Update + A Day in the Life

Ciao a tutti.  So a few things have happened since I last posted, but most of this month was just was just normal for me.  I have a solid routine that I do everyday, and I am living a normal life here (other than not speaking Italian of course).  Let's just jump right in.

Update

In the beginning of March, I got to go to Rome for the weekend with my brother.  We left Saturday morning, on what was supposed to be a 2 hour train ride.  BUT, of course, stuff went wrong.  We rode for about 30 minutes on the train, and were told to get off in a random town.  There, they had a bus waiting for the people going to Rome.  Apparently, something was wrong with the rail, and it couldn't go any further on that line.  So bus it was.  We though that would be it, but then our bus broke down... twice.  Luckily, the driver got it started each time, and we arrived in Rome at around 2:00 p.m.  Giorgio and I navigated the subway system, and went to our hotel.

Some cool town on our way to Rome

Our hotel was just outside of the Vatican, so it was somewhat easy to find.  We got checked in, and then immediately went to the Piazza San Pietro in the Vatican.  We decided the lines were too long to actually go inside, so we just saw the outside.  It was incredibly beautiful.  It is weird to think that that building had been standing since the 1600's.  You certainly get a new perspective on history when you are actually standing in front of these things.

View of St. Peter's basilica from St. Peter's square

From there, we spent the night roaming around Rome (see what I did there?), seeing some of the sights.  We went to see the Piazza di Spagna first, and that was really cool.  Then we went to the Pantheon, but it was closed by the time we arrived there.  Giorgio knew of a really good gelato place near the Pantheon, so we went there.  It had to have had at least 50 flavors of gelato to choose from.  I can't remember what I got, but I remember it being really good.

Piazza di Spagna stairs

The monument in Piazza di Spagna

The front of the Pantheon

After the Pantheon, we went to see Fontana di Trevi, but it was under construction so it there wasn't much to see.  By then it was around midnight, so we went back to our hotel to sleep.  The next morning, we got up early and went to Piazza San Pietro to see the Pope.  He does a little speech (only about 15 minutes long) every Sunday, and the Piazza is packed with people to see him.  I'm not a Catholic, but I think everyone should experience this at some point in their lives.  He was so enticing and down to earth that it was easy to listen to him, and not feel like he was superior.  You get a certain vibe being in the crowd that's indescribable.  Very weird, but very cool.

Fontana di Trevi and some happy girls taking selfies

There's a pope there. I promise.

Piazza San Pietro and all the people who went to see the Pope that day.

After the Pope left to do whatever Popes do, we went to Colosseum for a tour.  Yet another thing that everyone should see in their lifetimes.  The Vatican was weird to see, but the Colosseum was even weirder.  It is almost 2000 years old!  I can't even comprehend that much time.  It was built just over 100 years after Cleopatra, maybe 50 years after Jesus.  Once again, standing in front of something that old made me think differently about history.  Once our tour of the Colosseum was finished, we took another tour through the Roman Forums.  I got really annoyed with the tour guide (super pretentious history major), so Giorgio and I went off on our own.  It was cool to see what was left of ancient Rome.  Mussolini destroyed most of the Forums when he was in power, so very little of it still stands.  But still, it was very cool.  Some of these structures date back to the 8th century B.C.; 800 years before Christ.  Even now as I write this I am still amazed at how old that is, and the fact the I got to touch it.  Absolutely incredible.

Giant building in the Roman Forum.  No idea what it is.  I ditched the obnoxious tour guide long before this.

Panorama of the inside of the Colosseum

Outside the Roman Forums

From the Colosseum, we went back to the Pantheon to look inside.  I don't know much about the history of the building, but I know it is really old (go figure),  There wasn't much to see inside the building other than Raphael's tomb.  This building was built about 100 years before Christ I think, so about as old as the Colosseum, but 700 years away from the Forums.  This was more or less the last thing we saw before we got on a bus back to Pescara.

The giant ceiling inside the Pantheon

Raphael's tomb

Other than Rome, the month was pretty quite.  However, on St. Patrick's Day, I went to an Irish festival with some friends.  You have not lived until you have heard Italians covering Flogging Molly.  So many accents.  The festival was a lot of fun, but super crowded, so we didn't stay very long.

So that's what I've been up to this month.  I am going to Florence in a few days over Easter break, so I'll tell you about that next time.  But, some people have asked what my daily routine is on exchange, so I will tell you!

Day in the Life

6:20-  Try to wake up.

6:40-  Try to wake up again.

6:50-  Actually wake up.

This is my dirty room.  It only looks like this 60% of the time.

7:00-  Get ready for the day, assuming there is hot water.  Recently, I've been taking ice showers, but I don't know the words to tell my family, so I've just been going with it.  Exchange in a nutshell.

