And the streets were lined with chocolate

During the Euro Chocolate festival the streets of the city of Perugia were filled with stands selling chocolate in every form you can think of. I went to the festival with some of the other girls in my program along with a few thousand other people. The festival was packed, especially around the stands handing out free chocolate. In the middle of the street there were a string of huge chocolate carvings and as the sculptors carved off chunks they were handed out to the crowd. I unfortunately didn’t manage to get some of the shavings as I reached the front of the crowd just in time for their lunch break.

After walking around for a while we decided to grab some food not made of chocolate for lunch. We stood in the longest line ever to get a kebab, which are surprisingly common in Italy. After finally getting our lunch we wandered around some more and tried to find something to do. There were so many different kinds of chocolate and it was incorporated into everything including pasta, but here are only so many chocolate stands you can look at. There were a lot less free samples than I anticipated but I did have some amazing chocolate with chili powder in it. It sounds gross but really it was awesome and had a little kick.

While trying to get away from the crowds for a little we ended up just wandering randomly around Perugia and ran into some of Molly’s friends from school. We had a good chat and got some suggestions for dinner. It was a little colder than we expected so we decided to eat an early dinner and then head toward the bus station. We waited around at the bus station for about an hour and it was getting pretty close to the bus time but yet we were the only people there. We discovered that because it was Sunday the bus didn’t pick us up at the place it dropped us off so we ran onto a local but that took us to the train station. We thought we were cutting it close and when we arrived and saw no bus we got a little scared, but the bus was just late. The bus left almost 45 minutes late, but the driver was clipping down the road at a pretty good pace and we ended up back in Siena at about the same time as expected.

Life

The past few weeks have been rather uneventful and I’ve been spending a lot more time is Siena settling into a regular pattern of life.

I love my roommates and we've been spending a lot of time together and with the other people in our program. We've been branching out too and meeting new people although they probably think I'm a mute as I don't speak much in Italian. I understand more than I can say, but only if they don't talk super fast.

We’ve met some of our apartment neighbors including the little old man who lives at the end of the hall. I always see him as I am leaving in the morning or coming in at night. He is always dressed up with a blazer and tie and his shiny white hair slicked back. We say hello and sometimes have a little conversation. Sometimes he’s with his wife who reminds me of my little old Italian great aunts. Anyway Yesterday afternoon Julia and I were reading and we heard the door buzz and were a little surprised since neither of us was expecting anyone. Julia answered the door to see the older man standing there smiling with a package. It was for our roommate Gio, but since we don’t have mail boxes in the building the postman left it on the floor near the boxes. Our neighbor took it in and figured out it must belong to us and kindly delivered it to our door. There’s nothing like the kindness of a near stranger to brighten your day.

We’ve been in regular classes for three weeks now and the culture shock of the academic change has worn off. Teachers here don’t think that grades are important and the passing is all that matters, but IES doesn’t share the same theory and so we have requirements including a research paper for every class. Also we spend a lot of time in class talking about random things like travel and festivals, which may be because we have such small classes but I like it. I’m taking a class on Dante, Italian, history/anthropology of Siena and an Economics of the EU. My Dante professor is really nice but we literally spend most of the class listening to him read his lecture notes word for word out loud. Hopefully this will end soon and we will get onto actually reading and analyzing, which will be less mind numbing. My Italian is ok in class but studying is proving to be difficult as our book is literally a workbook without the grammar rules. Our professor is really into learning the language first by listening and speaking and then learning the grammar, which I feel is more difficult, especially when the tests are all grammar. My history/anthropology class is my favorite since it’s mostly discussion and actually interesting. The professor is really excited about the class, so much so that sometimes she gets off topic for about 15 minutes just answering a simple question and then forgets what the question was. The econ class started off with a brief history of Europe lesson for 2 weeks which was a little boring and repetitive. Now we have moved onto the actual econ section but we’re not past the intro so we’ll see how that turns out. So far it’s a little troublesome as our professor has a difficult time translating some of the technical terms but I’m sure it’ll work out.

