Il Mio Apartamento

Originally I wanted to live in the mini resident halls because they'd seem to be more like dorms. Fortunately I was lucky enough to be placed in an apartment with two other girls from the same program :). I say lucky because after taking a look at the resident halls I realized that I'll have more of the real experience. Plus, I've some of my friends have already complained about how inconsiderate people in the halls can be. Also, I live in the only apartment that have wireless.

My roommates are really nice girls from Davis. Our landlord is also very kind to us. After moving in, he invited us to his apartment where he introduced us to his wife. Although it's hard to communicate with him since he knows very little English, we seem to understand him. Carrying an Italian dictionary when speaking to him is also useful :P

One of the first things that I learned was that Italians live in apartment buildings. Well at least the typical Italian. I don't know why I hadn't thought about this before. Anyway since I was placed in an apartment, I thought that living on the 4th floor and not having a backyard would be kind of boring. I mean in the U.S. we really value our gated territory. We have our own spaces... So far, I haven't felt uncomfortable though and after observing how people can live so close together I've realized that there are many benefits. First, there is a greater community atmosphere. On the weekends and even on some weekdays neighbors socialize, either by singing, having dinner,drinking together, playing games ( lol, I'm not really used to this. I mean, I hardly talk to my neighbors at home). What I'm trying to say is that having no back yard, makes the street belong to everyone.

First Impressions

I know that I've started to write this blog after having been in Siena for a few weeks. I'll try my best to write about my experiences in the past weeks starting with my journey to Italy. I flew out of LAX on September 07, 2009. Honestly I was really worried about flying out and rather sad about leaving my family. Luckily I did not cry because my mom had a great way to deal with the sad reality that I was not going to see her for about four months (something that I've never done before). At the airport she started to joke. I don't remember what she was saying but all of us were having a good time. And, I was really excited about traveling to Italy and seeing Siena in 3-D and not through google.com. Once on the plane I texted my brother to let him know that I was ready to depart. I sat between a Social Worker from New Jersey and a man whom I did not speak to at all. On the next plane, I sat next to an Amsterdam lady with a really heavy accent. She was really nice but kept on talking to herself (she was nagging most of the time). Once we got off the plane in Amsterdam we were both disoriented and for this reason decided to walk together until we both found our next flights. By the way, I had not slept on the planes. I kept on imagining that the plane would go headfirst into the Atlantic ocean. I know that my thought process is a bit dramatic but I'm sure that everyone else had similar thoughts. I could not help to wonder about the millions of people below the plane. The world was so big and everyone a little speck. Ahhh, and with about ten hours on air I had plenty to think about. Anyway, I boarded a plane in Amsterdam headed to Florence. This time I sat next to the window. Looking down I saw mountains and tiny cars, and green patches of land. I was really excited :D At the Florence airport I waited for another girl that was also going to be studying in Siena. We finally found the correct bus after asking several people where the bus station was in horrible Italian. At that moment I realized that my Italian was not great. And would you guess how I found the bus station? I actually ran into a bus driver on the sidewalk who happened to be right outside the station. It was like winning the lottery :) Anywho, on the bus my body was too tired to truly enjoy Tuscany. I slept for about an hour. I do remember being a little disappointed about graffiti in Florence. Some parts looked similar to LA.

Getting to Siena was only half the journey. We still had to walk half a mile on the wonderful slopes of Siena. Oh and we were dragging our luggage. As we walked along the crowded streets people stared -I don't blame them. We arrived at our hostel and were relieved BUT our room was located on the fifth floor and there was no elevator. So three desperate girls with about 6 luggages struggled as they climbed to stairs. We wanted to cry out of exhaustion but we could not help but laugh at our facial expressions. So, after we got to the fifth floor we went out to have pizza and gelato. We also walked to the Piazza del Campo and realized that Siena looks much better in real life than in pictures. Standing in front of the Torre del Mangia, I felt the long journey was most definitely worth it.