7:20-  Maybe eat some breakfast.  Usually, I just eat a few biscotti (cookie things) with a glass of milk.  Big change from the big American breakfasts I'm used to.

7:45-  Catch the bus to school.  I wish I could post a picture of the bus, but I think it would be kinda creepy to take a picture of everyone on the bus... so I'll pass.  Imagine a bus so full of people that your face is pushed up against the window, and then more people get on.  That's my morning.

8:15-  School starts.  Usually Italians stay in one class all day, but I rotate to a bunch of different classes, so classes depend on the day.  I think I've talked about Italian school before, but I'll talk about it in the next post again maybe.

My school schedule.

1:15- School ends.  On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Satudays, I just catch the bus from school to home.  On Wednesdays and Fridays, I walk into Pescara Centro to my Italian course.  I have an Italian tutor that helps me with all of the grammar and other stuff I don't understand.  Lesson usually go for about two hours.  I will usually go to my favorite Pizzeria on the way for a quick lunch.  I like that place a lot, because it's not very popular, so I'm usually the only one in there.  At this point, the owner know me, and we try to have conversations where I speak Italian, and he speaks English.

My "home-base" class room.

Italian verbs

2:00-  When I don't have my course, I go home for lunch with my family.  Lunch is equally as important as dinner here, although we don't usually have guests for lunch.  We eat a lot of seafood and pasta.  I've only had real seafood one before I came here, and I've been missing out.  The stuff looks weird, but 99% of the time it is delicious.  If we don't have seafood, we usually just eat pasta with tomato sauce.  They think it's simple, but it is probably my favorite meal.  Put some shaved Parmesan on top... ohhhh.

2:30-8:00-  Free time.  Usually, I take a nap during some of this time.  School is really tiring when you have to work to understand anything.  If I don't do that, I will watch a movie, read a book, surf the web, or study.  I want to study more, but unfortunately I don't understand Italian well enough to really grasp the concepts yet.  I've just been studying Italian really.  Sometimes, during the night, I will go into Pescara alone or with some friends.  We usually just grab a coffee or something and talk.  Some of them help me study as well.

9:30-  Dinner time.  Favorite part of the day.  We almost always have at least one guest over.  Again, we eat a lot of seafood and pasta.  However, we also eat a lot of meat too.  The mains ones that we eat are chicken and beef, like America, but sometimes we eat lamb.  Sounds weird, but really good.  In Abruzzo (the region I live in), we have a thing called Arrosticini (ah-row-sti-chee-nee), which is like a lamb kabab type thing.  I think I posted a picture of it in a previous post, but sweet Jesus it's good.  We don't have it often because it's really expensive.  Every meal is accompanied by salad.  I've been told it's only in Abruzzo that we use Olive oil and salt as dressing, but I think all of Italy does that.  Very simplistic, but very good.

After dinner-12:00ish -  We usually talk with our guests and watch a movie after dinner.  Sometimes, people will be at the table for 2-3 hours after dinner talking or playing cards.  I am almost always the first one to go to bed.  I don't really even know how late everyone stays up.  Not sure if I want to.


Well that's my typical day.  Very different from my American life, but also very similar.  You learn when you go abroad that your life changes in a lot of little ways, not one big way.  Italian culture and American culture are not so different in the big picture, but small things, like the kind of coffee you get when you are with your friends, are different

If any of you want me to write about something specific, or have any questions, please tell me by commenting on my blog, facebook posts, or sending me an email. (colingran@gmail.com)

A dopo!

Update and Advice to Future AFS'ers

Ciao a tutti!  I have come to the conclusion that the only thing harder than going on exchange, is going on exchange an trying to keep a blog.  I am terrible at keeping this updated.  In my defense, this has been the craziest month of my life.  It has certainly been great… but crazy.  Anyway, I’ll try to update more often blah blah blah…  This post will be an update, but it came to my attention that this blog goes out to A LOT of people.  Like a lot.  Because of this, I will do an advice portion to any future AFS’er.

Many people claim that it’s around the six month period that you finally settle into you Italian home, but I think I’m an outlier.  I feel completely at home here, and I’ve only been here a month.  The language is still a barrier, but it’s something that has become a part of my daily routine, so I am not annoyed by it anymore.  Everything is just normal; I have a routine, I know the city well enough to take public transportation (which is confusing no matter where you go by the way), and I have a home here. 

The language is becoming way easier.  I have gotten to the point where I can understand 75% of what people say, but my speaking is still rough.  It’s very patchy for me.  One sentence will come out fantastically, and then the next will make me sound like a child.  I can live with that, as it provides some conversation starters with new people. 

Update

Since my last post, so much has happened.  It’s impossible to write it all, so I’ll just tell you two major highlights.

