Ok, so again not anything that anyone would ever want to read, but this has become sort of a running joke between us. Ergo we’re sharing it.
Shopping List for Florence:
-Canned Tomatoes
-Black Pepper
-Lemon Juice
-A Mirror
-Lactaid (nonexistent thus far)
-Cereal (all in Italian except for Frosty Flakys, with a semi-distorted Tony the Tiger lewdly giving the onlooker a saucy wink)
-An extremely large/sharp knife
This has also been our shopping list for the past four days. As in, we keep planning to do these things every day (because literally our class schedule is M/W 4:15-6:15 pm and Tu/Th 11:30 am-1:55 pm and 4:15-6:15 pm, the lightest thing since Carrot Top’s first period) and never get to because we keep waking up at like noon or one in the afternoon. Call it jetlag if you want to, but at this point it’s probably just us being retarded. We keep apparently sleeping through our alarms… both of them. Though it might be attributable to the fact that we keep going to bed between 3 and 4 in the morning.
Italian class is cool as well as one of the least enrolled in classes in our program, apparently (so many people are all, “Meh, not really necessary”… we’re IN ITALY and speaking English slower and louder doesn’t translate well!). Our professoressa refuses to speak to us in English and she’s absolutely adorable for it, chuckling when trying to convey the meaning of gnoma through hand gestures (at this point we’re all guessing “miniature man”, “bigfoot”, “food?”), when finally some genius in the front guesses, wait for it… gnome. We’re all idiots. It’s cool though. We’re both learning dirty Italian at the moment as well (courtesy of a Mr. Parker) and we think we’ll have the entire language down by next Tuesday.
Other discoveries/comments. We didn’t know what lasagna’s true potential was until dinner Monday night. Holy guacamole, people. It’s a beautiful thing. Paper’s still longer (Viraj, we’re bringing back a ton for you). Toilet’s still flush like a dream. Heat is a non-existent concept in our apartment, and they need to discover water pressure (though, to be fair, the last part is due to the fact that Italians literally import ALL of their utilities).
As for the cultural differences, men stare a lot, seem to know that we’re American (can’t fathom why since we’re so fluent), we’re learning to say “I’m pregnant” in Italian for when we go out dancing at clubs to keep the greasy ones at bay, and tea doesn’t really exist (neither do the letters j, k, x, y, or w, in case you were wondering).
Interesting discovery: the people here are all so beautiful and perfectly presentable at all times, but they’re obvious about being obsessed with image. We were in a coffee shop yesterday and one man literally spent about 6 minutes in front of the mirror just adjusting his scarf, shirt and hair placement – they don’t care that people know/see their obsession with self-image. It’s kind of refreshing in comparison to Americans who only ever obsess with beauty and image and dieting and presentation behind closed doors really… when was the last time you saw an American man blatantly posing for himself in a public mirror?
In other news, Gabi has already broken her camera – it’s a world record, Aviya misses peanut butter – neither of our phones work and there was one point where we were literally laying against the farthest wall in our apartment attempting to pick up the neighbor’s wifi (our internet is moody). We’re both signed up for a cooking class (two actually) at one of the top culinary institutes in Italy… SO EXCITING! One’s actually tonight right after our Italian class, so, hopefully we’ll put up pictures. Also, tomorrow we’re going to the Uffizi! (translation: Louvre-status museum )
We’re planning out all of our weekends of traveling and have so far found that Europe’s not actually that small and we really can’t go everywhere in 10-15 weekends… sad. But we are going as many places in Italy as possible, stopping in in Hungary, cruising over to Spain, and maybe hitting the entirety of northern and western Europe. Maybe Egypt… civil war anyone? (Just kidding, mom).
We’re going to sign out now, but we just wanted to let you all know that we still make really weird noises all the time instead of conversing, that we love and miss you all and that we’re going to a chocolate festival on Friday (CHOCOLATE!). Be jealous.
Love,
Gaviyella
