È stato un piacere: Saying "So Long"

In a glorious culinary culmination of our time together, Claudia and I at last cooked the pumpkin pie we’d been discussing since Thanksgiving, when we’d been unable to locate a pumpkin. We topped the pie with walnuts and pistachio (the latter for a bit of Sicilian flair), mascarpone, and fior di latte gelato. This was Claudia’s first taste of this autumnal delight. It was absolutely magnificent and allowed me to finally feel as though Christmas had arrived. Our masterpiece disappeared from the kitchen quite quickly: apparently Italians can also appreciate some American cuisine.

Later that night, Claudia, Fabrizio, Giovanni, and I went to Palermo’s first “Facebook Party.” The purpose of these parties is somewhat beyond me, but nearly every major city in Italy has had one within the past few weeks. It sounds to me like saying, “Well, why don’t we have a party and just invite everyone between the ages of 15 and 30?” but Italians seem to love the concept. They all get together, drink wine, and stand around talking for ages while a DJ blasts music to which few people dance. In Italy, young people don’t dance like they do in the US. Here, talking is the thing to do at parties. Facebook, as I mentioned in an entry a few months ago, is one of the newest crazes to hit Italy and has been fully embraced. I am amazed how long young Italians can discuss who’s posted new photos, added an application, or joined another Facebook cause. It seems to me like getting together with friends to discuss recent emails, spam filters, and the latest stupid forward going around. Nonetheless, I let myself enjoy my last night out with Claudia as roommates.

As I stood next to Claudia at the bus stop this morning, I realized my chest was starting to hurt so I tried readjusting my luggage strap, but when the airport shuttle arrived I understood what I’d been feeling: I could hardly bear saying goodbye. As I watched Claudia and her father turn their backs through the maddeningly tinted windows that prevented any final waving goodbye, I found tears streaming down my cheeks. As I said to Claudia with our final hug, È stato un piacere: It’s been a pleasure.

“So what now? It's plain to see we're over,
And I hate when things are over,
When so much is left undone” –Deep Blue Something, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Buon Natale e Tanti Auguri!

Christmas finally arrived and I celebrated in Italian style. Claudia’s family and I shared a full course meal, with appetizers, entrees, first courses, second courses, side dishes, fruit with mascarpone, and desserts. There was more food readily available than any of us could consume, and Claudia’s mother even provided us all with menus to prepare us for the gustatory delights she had in store.

Though Claudia and her cousins (and there weren’t many of them despite our stereotypes of Italian families) are all in their late twenties or thirties, none of them were married, none were in long-term relationships, and none had children or plans for them in the near future. It seemed so strange to me. At home, my older cousins and I all date people and often bring them along to family parties on the holidays. Though just in our young twenties, all of us have graduations in our near futures and general ideas for careers not too far ahead. With an average Italian college graduation age in the late twenties, I suppose Claudia and her cousins should not have surprised me. The vast majority of Claudia’s high school friends are not married or engaged, and the only one with a child had caused a scandal when she became pregnant during her final year in high school. I have heard that the birth rate in Italy is negative and now it seems much more understandable. The culture really seems to hold young people in an awkward sort of limbo for longer than is biologically advantageous or advisable.

Linguistically, I was thoroughly amused to realize that in Italian, it is not only acceptable but normal to refer to your aunt or uncle as just “Aunt” or “Uncle.” In fact, no one addresses aunts or uncles as Aunt/Uncle [insert name here]. And in Italian, it doesn’t sound fresh in front of one’s own grandmother to say things like, “the grandma wants the salt” or “the grandma needs a knife.” Even if no one else appreciated it, I still had to hold in a laugh or two. Sometimes things are just lost in translation.

The linguistic mélange that has become my modus operandi

Sometimes it’s good to have some ex-patriate friends, even if not from the same country, most especially those who share your native language. It's great to know someone who can really understand certain experiences, like being told in Italian, "My how you are big!" (the adjectives big and small are used to refer to height and not weight) and realizing for the first time that you’re starting to get rusty in your native language. While chatting with my Austrian friends, I kept on forgetting English words or finding myself uncertain of the appropriate phrasing to the extent that they even teased me about it. Last week while preparing for my interview in Paris (which was conducted in English) I unintentionally began throwing in French vocabulary words with English pronunciation. Worse yet, I didn’t even realize until my mother caught my mistakes while I was practicing with her. I’ve also begun using strange phrasing such as, “Would you like to take a coffee with me?” and “I’m becoming habituated to this,” both of which are more or less direct translations from what one would say in Italian when trying to express these ideas. It’s good to know at times like this that no, I'm not completely crazy. Or at least, this is not an indication of whether or not I am.