In late February, my brother Giorgio and I went to Teramo to visit one of my friends named Max.  A girl from Austria named Valerie also went with us.  We took the train from Pescara to Teramo, which only took about an hour.  Max met us at the train station, and we went to the city center to walk around for a little bit. (I’ll post some pictures at the bottom. Very beautiful city.)  After about an hour, we went to Max’s house for dinner with is family.  His house is pretty high up in the mountains, so the view was amazing.  We ate a really good dinner, and then spent the rest of the night talking around a fire (aesthetic). The next day, we ate lunch with Max’s family, and then took a train to Giulianova, where we walked around for a little while.  It is right on the coast, so it looked a lot like Pescara to me.  We caught a train going back to Pescara, and then got lost trying to get back home.  We eventually figured it out… 2 hours later.

Yesterday, I got to cross something of my bucket list.  I finally got to go skiing in on a notable mountain.  It wasn’t the Alps, but compared to Minnesota skiing, it sure seemed like it.  Giorgio, and family friend named Ana, and I went together.  It was exciting to actually be able to ski for more than 30 seconds before getting to the bottom.  I can’t really describe it in words, so I’ll just post some pictures at the bottom.

Advice for future AFS’ers

Here are some things I wish I would have known before I came here.  Granted, I have only been here for a month, so take these with a grain of salt.

1)      When you first arrive, you have about a two week window of being extremely interesting at school.  Everyone will want to talk to you, and you’ll be sort of famous.  Take advantage of this.  Invite people out, and don’t wait to be invited.  I did, and it took a lot longer to make friends.

2)      Stop talking in English.  It’s incredibly hard, but learning Italian is 100% harder if you talk in English all the time.  If your family speaks no English, consider yourself lucky.  It forces you to learn the language quickly, and it will make assimilation into the culture much easier.

3)      Download Quizlet now.  This is the best way to study Italian.  I have learned tons of verbs thanks to this app, and it was actually fun to learn them.

4)      Be open.  Everyone will tell you this, but it’s true.  I live on the coast, so some of the food is very strange looking. But, I always at least try it, and 9/10 times it’s fantastic.  This also goes for making friends.  The people you will meet are so different then the people you know in your home country.  You can’t expect them to act the same as your friends do.

5)      Learn what to call your host parents quickly.  There is nothing more awkward than not knowing what to call the people you live with.  I didn’t do this, and now I just casually start talking to the person hoping I get their attention.  It’s very strange.

6)      Be active, and drink a lot of water.  This is good no matter where you go, but it’s especially true in the beginning of your exchange.  You’re going to be tired all the time. If you try to combat your sleepiness (is that a word?) with exercise, you will feel a lot better.

7)      Be prepared to learn a lot about our country.  Exchange isn’t just designed to learn a new culture.  It’s also made so you can recognize your own cultural habits.  This one is hard to describe, but things you never thought about before you left are now the things you miss most.  The first few weeks are very reflective, so you will understand what I mean.

8)      Get close with other AFS’ers.  They are really the only ones who know what you are experiencing, which makes them the greatest people to talk to when you have had a bad day.  Which brings me to my next point.

9)      Download some super emotional songs.  Life is too short to keep pretending you don’t need Spotify Premium.  Get some super sad songs in a playlist, and feel those feelings away.  I highly recommend Sam Smith’s “In the Lonely Hour”.  Had some great group feels sessions to that one.

10)   Put the phone down.  This one, in my opinion, is the hardest.  When I am in an awkward situation, I immediately reach for my phone.  Unfortunately, every situation here is awkward to some extent, so I am constantly on my phone.  This is really stunting my relationship with my family, so just get into the habit of leaving your phone at home when you go out.  Nothing important is going to happen. I promise.

11)   You will question everything you do.  I don’t mean this in some philosophical way, I mean it literally.  For example, during the first dinner I had here, I had absolutely no idea what to do with my hands.  Like not even a clue.  I didn’t know if anything was rude or not, so I was just constantly changing hand positions to make sure I wasn’t being disrespectful. 

12)   Pick up on hints.  This is really important.  Something that I have noticed with my family is that they don’t take problems directly to you.  For example, I have an extension cord strip thing in my room.  I always leave it on in the mornings, but when I come home from school, it is shut off.  Obviously, my host mom keeps turning it off during the day, so now I know to shut off before I leave.  You need to be conscious of these things, no matter how small they are.

I hope those help.  I’ll keep posting more when I think of them.  If you are reading this and thinking about going on exchange, quit thinking and just apply.  You will not have any regrets.  If you are having problems deciding if it is right for you, please feel free to email me.  I would be more than happy to help!  My email is colingran@gmail.com.  Ci vediamo!

PS. So my computer is only letting me upload these two pictures... I don't know why, but I know I hate technology sometimes.