Ciao or Chow?

The above is a sunset view of Amelia, my little Italian home. This is the view on our way to the outdoor bar we hang out at (blog to follow).

So across the street from my stairs there is what looks to be a small bar/pizzeria. One night Lauren and I did not feel like trekking up the monstrous hill to go to our favorite pizzeria, so we hesitantly decided to try this place. We got a classmate of ours, Catherine, to join us on our culinary adventure.

Every dinner in Italy is a culinary adventure. They take (on average) about 4 hours start to finish. Sometimes menu's aren't provided, the chef just starts talking to you (which isn't a good thing as we just started our Italian lessons yesterday) and you fumble your way through ordering dinner. The only good thing is that EVERYTHING you order in Italy turns out yummy. I have yet to have something I did not like, and I have ventured well beyond my normal culinary borders. For instance, lunch yesterday was polenta with wild boar ragu. Sounds weird, tastes fantastic.

Ok, so back to trying the new pizzeria. We walked in and the fun started immediately. You apparently have to choose between the pizzeria menu and the restaurant menu, we choose the pizza menu. Right after being shown to the table the waitress asked us if we wanted antipasto, we said sure. (Side note: NEVER go to a restaurant in Italy hungry. It will take about an hour to get your appetizer, another hour or so to get your meal, etc. You get ravenous and angry if you didn't eat ahead of time.) After getting the antipasto we made sure to point out ONE antipasto for the three of us to share... or so we thought. THIS is what was brought to our table:

Apparently she thought we meant one antipasto for each of us, she brought three. We can't imagine what she was thinking, but we also think she must have thought we were crazy. The language barrier is killing us. Here is the receipt for our mistake, 30E for antipasto. Usually dinners are pretty cheap, 5E for a pizza. Lesson learned.

Speaking of language lessons, we started our Italian lessons yesterday and I am fumbling through them. I am hoping to get better over time. My main issue is that EVERYONE lied when they said French would help you learn Italian, lies all lies. French completely kills you when you try to learn Italian, mainly pronunciation. I read the words like I do French words, and that does not work. Oh well, hopefully very soon I will get the hang of it. :-)

Ok... so I started working on this blog because I thought I had already posted by Rome blog, but I didn't. One day you might get like 4 blogs so I can catch up. :-) I hope you don't mind.

Robin Hood and Markets

So, I finally have my own access card, so while I am at school I have internet. It is rumored that people have appealed to our landlord to get wireless in the building, so I am crossing my fingers. Also, the head of our program was on site today and realized how messed up the internet is, so he is going to look into an entirely new system for us. 

In the meantime some stories for you to enjoy.

So Sunday morning I woke up, got out of bed and started my morning ritual of opening my terrace blinds and then my terrace door to get some air. Normally this is a very uneventful thing, however this Sunday I opened my blinds to this....

Now, the motorcycle is not what threw me off... look beyond... in the distance... is that a man in tights and medieval garb with a bow and arrow? Yes, yes it is. Apparently in conjunction with the wine festival they had an archery competition. I have found that Italian males aged 0-80 love wearing tights. Ahh... welcome to Amelia.

Now... I have sorta gotten the hang of shopping. My first picture is to prove that Barilla is the choice that Italians make.  

I found an 8 pack of yogurt at the store, some celery at the market and some left overs from Pizza & Co. (where, coincidentally I mooed like a cow to confirm the kind of meat they were trying to sell us).

Apples, carrots, tomatoes from the coop. Ok... buying vegetables in Italy. It just does not make sense. You are NOT supposed to touch the vegetables, you have to put on a glove. Then you have to get the bin number, weigh it, print out a label and move onto the next one. :-) Hence on my first day here I bought a family sized bag of apples.
All my fruits from the market. They are FANTASTIC!!!
Ok... class is starting again. Off I go to learn about art forgery.

The Looking Glass

It looks as though it may be a while before I actually get the opportunity and bandwidth to load my videos, so I am going to try some photos. First, a little background on how I do the blogs, or how I try to do the blogs.

