Day 2: Piacere, Siena!

I woke up early on Monday! I spent an hour or two laying in bed thinking about how wonderfully ridiculous it was that I was in Siena. And then my thoughts started to drift to other things again… but then I told them to just chill out. They kind of listened.

The hotel girl thought liked my tie! And then I when she saw my hat of shiny colorful horns she just laughed. But it was much more of an “I think that’s cool” laugh than a “You’re out of your mind” laugh. Believe me, I’ve come to know the distinction between these two kinds of laughs. One is warm while the other is condescending. Condescending is no fun. Kind of like hill-ascending. There are a lot of hills in Siena! Seeing as I didn’t have to check out until 10:30, I walked up the hill to a little café and ordered a cappuccino. I can say with some confidence that it was the best one I’ve ever had. The lady at the counter kept grabbing my hat and saying things to me in Italian. I couldn’t quite understand her, and she spoke no English, but I ended up having a pretty cool conversation with her. I’m pretty sure she was asking if I was wearing this hat because I had a Brazilian girlfriend. ☺ I told her I just liked bright colors. And then we exchanged a couple phrases in Japanese.

Post cappuccino I wandered around until I found a wonderful open cathedral that was painted beautifully in what appeared to be the style of the Italian renaissance. It’s so nice to run into these things just by accident…. Afterward I began a quest to find a tasty beer! The first bar I ran into was this little tiny one called New York Bar. Haha. “Posso avere una Birra Moretti?” I asked. The answer of course was “Si, due euro.” And so I was off! I found a nice little nook in a doorway and sat there drinking my Moretti and taking pictures with my Nikon. Perfect.

I checked out right on time and sat in the lobby of the Bernini for a few minutes talking to a family from California. They all seemed really happy. I left my bags there and proceeded to meet up with my two buds and Margaret, another UO student, to make our way over to the Canon d’Oro, the hotel we were staying at that night. In the lobby we ran into Ginger, Kelly, and Allison! After exchanging excitement and talking about how Emma Watson was getting more edgy, we all went out to lunch. Margaret and I sat and had a panini while the rest of the crowd went to find pizza. How typical! Nah, I like pizza. We talked about my limited knowledge of the Italian language and chatted with an older couple from Switzerland who spoke no Italian and only a little English. We told them about how all of the street festivities were happening because of the upcoming Palio, the world famous Sienese horse race.

Speaking of which, let me speak of which! Siena is separated into 16 contradas, or districts, which all battle for a spot in the biannual Palio. If you can believe it, people here take this race even more seriously than Americans take football. But it makes sense; they’ve been doing it for almost 700 years. It’s so exciting to be here this time of year, there’s so much energy in the air! I have the melody of their battle cries running through my head like I had Usher stuck in my head after every high school dance… in the best way possible.

After paninis we walked down the street and met the rest of the crowd at a little pizza place. Here I had my first Italian gelato of the voyage! Limone and Coconut, quite a beautiful combination of chemical stimuli. We took our frozen goods down to the Piazza del Campo, the largest piazza where the Palio is held. A beautiful bell tower juts out from the ground and a huge half circle of cobblestone rests in the center. Ceremonies were beginning. As we walked over to one side of the square a forced clearing suddenly blocked us, and a parade of chanting locals marched through led by a wildly rearing horse that came very close to biting my head off. It was quite exciting!

We went back to the hotel and proceeded to hang out for the next hour or so. I facebooked for a while and then got into a conversation with Andrew about High School Musical and how wicked it was. I still haven’t seen the third film! Maybe I can watch it in Italian… Andrew went down to look for some shoes or something and I decided to stay in the room and allow myself to be sad for a while; sometimes this seems to be the best remedy for dealing with things. And then Colin Ives showed up! Everyone was down in the lobby now talking about their journeys here and getting ready for orientation, and with no further a-sock, I shoed up and followed the group to the AHA offices a few blocks away.

