A Lesson in Cultural Appreciation

I mean, that's one of the reasons for studying abroad, right? To expand your knowledge of and appreciation for other cultures in this world besides your own. But it kind of makes you appreciate certain aspects of your own culture more. Today is a dedication to cultural appreciation in a series of lists.
So, my little ode to American culture. Top 10 reasons why I love you, America:

1) Your football is of the much more interesting kind. And doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out or smack my head on something hard to knock myself unconscious. (Sorry to all the soccer fans out there, but... too little scoring, no discernable plays, too much continuity for me...) I need time after each play to scream at a) the refs, b) the coach, c) the players, and when I'm watching the game on TV: d) the cameramen who just screwed up whatever I was trying to see on the field, e) the announcers who are usually so incompetent or talkative that I just turn off the sound.

Dear Giants,
I am. Across the Atlantic and watching your games at the most ridiculous hours of the morning. Please don't make the Superbowl go into overtime, though. I don't want to be up at 4:45am with my stomach in knots.

2) You love technology. Seriously. In America, I can get free WiFi at almost any hotel, in any Rutgers building (okay, I need a NetID for that, but here you only get WiFi in rare, designated areas with some weird access code). They also spell it WiFe here. So, I mean, if you want to access your wife, I guess that's cool too???
3) Your consumer culture makes you spectacularly accessible to the general public. Here, shops close early on Thursday and you're lucky if you can find things open on Sundays. Oh, and don't expect to be able to do anything between the hours of noon and 3 or 4 o'clock. That's right! Not that every shop is closed between those hours, they're just the window of opportunity for stores to close. I went to the grocery store at 3:30pm the other day. They don't re-open until 4:30. And then they close at 7pm! I have only seen one 24-hour store here and it was a pharmacy. You, America, have these wonderful things called diners which are awesome 24-hour places you would never find here!
4) You don't have neighbors who write little notes on the apartment main entrance door telling someone not to walk around in her (at least I hope so) apartment with heels, especially in the morning. Except the underlining was much more heavy-handed. Lol. But it's okay for the dogs to bark non-stop starting at about 6 or 7am AND for you to vacuum at that time too... *shaking my head & rolling my eyes* Italians seem to really like their silence... at least selectively.
5) Your excessiveness is actually quite comforting. The shower that resembles a closet is quite rare in the states.
6) You don't measure ingredients by weight. I feel like I'm a chemist in the kitchen with my little scale!
7) I miss my car. My bike feels much less safe. All those tons of metal surrounding me make me feel safer AND they allow me to go faster too.
8) Your washing machines always make perfect sense. Ours is out of commission at the moment and we could be waiting up to a week to get it fixed--apparently Italian and American handy-men have that trait in common. They're always busy when you need them and always give you these enormous time spans when they "can" come over and fix your (to them) insignificant problem, which (to you) is actually pretty problematic and disruptive.
9) You don't have to specify that you want non-bubbly water when you order or buy it. It's just water. No big deal.
10) It NEVER snows smog. NEVER. I have ridden to class on my bike inhaling frozen smog on several occassions. And I can't find a HAZMAT suit anywhere!!