My Italian Thanksgiving

Back in June, my Italian roommates began asking me about Thanksgiving. Any holiday focused primarily on food can’t be too off-putting for Italians. Finally, the time had come. Early this week, my roommate Claudia and I sat down in front of allrecipes.com and team-translated the following dishes:

• l’insalata con clementine, uve, noce, olio (salad with clementines, grapes, walnuts, and oil)
• il pane di zucca (pumpkin bread)
• il pane di banane, noce, e cioccolato (chocolate-chip banana walnut bread)
• il pane di mais (cornbread)
• il ripieno (stuffing)
• la salsa di mirtilli (cranberry sauce)
• il pure di patate
• il “pie” delle mele (apple pie... pie cannot really be translated since the closest word for it in Italian is torta, literally “cake”)

We found ourselves missing a few key dishes: il tacchino con il sugo della carne (turkey with gravy) and il “pie” della zucca (pumpkin pie), but in the end we had our Thanksgiving feast, albeit somewhat unconventional. There was quite a hubbub in the small kitchen as guests began filtering in at 9pm. (Having a Sicilian roommate means starting dinner at bizarre hours of the night.) We hurriedly finished preparing the last dishes, shouting back and forth in both English and Italian. The night brought together my Italian, British, and American friends. (Nina Chen and some of her NYU-London friends had flown down to Pisa that morning, and the British guest happens to be studying Italian literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore here in Pisa.) The evening was a satisfying mélange of confusion and joviality, but I believe it was quite a success. As my British friend said afterward,

Grazie mille for a bellissima festa. I will always remember my first Thanksgiving. In Italy.

Obama Hits Italian News Stands

Translations

Left: The World Has Changed
President Obama enters history: "Let's reconstruct America together"

Right: The Lesson from America
Obama: "It's the proof that nothing is impossible"

"Siamo e saremo sempre gli Stati Uniti d’America" -Obama

The American elections have been all over the Italian headlines lately. At 2am (8pm EST), the Italian radio was already beginning to analyze state-by-state results, discussing their significance based upon each state's voting trends... and this was a popular music radio station, not even a news station.

On my way to work today, I got to hear segments of Obama's speech in Italian (before I even heard it in English!) on the radio. My smile stretched wide, my eyes welled up, and my heart felt like it would burst. After eight years of heartbreak, my faith in my nation has been restored.

"Siamo e saremo sempre gli Stati Uniti d’America,"
"We are, and always will be, the United States of America."
-Obama, Victory Speech, Nov. 4, 2008
Oh, yes, we are the United States of America. And I'm so proud to be American.

An Evening of Americana

After much anticipation, my friends and I began going through my American treats. The Starbucks mugs were an instant hit, though I’m not sure my friends actually understand they’re made to serve a purpose. Still, the novelty of the item seems to please them thoroughly. The Reese’s peanut butter cups were also met with approval. I brought them to explain why I named my orange cat Reese and to show my friends one of the many wonderful uses for peanut butter in the United States. Although I’m generally a health food junkie and don’t like soda, root beer is an exception. However, I’ve discovered that this is one of the only ways in which the European diet lets me down: root beer is not sold on this continent. Unable to resist the thought of a root beer float with real Italian vanilla gelato, I had to bring some soda back with me. Curious, my friends agreed to try it. They were forewarned that root beer might be an acquired taste. (I also brought some cream soda as an emergency back up, as this is another exclusively American soda but has a more generic, sweet taste.) They were not nearly as pleased with the root beer as I was, but interestingly enough, they all felt like they’d tasted it before. As the three Sicilians sat around the table, they sipped the beverage and threw out guesses as to what flavor it might have. They pretty quickly honed in on the medicine cabinet, but still couldn’t quite put their finger on it. Bemused, I eventually offered a suggestion I’d heard from another European I knew who’d recently tried root beer for the first time. That did the trick and pretty quickly, they figured it out. Apparently there’s some sort of mouthwash sold in Italy which tastes just like root beer. It’s too bad for them that the taste has been spoiled by a dental hygiene product, but personally I’m looking forward to figuring out just where I can purchase this mouthwash! After we’d finished off the dessert, we shared some children’s games with each other and somehow, one thing led to another and we stumbled across the perfect ritual for our fraternity. So we dimmed the lights, set the stage, and began our Pi Delta Pi initiation. Now it’s official: I have a real Italian (Greek) family.