Sylvia Minucci, our site director, is an awesome Italian lady from south Siena who always has a sense of humor, even when she seems stressed. She gave us our packets full of information for the month to come and talked to us a little bit about the structure of the program. Soon after, everyone from our program met in another room and exchanged stories about our flights and travels. Andrew’s flight attendant warned from experience that if he drank too much he was gonna fail the program and Brian shared his stories of Amsterdam hash. We all had some good laughs.

Our tour of the city was postponed until the next day, and so we all went back to the hotel to meet and assemble a dinner party. We were treated to a full course meal con la bruschetta, le melone con prosciuto, la pasta, e le patate! Era delizioso! We all talked about movies, and I officially met Brian for the first time (I’d heard about him before the trip through a mutual friend, and I thought I had met him, but I guess I never actually had ☺) We all agreed that The Fountain was an amazing movie, but couldn’t come to a consensus on whether or not the Dark Knight was better than Batman Begins… I think it’s obvious!

On our way back we all followed Colin’s assistant (Our friend Liz) back to her apartment and made a huge scene due to our excessive volume. Aparently her land-lord assumed she was hosting a party of rambunctious young Americans, and I guess in some senses she was. The lady looked as if she had just woken up and started frustratedly speaking English at us. “This is not possible!” We all felt bad. And stupidly American. But it’s cool, it was our first official night there…

Down in the big Piazza del Campo they had a booth of glowy toys! I wanted the pink bunny ears that flashed all crazily, but I didn’t have enough money on me… I’ve regretted it ever since.
Damn! I’m gonna have to start writing shorter blogs! I’m already more than a week behind. Is anyone reading this anyway? ☺














A beer and two of my favorite socks :)













Cathedral courtyard (Right down the street from my hotel)



















Mary













Pretty buds



















Andrew and Emilee in front of the Campo bell tower














Left to right: Margaret, Kelly, Ginger, Emilee













The horse started running kicking wildly right after this!













But this guy got it back in control













The hostess at my hotel. I went back later in the day to return my keys and grab my luggage and I asked her for a quick photo. She said "Of me?!"

Day 1: Life Is Different on the Ground

And so here I am. Sitting in an apartment in Siena, Italy, the sun has set and the thoughts run wild. The past days have been a phantasmagoria of exhaustion, adventure, sadness, and excitement. I can’t really contextualize the craziness of what I’ve experienced in the last 70 or so hours. What I can say, though, is that I haven’t felt so completely turned around in a long, long time.

Friday I spent packing. Well, that is to say Friday night I spent packing. I spent most of the day hanging out with Edwin and Nick, talking and reminiscing over the past year. It was such a wild year… one of the most fun and most trying years I can remember, full of creativity, the best kinds of immaturity, and heartbreak. But I wouldn’t sell the experience, even the darkest parts of it, for all of the creamy pesto sauce in the world…. And that’s saying a very large something. ☺

So yes, Friday night I spent packing. I decided at about 10 that I was going to stay up all night. Forget sleep! I have a 12 hour flight ahead of me! As always, however, I got over the deepest exhaustion and hit my second wind right before I went through security. Before I left I sat with my parents and bros and talked about cool names for kids. (Some of these included Amoeba, Nightshade, Otis, Aquamarie, and Diarrhea…) I got on my first flight at about 7:45 in the morning on Saturday. The first leg was relatively uneventful. I realized right after I boarded that I had totally spaced bringing headphones and a writing utensil. “So much for entertaining myself for the next 5 hours” I thought dejectedly. At which point I decided to watch New In Town starring Rene Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr., and was truly and utterly turned off. I love stupid romantic comedies, don’t get me wrong, I just couldn’t stomach how painfully unfunny and trite this film was. I couldn’t even make it through the first 20 minutes… then again, maybe it was because I was sleep deprived and falling into a bad mood. Just when you think you have your emotions under control they sneak up from behind you and poke you repeatedly like a baby dinosaur prodding you for breast milk. Do dinosaurs drink breast milk? No; they’re reptiles… or birds or something. Anyway, like I was saying the first leg of the trip was quite uneventful…