Top 10 reasons why Italy is pretty cool too:
1) The food tastes so much better here. Less salty, less sweet.
2) You ALWAYS break for lunch. My class schedule is 10-noon, lunch break, 1-3pm. Pretty nice, if you ask me, considering at Rutgers I just run from class to class swiping for take-out lunch when I get a chance or just eating some pretzels when I don't.
3) Your hot chocolate is this awesome mixture between chocolate milk and chocolate pudding. Mmmm... I'll put gelato here too since it's too cold in Ferrara for any gelateria to be open, so I haven't had any yet :(
4) You can't buy the history of this place or country. It's just really cool how much history occured here and how much of it is just there, on the street, completely free to look at.
5) Riding a bike is kind of cool. When you disregard how scary it is to ride the wrong way on a one-way street and how you feel like you're going to ride into a parked car because you have to ride close to the side of the street and they're packed with parked cars! And when you disregard how many bruises you have from said bike (because this is me we're talking about).
6) It's more dog-friendly than my own hometown. I saw a few dogs in an Acqua & Sapone (it's like a supermarket, only without any sort of food... so it has toiletries, household products, light bulbs, paper plates, make-up, etc. but no meat, vegetables, etc.)
7) You can go out of the country pretty much any time you want to and it only takes an hour or so, depending on where you want to go and how you want to get there. In the US, I have to shell out mega-bucks to fly somewhere or drive for hours to even get near Canada.
8) The cultural nuiances are pretty amusing to learn as an outsider. Did you know that in Italy the number 17 is unlucky because in Roman numerals XVII is an anagram for VIXI which means "I have lived" (i.e. and now I am dead) and because it looks like a hang man on the gallows. 17. I dunno, kind of, maybe... if I squint. And women are supposed to wear red underwear on New Year's Eve for good luck in love?
9) Some of the prices are actually cheaper than the US. I can buy a 2 L bottle of spring water for 0,20 Euros which is about $0.30 in America. Of course, there are a ton which are much more expensive, but being blind to brand names is actually pretty nice when it gets me deals like this! Of course books cost an arm and a leg...
10) We have city walls. That you can walk, run or ride your bike on top of. I haven't been on them yet because it's been too cold. If you looked at the Weather Channel you would call me a wimp, but the cold here is really damp, which makes it feel MUCH colder, and hey! You wouldn't want to go for a stroll in frozen smog either!

#1 Reason sitting at my "dining room" table feels like I'm a kid eating at the grown-up table:
It's actually a kitchen island.

#1 Thing to do in Verona:

Go inside the Arena and take ridiculous pictures.

Runner Up: Take the elevator and then climb the few extra (120 or so) steps of Torre dei Lamberti:

The Italian graffiti up there is also much more intriguing than its American counterparts. I'm amused at how many times Italians spelled the f-word wrong. But it's also kind of sweet.

Loosely translated: "The beginning of an eternal fairy-tale!!" (And I can't read the names...)

If you want to follow this blog...

So my mom said that a lot of people couldn't figure out how to follow my blog. This is just to give you some simple instructions on how to do this if you're interested. (Look away, all my college-aged or technologically proficient friends!)

So, on the right side of my blog (next to all the entries) there are two options for you. You can do both if you'd like. The top one is "subscribe by email." This means that every time I post a new blog entry, you get an email with a little bit of what I've said and a link to the entire blog post. Anyone can do this, you don't have to have a google or any special kind of online account. You just enter your email and click "subscribe." If there are any additional instructions, just follow those.

The second option is to become a follower of my blog. This doesn't include anything special like getting emails, but it shows me that I have people reading my blog!! For this, you click on the "Join this site" button underneath the "subscribe by email" gadget. In order to be a follower, you need a google, twitter, yahoo, aim, etc. account. If you click on it, google gives you the complete variety of account types you can use. (And for all my Rutgers friends who are still reading this, I am mad at you for this reason: you probably have a scarletmail account, which is run by google. Hmph!) So, if you don't have one of those accounts, you can create one. Google is most definitely free, but I'm not sure about all of them. And they're all relatively simple to make.

If you have any questions, you can post a comment on here and I'll try and address them.

Give the blogger some love, people! Please follow this blog.

All in a Day's Work

My fried chicken may not exactly bring all the boys to my fourth floor apartment, but damn straight, it's (probably) better than yours (unless you grew up in the South in which case your fried chicken can probably beat my fried chicken's ass). Yeah, just chilling in my Ferrarese apartment frying out some Italian chicken cutlets. Doesn't it look good? Mmmm...

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty accomplished at the moment.

