I have SO MUCH SPACE, Franca is ADORABLE, FIRENZE IS BEAUTIFUL, THIS IS GOING TO BE THE MOST AMAZING SEMESTER EVER, I AM OBSESSED WITH EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE ALREADY'' and the other half of my thoughts were more like ''OHMYGOSH I am all by myself, I'm going to vom, WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO?!'' I was a little overwhelmed with both positive and negative thoughts. I needed to do something mindless, yet productive. I had two ideas: unpacking and organizing my things, and then PAINTING MY FINGERNAILS.

Now, you may laugh and think ''You just landed in Florence, Italy, one of the most beautiful and historically rich places in the world, and the first thing you wanted to do was paint your nails?'' Well...um...yeah. In college I've found that nail-painting is one of my absolute favorite de-stressers. It is a task that requires concentration and (some) skill, but you can easily daydream and relax while doing it. You can put on some music, decompress, and, on top of that, when you're done, it looks pretty. It is one of my favorite things to do when I get overwhelmed. And I brought my brand new bottle of OPI ''What's With the Cat-itude?'' polish from their new Shrek-themed collection. Too cute.

WELL.... I began unpacking and moving my clothes into my armoire and other little compartments in the room. I opened the pocket in my suitcase where I remembered packing the bottle of nail polish. I pulled out a shirt and tossed it on the bed, anxious to find the What's With the Cat-itude? bottle.

WELL...what do you know? There went the bottle (which had apparently been wrapped inside the shirt, a small but important detail I had forgotten)...shattering into pieces and spilling onto Franca's tiled floor. I shifted into panic mode. Honestly, at first it was just because I was upset I couldn't paint my nails anymore and because the limited-edition bottle was kaput. THEN I suddenly had the terrifying realization that OHMYGODTHISISSOMEONEELSE'SFLOOR. I bolted for the bathroom, looking desperately for equipment with which I could do damage control. Good ole toilet paper was the only viable option. With no other way to handle this situation, I grabbed the entire roll and began sopping up blue polish from the floor. Miraculously, this method worked much better than I expected, but my frenzied state while doing it caused me to wipe the polish in short spurts, leaving adorable little white toilet paper bits stuck to the floor. The only way I could think of how to proceed was with soap and water. There was only one washcloth in the bathroom and I wasn't about to use my limited linens for a project this ridic. I instead grabbed one of the many cheap ($6.99 for 5) Wal-Mart white Hanes V-necks I brought along, soaking it with water and dousing it with soap to wipe up said toilet paper bits and OPI remnants. And that was all it took: With a little bit of elbow grease and a lot of toilet paper, I had survived my first clumsiness-induced debacle. I just hope Franca doesn't look in my wastebasket anytime soon, because she'd be MOLTO confused.

On to more general things. I am living right in the historical center of the city which is FANTASTIC. I was a little concerned that AIFS might dump us in an awkwardly distant suburb or in a scary alleyway on the end of town opposite of the school. Nope. I am on the side of the Ponte alla Carraia opposite the Duomo, and I'm within easy walking distance of the Ponte Vecchio, Santa Croce, the Duomo, the Uffizi, and tons and tons of little cafes, smaller galleries, restaurants, bars, boutiques, libraries, you name it. It's wonderful and ideal.

Yesterday I experienced my first truly uncomfortable ''culture shock'' situation. Yes, there have been noticeable differences in the culture that I've seen from the beginning, but they came with some warning or were easy to adjust to; I expected and HOPED that I'd be dealing with differences-that is, after all, how you learn. And the dodgy driving that the Italians are so known for hasn't been nearly as intense as I expected. After spending time in Haiti, Italian roads, by comparison, seem like leisurely golf courses populated with 80-year old cart drivers on tranquilizers. Point being, I've easily adjusted to most of the differences, but yesterday was the first time I truly felt SHOCKED (or just like an idiot).

I was walking, innocently enough, through the open-air markets in the San Lorenzo area, seeing plenty of cheap purses and faux pashminas, not planning to buy anything, just wandering. Once I exited the little booth/tent area I walked onto the end of Borgo San Lorenzo and noticed a walk-down corner shoe shop. I needed a pair of everyday sandals other than my Rainbows. This place is nothing fancy, mind you-we're talking shoes hanging from cork on the outside of the building and signs that say ''High fashion shoes.'' (Ways to know something is not ''high fashion:'' when it calls itself that. Food equivalent: A gourmet restaurant doesn't have pictures of its food on the menu. My point is made.) Anyway, I walked down into the store and saw plenty of people trying on shoes. Outside the store, there had been signs in Italian and in English that said ''Please do not touch the shoes on the outside of the building.'' Well, there were no signs indicating anything about these shoes INSIDE the building. However, the moment I strapped the sandals on my feet, a man started yelling at me (in Italian, of course, so my simple American mind had no idea what was going on) and CHARGING toward me like a bull before he literally YANKED the shoes off my feet. Terrifying!!! And it actually took me a moment to realize that it was the store owner-apparently I was supposed to ask permission to try on the shoes. (Side note: the Merona sandals I got from Target for 19 bucks were more high-quality than anything in this store. It's not like I was test driving a Rolls Royce without permission.) For a moment I actually thought it might be someone robbing the store-not of money, but of shoes, and that the robber was, for some reason, lurching for my shoes first, perhaps as a scare tactic, rather than taking any of the hundreds of boxes lining the walls. But no. It was the store owner, indicating to me VERY adamantly that the shoes were not to be tried on (in Italian, but I got the gist.)

Lesson learned.