 

At school internet is the most precious commodity and currently only three people can access the wireless at a time. In Italy you don’t just get a universal password and then log on, oh no that would be waaaaaay too easy. In Italy (more particularly in Amelia) you have to get this personalized random log-in and password that comes on this credit card looking item. The 20 cards that my school ordered a while ago need to travel from a town that is about an hour away, sadly we have no idea when they will actually arrive. So in the meantime we all share the log-in’s and it very much limits the amount of time I can sit online.

 

In order to get around the time constraint I have decided to start typing the blog the night ahead and then just posting it when I arrive at school and can get my hands on an access card.  Hopefully this will work much better and I can update you a bit more often!

 

I have a list of things I want to fill you in on (such as the fieldtrip to Rome, the wine festival, the flag throwers and drummers that practice outside my window at midnight, etc) however I am going to start with my apartment in pictures. Again… I really hope the pictures make it online!

This is the view from my front door. Now don’t be fooled, this is not an Ikea catalogue, it is my apartment. You are surprised aren’t you? You were expecting ruins? Me too! I have been very pleasantly surprised. The monstrosity in the majority of the picture is my drying table. Oh yeah, we do things old school over here! I wash my clothes then I have to hang/drape them to dry. I moved it inside because it was starting to look a bit rainy outside.

Moving on, this is my shelving system. I took the liberty of printing out some of my family and friends (you might recognize yourself) and buying some cardboard frames so that I could see your smiling faces!

 

Next, in no particular order, you have my bed, my bathroom, my bedroom with the door to my terrace and bathroom and a shot of my wardrobe/closet.

 

The next series are photos I have taken either of my terrace or of the view from my terrace. This one is of my terrace.

 

Then you have Bar Leonardi. In Italy, bar does not necessarily mean drinking bar it is more like a café. Every morning I walk down and order a caffe latte… Starbucks wishes they could make a caffe latte like this! Bar Leonardi is also quite the hangout for Italians of all ages, all of the ages seem to shy away from going to bed early so I typically have lots of people out there until about 3am. Additionally this is pretty much the intersection of the two main roads in Amelia, so I get lots of fun motorcycle revving to wake me up in the morning.

 

Next you have the church (with the belltower and clock). The belltower chimes every hour and every half hour. I love the bells!

 

The white illuminated archway is the Porta Romana. There are only 4 doors into the Old City and this is the main one. I walk through this everyday to get to class.

 

Speaking of class, the white building here is the archaeological museum. My classes are held in the city library, which is behind this building.

 

Ok… I have to go to bed. More later! Ciao!

My Apartment

Buon giorno! Simply because I love you guys so much, I am back at school an hour early to get a spot on the internet! :-) Today I am posting a video of my apartment (Appartamento), and tomorrow (or Sunday) you will get a video of my walk to school.

Tomorrow we have a field trip to Rome, so we won't actually be in class. How amazing is that? A field trip to Rome!! :-)

About my appartamento... apparently on July 15th I will be moving into a new one in my building, but on the other side. Again, the charm of Italian life. However, apparently the other one is larger, has a washer (which this one ended up not having) and a terrace. So besides the annoyance of packing an unpacking, I am pretty happy with the decision.

I love Italy, and Amelia in particular. It's just different and wonderful. The people here are so kind and so friendly!

For example, last night I forgot to bring my camera to the flag throwers and our Welcome Party from the town of Amelia, but I am going to borrow one of the other girls videos so you can all see.

Well I am going to have to go so someone else can get on the computers!! :-)

**video to come shortly... internet problems!

Ciao!

Hello all!! I have arrived. Well, actually I arrived on Monday, but internet access is very limited at the moment. We are supposed to get cards with passwords and such on them, but it hasn't happened yet, so this is my first 5 minutes on the internet since arrival. Our program organizers keep telling us that Italy focuses on charm over convenience... we are starting to get a little sick of the charm. :-)

A few things to fill you in on, then off to class, but I promise to have a better blog WITH photos soon. (pardon the lack of good punctuation and grammar)

1) My apartment is like I stepped into an Ikea catalogue... in fact my apartment came with a stack of Ikea manuals, so I suppose it is like a living catalogue. It is Amazingly modern. So there is no air conditioning, but A) it's chilly here now, and when I wake up in the morning I am freezing. B) they build there buildings out of stone, with tile floors, so they are colder to begin with. I know I may change my mind on that in the actual summer months (it is still considered Spring here).