I can now officially:
1) Fix an Italian hot water heater. (Oh, yeah, don't think I mentioned that we had no heat the other night... it gets down to about 27 degrees Fahrenheit here at night... and no heat in our 4th floor (basically the attic) apartment. But not to worry! I read the Italian instructions--might I just say that water heater vocabulary is not my strong point?--and fixed it. We shall never freeze again!!)
2) Do my laundry in the teeny Italian washing machine. (Okay, it's not that groundbreaking since I've been doing laundry since I was 12, but does your washing machine look like this?)

AND configure my clothes just right on the drying rack so that they dry in 1 day. In the winter. When they come out of washing machine practically soaking wet. Oh yes. I would post a picture of my awesome layout, but I don't really want pictures of my undies floating around on the internet... ;)
3) Cook pretty tasty food on a gas stove-top. And it's edible, too!

I think I'm ready to take home the gold when homemaking becomes an Olympic sport. Especially when all I had was some pretty crummy cookware to work with and no sort of measuring device in the vicinity!

My Crib... Well, okay it's not really THAT awesome

Today I'll be giving you a virtual tour via pictures of my apartment. (Btw, I'm really hating blogspot at the moment because it takes forever to load my pictures and then it keeps deleting my post.)

This is what you see when you enter my apartment:

That is our living room/dining room to the left of the archway and on the right is a fireplace which we are not allowed to light. To the left is a set of closet doors and a door leading to our 2 bedrooms and bathroom:

The closet on the left is mine! Through that glass door... To the left is my room.

Please note: I did not choose my sheets or bedspread. They are both lime green, but the only things that matched.

My bed is pretty large, but the mattress is on two small bed frames. Strange...

I have two closets, which, in a country where closet spaced is almost sacred it's so rare... I guess I'm pretty lucky! :) The only downside is that the closets are literally 3 feet tall and there is a very solid beam of wood above them. My head can attest to how solid it really is.

Mostly, I use the closet on the right because, you know, I was only able to bring about 50 lbs of clothes and shoes...

Plus, this gives me space for my (mis-matched) chair and ottoman.

Then I have a wonderful and huge chest of drawers!

Back in the hallway, the bathroom is next door. CIEE really has great taste in decorating. An elephant toilet seat cover and a cow's head bathmat. Lol!

There's a sink and vanity, blahblahblah, but the pièce de résistance is definitely the teeny shower complete with jungle-themed Ikea shower curtain. Who knew they had Ikea in Italy?!

Now onto the living room/dining room. We tried to liven it up a bit with the extra sets of sheets on the shelves.

I don't think it helped much in the sloped couch area, though...

We have GOT to find a way to re-arrange this area. Very bland. The sloping ceiling is a bit of an issue, though. Looking back at the entryway, this is the beautious thing we get to look at everytime we leave this place called home.

On to the kitchen!! It is on the opposite side of the right wall of the entryway (in this picture). It has all the typical accoutrements: stove (gas! yikes!), oven, fridge, freezer, sink, countertops, cabinets, little table thing, etc. Pretty boring. Except for my little touch of Jersey!

But here's the rest of it...

And here's the laundry room/boiler room. After last  night, I now know how to fix a hot water heater despite not being proficient in Italian hot water heater vocabulary.

I almost forgot the best part! The view. Ummm... Well, on the bright side I don't look at a dumpster, so it could be worse. It's a sort of ho-hum view of rooftops and weathervanes, etc. from my bedroom window.

Then there is the view from our living room window. Slightly better, but since it's about 5 feet from my window (on the same wall), it's only slightly better.

I almost forgot to post the really awesome entryway to the apartment building where my bike will soon be residing (I have to get one first, though!).

So that's my apartment. Did you want a picture of the facade too? So demanding...

Quickie note

To all my faithful (read: 0) readers.

Finally FINALLY got internet in my apartment. It's about 1:30am here, so I'm not posting anything exciting at the moment. But I think maybe tomorrow because it's my day off. Although I do have to go to the supermarket to pick up some food and boring stuffs (this is about my 5th trip in 3 days!). But anyway, hope to post pics of my apartment and what I've been eating the past few days.