I got into Newark after a few hours and bought an I Love New York pen for four dollars. It barely writes… but I found that it was perfect for clipping my large red dangling belt together! Plus, now I get to look more stylish! Stylish like an American tourist who loves New York! The second flight was better. I talked to a Jersey lady about how cool the exchange was going to be and another lady about Barack Obama and gypsies in Naples, both of which she did not approve of. I tried to convince her that Barack Obama was actually a pretty cool guy, and that not all gypsies are petty criminals, but to little avail. Right as we were exiting the plane the little girl in front of me decided to announce that she had lost her shoe! What a thing to loose at such a time! I helped her look, but I we couldn’t find it. If you’re reading this, best wishes to you finding your shoe, little girl!

Rome was pretty damn stressful. I almost got lost a few times. But I did finally get to put the 2 years of Italian I’ve taken into action with phrases like “Dove è Terminal cinque?” or “Qual’autobus vada alla Terminal?” I decided that I was going to try only to communicate in Italian, a task much easier said than executed. The problem with speaking in a language you don’t really know that well is that people assume that you speak it. Thus I had to overcome quite a bit of confusion. But it was great! I waited a couple hours for Emilee and talked to a girl who worked on a cruise ship for old people. She showed me some of her photographs… super pretty!

After stressing quite a lot, I finally spotted Emilee walking out of the baggage claim. She had run into Andrew, another Siena student, and we all luggaged our way to the underground train. We had a smooth 45 minute ride in which we talked about Up and Transformers 2, and listened to a violinist who was determined to make some quick money. We almost missed the stop, but we asked one of the Italian passengers at the last minute and hopped off at the right bus stop just in time. Finding the Sena bus company was relatively painless, and the ride to Siena was slightly less painless, but slightly more beautiful! Italian countryside is a lot like Californian countryside, in the best way possible…

But damn, Siena is amazing. Arriving here you feel like you just drove a DeLorean into the middle ages! Well not quite, but I think you understand. It’s obvious that everything from the stone buildings to the cobblestone streets have quite a few stories to tell. Andrew and I took a little time to help Emilee to her hotel and then proceeded to our own. The girl who worked at mine was simply lovely. Not only did she go out of her to make me feel at home, but she let me talk to her in Italian under the context of me not really knowing the language. Plus she was a cutie. ☺ The Albergo Bernini has an absolutely wonderful terrace with a gorgeous view of the city. This was such a great way to start my stay in Siena…

And directly after I checked in a huge thunderstorm hit! It was interesting to watch as the rain began to pour down and all of the locals took shelter under covered walkways and umbrellas. They were so afraid of the rain. And they must have thought I was crazy because most of them either gave me funny looks or smiled with warm but eye-rolling smiles as I walked slowly and calmly through the downpour, letting my thoughts be washed clean. Then again they were probably more concerned with what I was wearing…

I met Emilee and Andrew at 6:30 and we had some tasty pizza. I walked around some the city a bit to get my bearing, and then retired to my room for a well deserved rest… What a lengthy day it has been!


















All streets in Siena are this beautiful













View from the Church courtyard













The terrace of the Hotel Bernini


















Refuse

An Introduction

If you don't already know, here's how:

1. Find a bow-ty of your choosing at a local thrift store
2. Drape the two sides over two bags packet full of subtle excitement and distant hope
3. Send them all across the Atlantic Ocean on the 7:45am flight
4. Let it settle in a Medieval city.
5. Wait for the Italian culture to fold and twist it in a way it has never been twisted before

and...

6. Read it's blog!


Haha. Sorry about that. The truth is I really just couldn't think of a better name for my blog... I should be writing on a several-daily basis, so if you all are interested in hearing about my overseas shenanigans I would greatly encourage you to read! And what's more, if you write me a comment, a message, or any sort of response I will send you a hug, a kiss, or 20,000 euro! It'll be a surprise which one..... ;)

Let the festivities begin!