Saturday, January 12

 
television is so weird here. i cannot stop laughing. my mom here always watches the same game show before dinner. it is an hour long and seems like a normal game show at first glance. but between ever round they take a break so that these gorgeous, obscenely big-breasted italian girls who are dressed like hookers from some kind of biker porn can do poorly choreographed dances to bad american music. i don't understand. it is a game show, but girls in tiny leather teddies are dancing and lip-synching to american rock.

the commercials are also a blast. i saw one that showed this completely naked girl (full frontal is no big deal here) rolling around having water splashed on her. but it was just for bottled water. the real kicker is, she wasn't just any naked girl - she was miss italia. oh, italians.

but there is a lot of cool history here. just the other day someone showed me where the old florentine baby black market was. for real. it is this church decorated with little baby statues. sluts who got pregnant before they got married would come and put there baby in this round wooden thing, and then sping it around, and on the other side of the wall would be a legitimate couple who would take the baby home and raise it as their own. it sounds kind of risky to me, though. i mean, what if you get a baby with a hunchback or something? and you just have to take it because that is what showed up. i guess maybe you could spin it back around. who knows.

time to go eat dinner and then get coffee with some friends. a relaxing night at home. ahhh.
posted by from shannon at 9:35 AM

Thursday, January 10

 
i hope people are still reading this, or man is this going to be a waste of my time.

as many of you may know (since you are my friends and have hopefully noticed that i am not around much this semester), i am here in florence. safe and sound. which is saying something, since i almost died on the plane ride over. the turbulence was disastrous. i had images of that devon sawa movie in my head - i cannot think of the name now, but i am sure that my friend lindy will know.

so i am here for four whole months. eek! what am i going to do? speak a lot of italian, i guess.

things are really good here. i am still getting adjusted, but i am generally just pleased to be here.

i cannot use apostrophes in this entry. i cannot find the key on this italian keyboard.

so far i have started classes at the centro di cultura per gli stranieri - basically a part of the university of florence set aside for foreigners to take italian classes. it is very neat because in my language class i have about a million swedes, some germans, a french girl, some mexicans... it is so cool. but weird because english is so useless. when we americans speak it to each other i am actually embarassed, because i feel like the other kids are smirking at how dumb we are, since they all speak three or four languages and we are so loud. i never noticed how loud we are. i feel like one of us is always shooshing the other ones.

my family is good too. i was really worried about them. i was always worried about living alone. when i filled out my housing application back in the states i asked to live without an american roommate. i do not know what i was thinking. by the time i got here i was all in a panic. but luckily even total strangers, like the nice people at syracuse housing, know not to trust me to make important decisions for myself. despite my request they luckily paired me up - with my friend dikla from usc, even. i think this will work out swimmingly.

that is the update for now. i have a few funny stories that i will impart when i have more time. i will not have real internet access until sometime next week - for now it is pretty sporatic.

italy is great but i miss my friends. a lot. next time i leave the country for a long time all of you are coming. okay, good.
posted by from shannon at 5:58 AM