2) Grocery shopping is so hard myself and some of the other girls go once a day just to try to figure it out. There are NO American brands at all, so you can't even go to a brand you know and then try to figure out which one you want. They have NO sliced turkey or chicken (aka lunch meats). And buying vegetables... well that deserves it's own post. 

3) This town is SO STEEP my calves are killing me. I fear I am going to have gladiator legs when I return (something not so desirable on a lady).

4) The Gelato is amazing... as are the cappuccinos... and pizza.

5) School is great and the other students are really nice.

6) Tonight the town officially welcomes us with flag throwers, wine, dinner cooked by the local ladies, etc. Again, that I will cover in another blog.

I miss you all!! I hope you are all doing well. I hope to have better internet access by this weekend, so I will start answering e-mails then!

Love ya!

Katie

A Fortnight Away

When I signed onto facebook today I saw that my "moving to italy" countdown has hit 14 days, and oddly enough my brain immediately translated that into a fortnight. I say oddly enough because I was not aware that I knew what a fortnight was. After thinking about it, I thought that maybe my brain may have been guessing so I decided to look up a fortnight; then while I was looking that up I started wondering how much a score was (as in "Four score and seven years ago") so I looked that up too. For your education, a fortnight is 14 days, and a score is 20 years. For those of you that remember that from school, I applaud your memory! :-)

There you have it, I have a fortnight to finish getting ready to move to another country. Some of the things I have left to do: sign up for travel medical insurance, order currency (to have when I land to pay my rent), rent/buy my cellphone for Italy, find a reputable car company to pick me up from the airport and bring me to Amelia, figure out how to switch from Verizon to AT&T (since my contract with Verizon ends while I am gone).... and the list literally goes on and on.

So I think that maybe my brain converted the time so that it was still slightly ambiguous so I don't start to panic about getting things done. Thank you brain!

P.S. Pardon the digression at the beginning, and get ready for more... I do that pretty often.

Serendipity?

ser-en-dip-i-ty  [ser-uhn-dip-i-tee]
–noun
1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
2. good fortune; luck: the serendipity of getting the first job she applied for.

I am moving to Amelia, Italy on May 31st. Well technically I am boarding a plane on May 31st, and landing in Italy on June 1st, so I suppose I am moving to Amelia, Italy on June 1st. So how has this all come to be? We shall start at the beginning (all you Sound of Music fans… STOP SINGING!!).

When I was in undergrad I majored in Art History, by far the most rewarding and interesting part of my educational life. Amidst all of the slides, paintings and sculptures I started to notice a running theme associated with all of the things I found interesting; I was always drawn to the items that had been lost, looted, stolen, destroyed, etc. This led me to contemplate going to law school in order to pursue this interest even more, but I soon realized that the area I wanted to focus on was not the law so much as the art and history. So I graduated with a BA in Art History, kissed my art dreams goodbye and got a MBA.

Lucky for me that pesky little interest of mine would not go away. I would often talk to my friends and family about finding a way to work my way into the art (and more specifically the art theft) world. About a year and a half ago my wonderful Aunt Mary Ellen sent me a newspaper clipping (desirable accidental discovery #1) from the New York Times. A young man about my age had just started his own association: The Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA). I read the article, was very much intrigued and jealous, and then put the article aside (I was in the middle of my first out of school job that afforded me little if any personal time, so I knew researching it in depth wouldn’t really happen).

About 6 months later I had quit my job and was spending a weekend in Orlando with my mom. I had decided to go to the bookstore and shortly after arriving one book caught my eye, The Art Thief.



So, I picked it up and read the back. Wouldn’t you know, the same young man featured in the NY Times article had written this book as well (desirable accidental discovery #2).

This was too much of a coincidence. Here was someone doing exactly what I have always wanted to do. So, I went to his website and wrote him an e-mail to see if he needed any employees. He wrote me back and explained that while they were not hiring until the Fall of 2009 (when they open their office in Rome) I could volunteer and that I should look into a masters program that they were offering (desirable accidental discovery #3).

Long story short I applied and got accepted into the masters program for the Study of Art Crime.

So there you have it. Serendipity? Maybe, but if so, I really hope the second definition works out too!