Tomorrow begins a few weeks of scattered trips including the Eurochocolate festival, Milan and Barcelona. I’ll try and keep you posted.

Taylor's Visit

Sorry I’ve been a little lazy with blog updates.

Two weekends ago Taylor came from Spain to visit me!! I picked him up at the train station Friday night and it was so nice to know that I got 2 whole days just to hang around with him. We went back to my apartment to meet my lovely roommates and have some dinner. I decided to show off my new culinary skills by making some veal picatta. Working in our closet size kitchen with more than one person is a little troublesome but we managed and turned out a fabulous dinner. After a lovely meal and conversation we headed out to our newly discovered local hang out, the Barron Rosso. Siena doesn’t have much nightlife but this place is usually pretty cool. So we grabbed a table in the back and chatted until the live band started up, a cover band with an interesting set list at one point transitioning Pearl Jam to Otis Redding . The odd choices made “guess the song” a fun game to play. I won surprising everyone with my random music knowledge.

Saturday we decided to be tourist in Siena and spend the day meandering around town without a real plan. We went to the Duomo as our first stop. I said before I don’t really like visiting churches but the Duomo in Siena is just beautiful! Now is also the time of year when they uncover the floors, which are amazing. There are many different inlayed marble designs in different place in the floor, some relating to bible passages and some relating to Siena. We spent quite a while in the Duomo. After leaving we took our time walking back to the apartment to get lunch. It was really neat to walk around with someone who doesn’t walk on these streets everyday it made me notice things that I missed. After some lunch we walked some more and ended up getting some gelato and basking in the sun in the Campo. It was a wonderful aimless and relaxing day.

Sunday we thought that a day trip to local hill town sounded like a great idea. After deciphering the bus schedule it looked like there was a direct bus to San Gimignano which is a beautiful little town about an hour away. We arrived at the bus station but there was no bus to San Gimignano at the specified time, so we asked a driver and he said his bus was going there we just had to change in Poggibonsi. I was confused but we hopped on and made the transfer and arrived in San Gimignano easy peasy. After arriving we spent some time exploring, and we walked up to the remains of a castle which was really neat and even had a few musicians playing medieval music too to add to the atmosphere. After walking back through an olive grove we decided to climb up the tall bell tower in the middle of town. The view from the top was just beautiful and definitely worth the climb and euros. After some more aimless wandering we decided to catch the bus back.

The first bad sign about our bus trip back was that the direct bus that was supposed to arrive at 3:30 didn’t come, then we thought that a bus to Poggibonsi should arrive soon, but no. We finally got on the bus at 4:25 thinking it would just be another easy transfer and we would be back in Siena in no time, wrong again. We arrived in Poggibonsi late and after taking quite some time to figure which of the 5 different schedules applied on Sunday we discovered we had missed the bus to Siena by about 2 minutes and the next bus was not for 2 hours. Usually being in a Tuscan city for 2 hours wouldn’t be so bad but Poggibonsi happens to be the ugliest city in Tuscany, I was told this is because it was bombed during WWII and lost all its old charm then. On a side note the last time I got stuck in Poggibonsi also happened to be while trying to reach San Gimignano when I came with my family and the Flo’s. We got turned around in a traffic circle and lost in Poggibonsi for about 45 minutes. How fitting that I get stuck here again. Finally it was getting close to the time the bust was supposed to arrive, but it was late of course but all I could think was that Taylor and I would be stranded in Poggibonsi. The bus arrived at last 15 minutes late and packed to the brim, but there was just enough room for us and our fellow Siena-San Gimignano travelers. Arriving back in Siena was such a relief and I learned a valuable lesson, don’t try and take the bus on Sundays.

Overall it was a fabulous weekend with so many great little places and views and moments. Even if Siena can seem boring, I really do love where I live. Having Taylor here was amazing and I’m so glad that he made the trip.