As American as Apple Pie

When a student goes abroad, she should try her best to immerse herself within the culture, but as a true American, I seem to be succeeding in exporting my culture as much as I’m absorbing that of my host country. On Sunday, Claudia and I finally cooked our first apple pie or, using the rules of Italian phonetics, “ah-play pee-ay.” No worries about the cultural immersion, though: our apple pie was served with Italian gelato. The very next day, we cooked a delicious (and spicy!) American pumpkin soup. I’ve come to appreciate the importance of food in Italian culture and have been bonding with my Italian friends over our favorite classically American/Italian dishes. Claudia and I even both got new notebooks in which we’ve been jotting down words in each other’s language whenever we come to one of those how-do-you-say-this, circumlocution-and-sign-language moments.

All the Italian students are finally making it back from their summer vacations and so the social scene in Pisa is seeing its revival. Last night, I went to the movies in Italy for the first time. Italians, unlike most people, never watch films with subtitles, so I watched the Italian-dubbed Kung Fu Panda! I understood almost every word and felt very proud. Afterwards, we wandered around Pisa a bit, got the requisite gelato, and sometime after midnight but before the evening drew to a close we decided to form our own co-ed fraternity. Now I’ve even got my own Greek family overseas, the ΠΔΠs. Not only am I bringing my cuisine here, but I am even instructing my friends in the ways of Greek life. We’ve already selected

• our colors: blu (dark blue, the color of the night sky when the fraternity was born, representing our awareness of the present) and azzurro (light blue, the color of the sky in the morning to come, representing our hopes and dreams for the future)
• our flower: il fiore del fico d'india (the flower of a plant classically found in Sicily), and
• our open motto: Non c’è rosa senza spine (There isn’t a rose without a thorn)

Still in the works are our symbol, our secret initiation ritual, and the day of the week when we will be required to wear blue underpants. The ΠΔΠ t-shirts are the next on the list after that.

On a side note, I finally got my first ride on an Italian motorcycle this past weekend. It’s every bit as fun as it looks and then some!

I Biscotti Americani

Last night I discovered that Italians in general have not been introduced to the American concept of a cookie (biscotto, pl. biscotti). When Ramòn left his oatmeal (avena) here in Pisa, Claudia found it and asked me what could be done with it. I explained that the most normal things were either to eat it as a breakfast food or to make oatmeal cookies. This spawned the discovery of Italian deprivation. So tonight we bonded over another American speciality, spiced oatmeal raisin cookies, and discussed all the different American dishes we will be cooking come Thanksgiving. I've been studying a lot of Italian lately, and my vocabulary has extended enough such that we were actually able to chat for a couple of hours.

When in Italy, Just Smile and Don't Ask

Here are some interesting observations I hadn’t considered seriously until trying to prepare Anastasia for her arrival (tomorrow!!):

Should you use cash or credit cards? In Italy, cash is almost always preferred, especially in restaurants. I’m not so sure that Italians consider it much of a civic duty to be entirely honest when reporting revenue. Also, do not ever expect precise change when making a purchase. Italians do not enjoy using coins smaller than the 5 or even 10 cent piece. You don’t really need those pesky two- and one-cent coins weighing you down, anyway. Conveniently, if upon your arrival at the next register you find yourself a few cents shy of your purchase total, the cashiers aren’t too demanding. I suspect the change they never returned to the previous customer will probably cover their losses at the end of the day.

Should you arrive early for the trains or are they always running late? This is a bit of a tough one. To be safe, you should always arrive a few minutes early because you never know with the Italian trains. However, even when they leave late, things always seem to work out. My train leaving Naples was delayed by twenty minutes, but I was lucky I’d set my alarm 15 minutes before the scheduled arrival time before falling asleep: the train still managed to reach Rome ten minutes ahead of schedule.

Is there anything you should bring to wear? If you want to look Italian, you will not wear shorts or sneakers. Despite the sweltering heat, Italian women will go to great lengths to avoid a fashion faux pas. Besides the standard set of tight jeans, they can be spotted in skirts and dresses, but death before shorts unless, as my roommates explained, you are in a beach town, at which point the article becomes acceptable though still not often worn. Also, forget practicality when it comes to shoes. Sneakers might spare you all sorts of foot pain, but these women would rather sparkle in their gold and silver sandals, of which it seems every Italian woman owns at least a pair this season. Fortunately, it is possible to find trendy (mostly silver and gold) tennis shoes for those who would rather not sacrifice so much on the comfort or those, like me, who are wondering how the heck they could possibly survive a whole week of touring around Europe in those uncomfortable little sandals and ballerina flats.

