Getting Settled

I have mastered the route from my host family’s home to the Smith center.  I can comfortably navigate myself around that area, with few errors.  I can successfully make purchases at a variety of stores.  I’m getting the hang of this.

I’m not getting ahead of myself, though.  I am painfully aware that I still have much to learn, do and see.  It’s just hard not to beat myself up about it.  There are things that I feel I should have done already, that I should have been more proactive about doing.  I then have to remind myself that I haven’t even been here for a week yet, and that I will be here for quite some time.  But that is a lot easier said than done.  

Today our three weeks of orientation officially began.  Orientation is composed of a number of things.  We started today with our Italian class.  This language course is a review/refresher class for all of the things that became fuzzy over the summer.  Because it is starting with the very basics (today we went over the present tense…) this morning’s lesson was not the most exciting.  I enjoy the professor, though.  She’s friendly, lively, and encouraged us to ask us any questions we need to ask.  Even though I had a wonderful summer, it was very long, and so I am grateful to have a class like this to help get me back into the academic swing of things.  Orientation also includes a mini-course on Florentine history, and an art history course that will involve a few trips to important sights and museums around the city.  Hopefully after these next few weeks I will be able to provide a small summary of the city’s history, as I did in an earlier post with Naples.

After class today, some friends and I took a walk to the supermarket.  Smith gives us a monthly stipend for lunch, as our host families are only responsible for breakfast and dinner.  A lot of past JYA Florence students recommended that instead of going out to lunch every day, we instead go to the supermarket and buy some simple lunch essentials to save money.  In addition to being economical, it is a way for me to put some choice into my diet, as my host mother has her plans for dinner (and her cooking is too good for me to object!).    

What I love about Florence is that even a walk to somewhere like the supermarket is a sensory experience.  Every day I see, hear or smell something new on the same streets, which is a beautiful thing in and of itself.  The fact that nearly all of what I am seeing, hearing and smelling is also beautiful is simply an added bonus for which I am most appreciative.  What I have to do now- as if my to-do list isn’t long enough- is learn to slow down.  As a New Yorker, this is difficult.  But Florentines, all Italians really, don’t rush the way we do at home.  They take their time.  They understand the value of being aware of your surroundings, noticing things, and then processing those things.  Today after lunch, I decided to give it a try.  I went for a walk by myself, simply wandering around the areas surrounding Piazza Signoria (where the Smith center is located).  I bought grapes at a small fruit stand, I went into leather stores to smell the authenticity.  I window shopped, I actually shopped (what girl can say no to an artisanal Florentine jewelry store), and just tried my best to observe all that I could.  I looked at people, listened to them, and made an effort to learn something, anything.  It really was a sensory overload, and I have no doubt that there are things I missed.  Now that I have a taste of what it can be like to slow down, I want to taste more.  Figuratively and literally.  I am in Italy, after all.