Prima Settimana a Scuola

1st week of school. Let me start off by explaining how my bones and tendons are yelling lactic acid build up. I have been so excited to start school so on monday when I proudly gather my luggage from my friend's in Perugia for my train to Rome, the handle of my luggage decides to shatter and break, about a block after we left the house. I had about 30 minutes till my train left and still needed to pull out money for the train and for the minitram to get me to the train station. Oh, me. What did I do? Well, i pulled out a scarf and tied to to my bag and dragged it up some hills to the station. I had at that point 6 minutes till the train left. Tried to buy a train ticket at the macchine. Of course it froze once i inserted money. What did i do? Cry like a baby? No, I said "im getting to my apartment in Rome and nothing will stop me, not even a 40 euro fine for being on a train without a ticket!" So i threw my luggage down the stairs (to get to the platform) lugged it up the platform and got on the train and still had 2 minutes before departure. So I hunt down the train "captain" (capotreno) to beg for mercy, tell him my Seinfeld like circumstances as to why I did not buy a ticket in time and convince him to sell me one on board without the fine. He, of course can't do it. So THEN I decide maybe its time to start crying like a baby. He stops me and tells me he has a solution. At the next train stop, he let me off to buy a ticket and wouldn't let the train leave until I got back on. Don't worry, it didn't hold up the train because at this point I was so pumped with adrenaline that I did it in like 43 seconds. Sweet ending to a bitter beginning. Oh and of course I had to drag my 65 pound bag around Rome to school to get checked into the apartment b/c I was too stubborn to pay for a taxi and then lugged it up 4 flights of stairs to the apartment. I rewarded myself with ice cold Limoncello. I think i might need to buy a new piece of luggage.

So today was my first day of school. I was really excited because for about 5 of us there is a specific conversation class about the course topics, and the other students have to take a crash course in Italian as they have had no previous training. Did I mention I graduated in Italian Studies?  So when I went to this "conversation class" I was horrified by having to take a grammer exercise quiz. I just spent 3 years, plus several months as an exchange student in Italy prior, worked my butt off to get a semi good command on the language and literature and here I was back in 103. It was a nightmare. The teacher at the language center even did flashcards with foods on them to see if we knew how to say them in Italian. This class is 2 hours a day, by the way. I went to my professors and asked that I be given something in place of the language class as I have already payed my dues to vocab and grammer drills, and I was the only person in that group of 5 that had beyond a year of Italian training. They gave me an awesome task. To research a food issue that appeals the most to me and relate it to Italy and do a research presentation about it. And possibly even do some translation work with a CD they acquired an an Italian event concerning the politics of food sovreignty.  Im in a little bit of heaven. I get to have 2 hours a day to myself researching my intellectual passions.

Then we did a tour of the Campo de Fiori market. We were given a little tutorial about the history of open air markets.  The Campo market has seen some unfortunate changes due to gentrification, tourism and globalization (mostly americanization). 30 years ago there were 100 fresh fruit and veggie stalls. In 2002  that number dropped to 20. We were given a little exercise to count today, in 2009, how many stalls there were. As I walked around and had this in mind, I started to notice the darker heart of Italy. How there were stalls selling pure crap. Signs written in poorly translated english. Imposter designer vendors about a foot away from their "stall" (cardboard on the ground with knock off Vuitton bags) in the case a policeman decided to notice, since more than likely they reside as clandestines in Italy illegally. I noticed produce that was surely not grown in Italy. Floods of tourists that blindly enjoyed this atmosphere, made exactly to please them and make money off of. There were no farmers at these stalls. These vendors went to distribution centers at an ungodly hour 20 miles away from Rome to give people (and rip them off) the romantic experience of shopping at a farmers market in the historical center of Rome. The darker heart of all this is that a society erases certain romatic traditions for accomodating tourism, business and profit. At the end of this tour, I counted about 8 stalls of fruits and veggies. And as I saw mostly western tourists enjoying paying for overpriced supermarket quality produce and a few trinkets and gourmet truffles, and also I saw a few extremely dirty bums laying down in the nearby allies. Its sad for me as a romantic to see that traditions are wasting away and polarization of rich and poor are ever so gapped, but we still can at least enjoy the Roman sun. You can't americanize that.

That was basically my first day of school.