Do you need a visa? Thank goodness, no, people spending under 90 days in Italy are spared the nightmare of Italian bureaucracy. To get my permission of stay, one set of finger prints, although digitalized, simply would not suffice. The two offices demanding the fingerprints couldn’t possibly email the files to each other or even walk a disk across the street since that’s how close together they’re situated. An appointment with the “Questura” must be scheduled weeks in advance, yet still the office will keep you waiting several hours after the appointed time. Despite the proximity of the offices asking for the fingerprints, each only opens for several hours a day, rendering a single day’s visit to both buildings impossible. Efficiency is not a part of the Italian psyche. Workers update each other on the minutia of their social lives between grabbing each of your fingers, either assuming you don’t actually understand the country’s language or figuring that you probably don’t have much better to do that to get a crash course in their personal lives. Anyone wishing to live in Italy must prove themselves patient and in possession of a strong sense of humor.

Thanks to FunDraw.com for the free clip art!

Dear Mr. Would-be Latin Lovers...

Please do not tell me your name and carina or uscire in the same breath. Preferably not even in the same conversation.

If I’m wearing shorts, this is because for once it’s just too damn hot to try to assimilate into the Italian culture and wear jeans or a skirt. However, I can now appreciate why Italian women don’t wear shorts. To clarify things, these shorts were not put on to impress or invite you.

If I refuse to take off my earbuds when you speak to me, this is not a good sign. If I eventually rip one out when you won’t shut up to tell you I don’t speak much Italian, this does not mean we should try again in another language.

Just because you think I look French (and perhaps have by now realized that I speak French or have a French name) does not mean I will have sex with you today, tonight, or even at all.

Do you really think it's a compliment to tell me I look too pretty to be a Biological Engineer? What's that even supposed to mean exactly?

If you’re thirty years old, I’m too young for you. If you’re older, don’t ask.

Look me in the eye. If you would have to stand on your toes to kiss me, don’t try.

Who the hell do you even think you’re asking out? You don’t know the first thing about me. I could be some crazy-psycho-killer-bitch who keeps ex-lovers’ dead bodies stashed away in my closet. But seriously, if the only reason you want to take me out is because you think I'm cute, I'm not biting.

Asking for my zodiac sign will not win you points. How dumb do you think I am?

If all else fails, you do not have permission to grab, smack, or in any way touch my ass, thank you very much.

Love,
Me

Free Original Clipart at Designed to a T

An American Breakfast for our Italian Friends

Apparently American cuisine has a reason to boast: breakfast. It turns out that my roommates had never tasted French toast (Hmm, maybe this is French? But even if so, I imagine it's been sufficiently Americanized) and the concept of peppers in a meal before noon sounded absolutely absurd to them. Yesterday evening, Ramòn and I got together to solve these problems. I prepared French toast (using Italian bread, of course) and Ramòn cooked scrambled eggs with ham, onions, and peppers. Claudia, one of my roommates, joined in the kitchen festivities by cooking us a special kind of lasagna prepared with unleavened Sardinian bread and lots of cheese. She also made a cake, as usual.

Claudia, Enrica (the roommate who actually shares my room), Danilo (Claudia’s friend), Ramòn, and I all ate together at 9pm. Our Italian friends, though slightly disturbed by placing fruit, lasagna, and scrambled eggs on the same plate at the same time, were impressed by the American food! As we were beginning dessert a couple of hours later, a few more of Claudia’s friends came over to say goodbye. They won’t be coming back from vacation until mid to late September. Stepping outside together, I learned that my apartment actually has both a see-saw and a Disneyland-tea-cup-style spinner! Last night, the basic joys of a children's playground surpassed all language barriers.

Framing the World a Bit Differently

I've been in Italy a little more than a month and I'm beginning to settle in. The cultural differences here are a bit like looking at the world through a new pair of glasses. The way we view things is still mostly the same, but these glasses don't sit quite the same way; they frame the world a bit differently, and maybe the lenses take a different tint when standing in the sun. Here is a collection of some of the most striking differences I've noticed between the US and Italy.

Hitting the books

Right now we're wrapping up a two-month period for the students of the University of Pisa. When they return, they’ll have to deal with one more month of exams in September before the school year picks up again. Interestingly, there is never a set date or time when students must take their finals. They choose any time in June, July, or September. Students can even elect to take an exam a year or more after they took their course! Exams are generally oral though they can also include a written component.

