How I Know Italian Vitamins are Actually Super Pills

I had big plans for when I got to Italy.

This is what I thought my life would be like when I got here

1.     Do all homework all the time

2.     Appreciate art all the time, every day by doing sophisticated things like going to museums

3.     Travel EVERYWHERE

4.     Cook fancy Italian food

5.     Be fluent in Italian

6.     Legal drinking age= party every night!

But hey I’m a reasonable person.  Pretty soon I realized that this wasn’t a really realistic life goal so I went back to the drawing board

New more realistic life:

1.     Do homework all the time always.  In fact do homework early. Do homework before its even assigned

2.     GO TO MORE ART MUSEUMS

3.     Catch 20 planes a week

4.     Make eggs for dinner every night

5.     ITALIAN BECOMES PERFECT. I will even know idioms and make jokes. I’ll be like a real Italian.  I will memorize the bus schedule so when people ask me when the next bus comes I will KNOW.  They will never suspect I’m an American.

6.     PARTY ALL THE TIME ALWAYS. SO MANY BARZ! SO MANY CITIES. 

This was going pretty well for me. I did get a little sick of eggs.  So when disaster struck, I figured it was just that eating eggs for at least two meals a day and making the third one a chocolate bar was probably giving me scurvy or something.  So I ate an orange.  (vitamin c fixes everything, right? But that didn’t help.  I was sick.

From bed I momentarily tried to revise a new more realistic life.  It looked like this

1.     Stay in bed

2.     Watch tv

3.     When starving, make eggs. But put vegetables in them or something

But I couldn’t stick to it.  I started freaking out. I’m only in Italy for three months.  I want to do EVERYTHING. I must see every work of art since ancient Rome.  I have to learn Italian! No one ever learned Italian from bed!! I HAVE TO SEE THE WORLD AND THERE ARE SO MANY BARS I HAVENT BEEN TO YET.

I marched myself to the pharmacy.  I demanded Sudafed.  They don’t have Sudafed in Italy.  I demanded medicine. They don’t really have that either.  Standing in a pharmacy in the middle of Florence in my pajamas without I begged the pharmacist for something, anything that would get my life plan back on track.

And that’s when she gave it to me.  A little tube.  Since I was so behind on my BIG PLAN to become fluent in Italian I didn’t understand what it was.  But in my mind the tube was going to be magic. It was probably some sort health tonic/ Italian fluency tablet all in one. 

I went home and dropped the tablet into a glass of water, drank it and waited for the miracles.  I refused to go back to bed.  I made eggs. I felt exactly the same but my brain didn’t want to hear that.  Through sheer willpower and belief in weird Italian magic, I was cured.

Since then I’ve taking those little tablets every day. I even keep them in my backpack for emergencies when I’m super tired in class.

I finally got around to looking up what’s in them. It’s a multivitamin. With extra vitamin C and a little bit of caffeine.  But in my heart, I know its magic.

Italian Living

It seems like all I've done for the last two days is adjust.  I moved into my apartment which is located right smack in the center of Florence.  Im only a few blocks from the Duomo! The view from our windows are gorgeous and the location is undeniably wonderful. 

The apartment it self is quirky.  There are 12 girls living in one large, tight apartment.  The layout is bizarre: two angular narrow corridors snake throughout the building while little rooms and bathrooms and staircases shoot off from these two center points.  The doorways, even to the main doors into the corridors and the upstairs are so narrow I find myself peeking around corners to make sure I'm not accidentally entering a smaller room like a bathroom or a bed room. The apartment is accessible only by going up six flights of stairs in a tight winding staircase (there's no elevator) and my thighs were actually sore the first few days I got here.  Worse, theres no air conditioning and on the sixth floor it gets really hot and humid.  Thats alright though because there's also no hot water (hopefully its just broken temporarily) so an icy shower cools you down in now time. 

Though some of the other NYU apartments are more modern, I'm glad I live her.  My apartment was built before America was discovered.  Living here completely different from living in the states.

The View from my Kitchen Window

Visa

Went to get my visa today.  Put on my best "not snooki" outfit and trucked off to the embassy.  The people there were not nice but they GAVE ME A VISA.  So now I'm really really going to Italy.

What I Know

When people ask me if I'm excited its a little hard to say yes.  Right now my brain is full of stuff I have to do (like get a visa) and stuff I don't know (like if I'll definitely get credit for my italian classes). I'm going to try to push all that stuff out of my head and focus on the stuff I do know and the tips people gave me:

Traveling 
1. Some old italian man makes custom leather sandals in Sorrento
2. Fly Ryanair or Easyjet
3. Cinqueterra is definitely worth a visit.  If I do go, I must look up Angelo's Boat Tours in Monerserro
4. On the first sunday of October there is a wine festival in Marino.  On the second sunday there is a doughnut festival
5. Bus2alps is ok to to use and I should go to interlocken
6. Chocolate festival in Perugia! Chocolate Festival!

Florence
1. Ristorante di Fagioli at Corso Tintori, 47- Go and get the Robolitto (peasant style bread soup) and the beef steak
2. Villa San Michele- old monastery converted into a restaurant
3. Great Sandwich place on Salumeria Verde on Via Guiseppe Verde
4. Il Gatto e le Volpe- fantastic gnocchi
5. Obviously go to the apertivo
6. Order the house wine because its good but very cheap
7. Festival del Gelato- on the Corso, bright lights, hard to miss.

Ok see? Chocolate festival.  Now I'm excited.