During their academic year, Italian students spend a lot more time in class than us. I debated educational methods with an Italian biomedical engineer: though I can’t imagine successfully synthesizing my engineering lessons without the p-sets that teach me how to apply what’s been taught in class, he was entirely of the opinion that in-class discussion is the optimal way to acquire an engineering education. Italian students do not have to deal with weekly p-sets, papers, or lovely lab reports. The concept, all too familiar at MIT, of all-nighters and sleep deprivation is completely foreign to them (literally!).

The importance of eating well

Here, a significant portion of daily life is devoted to food. Dinner alone can easily take a three-hour bite out of the evening. Whether their interest in eating led to the wonderful cuisine, or the cuisine to the interest, the stereotype holds: everything tastes better in Italy. Still, Italians have some habits that are tough to get used to. Take the meal times: Lunch does not start before 1pm, no matter how much my stomach might be rumbling by noon. Dinner often won’t get underway until 9pm (and when you have to commit three hours to the meal but still wake up at 6am, you may need to pre-game it with a late afternoon siesta). Italians also don’t load one plate with everything they intend to eat. They take their antipasto, then a first course, a second course, and finally coffee—which Italians drink in shot glasses at any time, day or night— and a dessert… which brings us to one of my favorite topics: Italian gelato. Words escape me. So far, these flavors have been the most memorable:

• Coco (coconut… one of my 2 favorite flavors for anything, ever and it’s so common here… Sadly, Italians have yet to be introduced to my other favorite flavor: pumpkin)
• Pompelmo (grapefruit)
• Frutti di bosco (mixed berries, an Italian specialty from what I gather)
• Bacio (chocolate hazelnut, literally “kiss”)
• Pignoli (pine nut)
• Bailey’s

What they’re missing:

1. Root beer—and consequently root beer floats

2. Fresh fruit juice. This one is beyond me. How could people with such a commitment to good food not sell any form of not-from-concentrate orange juice with pulp in a local supermarket?

3. Bagels. Despite all the amazing bread to be found in Italy, this specialty is entirely missing. The classically New York-style Jewish delis that I so love are nowhere to be found.

4. Peanut butter. Actually, you can find this in the local supermarket, but they only sell one brand and it’s only available in creamy. Furthermore, my roommates had never heard of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (prompting my youtube search of the peanut butter jelly time song. Good times.) This also means this culture has been deprived of my daily sustenance: peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I’ve been trying to adopt more Italian eating habits (later meals, different diet), but cutting these out of my routine has been a real sacrifice.

Getting from Point A to Point B

Italian streets just aren’t designed for modern vehicles. At least, not in the American sense. Vespas are as popular here as the stereotypes portray them to be, and smart cars are all the rage. The public transportation system in Pisa is not amazing—there’s no subway here—but the buses run regularly enough and are always fairly full. Sometimes a bus driver forgets to close the doors after a stop, or the bus decides to stop closing the doors on its own. It's always a funny surprise to be seated, or better yet standing, next to an open door and suddenly realize that you're no longer at a stand-still. Renting a car is also a possibility—one I may even look into after my international driver’s license is delivered next week!—but first, the challenge: in Italy, people only drive stick-shift. Fortunately, my lab mentor has offered to help me. And finally, one last tidbit: Who rides a bike in Italy? Answer: everyone. Men in suits, ladies in heels, young kids, old people, yes, anyone and everyone.

Smoking: a national past-time

So we’ve all heard Europeans smoke more, okay. But the dedication some Italians show to their addiction is really quite remarkable. I’ve seen Italians who step out of a restaurant between courses to light up, who lean out of trains when they stop at a station to get in a few puffs, and even some who ride their bikes one-handedly in order to get in their morning cigarette on the way to work. I’m impressed.

Working to live instead of living to work

Perhaps the most surprising element of life here in Italy is the amount of vacation and time off. As my lab mentor told me, in August, Italy closes. Yes, apart from the tourism industry, the country shuts down. We ran out of 10ml pipettes: too bad, the Italian company selling them won’t make any more shipments until September. As a college student, of course I assumed this vacation concept didn’t apply to me. But no, I was told I too am expected to take my two to three weeks of vacation. In fact, despite my protests, I cannot enter a laboratory during the week of Monday, August 11 through Friday, August 15. (August 15 is Ferragosto, the Italian national holiday.)

Weekends and evenings are also fairly sacred. There is no such thing as returning to lab to finish an experiment after dinner, and with the exception of some Saturday mornings, no one will work during the weekend. Of course this lifestyle could end up growing on me. I’ve had a lot more time for reading, picking up some side hobbies, and exploring Italy on weekends. Given that I recently learned my roommate owns a sewing machine, I’m also now on the hunt for a really good fabric store… this may require a trip to Milan sometime soon…

My First Sagra!

What is a sagra, you ask? According to about.com, a sagra is defined as "a local fair, usually a celebration of the bounties of the earth." And I just returned home from a sagra celebrating the food of Sardinia. I went to this sagra with a large group of people from my lab. The sagra was held out in the country, right alongside a giant sunflower field. By 9pm, I really had no idea quite what to order (and was so hungry I could hardly think straight! How do these Italians all eat so late?), but as I've never tasted a kind of fish I didn't like, I figured I'd be safe with that. While the fish was indeed delicious, I'd been expecting a hunk of meat, not a whole fish still closely resembling the animal it recently was! I've also learned that patience is a virtue. Italians don't just order a meal. They order their appetizers... then their first plate... then their second plate... then a dessert... then coffee and after-dinner liquer. And in between each course, there is lots of time for chatting. If you make the mistake of only ordering a second plate, you may find yourself going crazy in the meantime. But live and learn, right?

Independence Day as an Expatriate

For the Fourth of July, my Pisan MIT friends and I decided to share a bit of American culture with my Italian roommate Claudia (in the photo) and her friends. We bought burgers, sausages, and watermelon. As the meat sizzled, I bit into a juicy slice of watermelon and a couple of cold beers were cracked open: I felt truly American. However, as somehow striving for perfectly authentic American cuisine while living in Italy didn’t sound like the best idea, the burger and sausage buns were sliced from loaves of thick Italian bread.

Chris, Ramòn, and I were excited to realize that Camp Darby, the largest US military base outside of the US (and only a few kilometers from the center of Pisa, on the Mediterranean), would be open to the public to enjoy fireworks and celebrate our Independence Day! Sadly, the winds were so strong that no fireworks could be released. I was heartbroken, but assuaged by the feeling of the sand between my toes. Bringing back memories of my days in track and field (I was a triple and long jumper), pretty soon I had an irresistible urge to slip off my flip flops and run freely. At the water's edge, I came to an incredible realization: the Mediterranean is very warm! I starting laughing and running through the water as the wind blew through my hair. I ran until I could hardly breathe. Then I stopped and just stood there staring out into the dark waters for a long time. (Of course, from time to time I’d get hit by a particularly large wave, burst into laughter, and have to splash around a bit.) I've never felt such wonderfully warm sea water in the cool evening air. Last night while celebrating American independence, I fell in love with my Italian life.

How to Practice Speaking Italian

Happy to no longer be homeless (living from a hostel), I moved into my new apartment last week on Monday (June 23) (see the photo taken from my front door?!). Finding this apartment was quite possibly one of the best things that happened to me since arriving. I am living with three students from the University of Pisa: Claudia, studying history; Alessandro, studying Earth Sciences; and Enrica, my roommate, finishing her thesis in literature. These three people couldn’t be friendlier. The very day I moved, they kept me up late chatting and swapping stories despite my very limited Italian. (Did I mention they don’t really speak English? Yikes!) We kept an online English-Italian dictionary open to help us out, but it wasn't too difficult and I had a very fun evening. Since then, we have shared plenty of dinners together. They take me out with their friends, show me around the city, and offer me an infinite reserve of patience as I’m still learning Italian.

I’ve been thoroughly impressed by the kindness all of the Italian students have shown me since I’ve arrived. I’ve also learned that a great way to practice my Italian is by letting it slip to an Italian that I am in “una confraternità” (a sorority). This works like a charm. It consistently sparks interest and prompts a certain standard set of questions: What do you do in a sorority? Are you a cheerleader? How do you join a sorority? What is the name of your sorority? What does it mean? Oh, boy…

And you thought baseball was a classic sport…

My roommate and her friend took me out today to witness an annual tradition in Pisa, called “il gioco del ponte” (the game of the bridge). In this sport, squads from both sides of the Fiume Arno compete. The team from the north, Tramontana, and the team from the south, Mezzogiorno, each approach the bridge dressed in medieval garb. Following much pomp and formality, the two squads take their places on opposing sides of a giant sled. At the signal, the players begin to push until one team successfully forces the sled all the way to its opponent’s flag at one end of the bridge. The crowd didn’t get quite as riled as they might for a soccer game, but it was still an interesting event. Heck, I even got to see my team (Tramontana) win!