WiFi issues and pizza abounds

I have never been on a younger flight! At least 99% of the passengers on my flight from JFK to Barcelona were between the ages of 20 and 22. *Grumpy old lady mode* They were so noisy and inconsiderate and the plane was just a wreck after everyone left. I only slept for about 45 minutes and only then because I blasted the music on my iPod so that I couldn’t hear anyone talking. And then my headphones broke, so there went that plan. (Yes, my really nice $80 Bose pair. The jack got stuck and pulled straight out of the headphone cord.) -__- So now, besides the fact that packing was hard enough, etc, etc. I’m on a quest to find a replacement pair of headphones—preferably the same brand—to lull me to sleep over the (potential) snoring of my new roommate.

Sorry for the rant, this is probably my exhaustion headache talking some at the moment (or just my old lady side speaking out). Super tired from waiting in the airport all day for all the students (my flight got in at 11am, it was the first. The last didn’t arrive until 3:30pm—I’d say I’m allowed… but just a bit). I also didn’t eat much in the past… ugh? 24 hours? I can’t keep track anymore. In the states it is 11am. Here it’s 5pm. The last really good thing I ate (besides the nice lunch at home before departing for the airport) was a bag of Chex Mix. Then it was some sort of “chicken and rice” on the plane and for breakfast… (*drum roll please*) a warm croissant. Yes, that is all I got. On a platter. Mmmhmmm. Oh, and don’t forget the package of 2 caramelized biscuits we got on the flight from Barcelona to Bologna. That was actually good, but not very filling. So hungry… Only 2 more hours until dinner… Is it possible to starve in Italy of all places???

American Airlines needs to step it up. No wonder they declared bankruptcy when other airlines provide individual TVs, edible food, nice blankets, HEATED CABINS (I know I hate the cold, but I was shivering on that plane), and good movies. I guess the competition is FIERCE!

Watching BBC on the TV now and trying to find someplace where I can get free WiFi. Gosh, they sure make it difficult to get any sort of free WiFi around here. Even in Barcelona, where I found a wireless connection and had a chance to get 15 minutes free, when I logged on the server told me my 15 minutes were up!—Before they even began!!

They finally gave us free WiFi after dinner when our advisors worked out some kind of deal. Only the access code for us doesn’t quite work. Will I ever have WiFi in this town?!

Less grouchy now that I’ve eaten, but I’m still tired… Meh. Going to shower and go to bed. I will dream of real Italian pizza tonight. And gelato. Mmmmm… jealous yet? (Maybe not of my totally enviable Internet situation, but of the future food I will be eating here.)

do i really, really, REALLY need this???

I really, truly hope that the hardest part of studying abroad is packing. Because that was difficult enough. My fingers are bloody and sore (stupid suitcase zippers), I bashed my knee on the door while trying to weigh my suitcase and I'm nauseous thinking that I might have packed too much and might have to pay $60 because a) my suitcase is 1 lb. overweight... 2) my carry-on (which is really just a small suitcase) just barely meets the requirements and only if I smush it. Oh no. I'm doomed!!!

Tomorrow is another REALLY FUN DAY (not) of continuous packing and unpacking. And trying to size down my enormous wardrobe even more. And more and more and more. Gosh, this is way too difficult. I can't wait to see how many boxes and mountains of stuff I'll have in the future when I move into my own apartment/house after I finish school--all I can imagine is a wall of boxes surrounding my house. YIKES!

Somehow I don't think my mini travel companion, Sir Stu (courtesy of Rutgers Study Abroad) is going to be much help as he's made of foam and about 2 1/2 inches tall. Damn!

Stupid airlines and their stupid restrictions... which I understand are to keep us safe, but seriously, do they really need to charge $60 for a second checked bag? and $150 for a third (not that I'm planning on that, but seriously?!)? Thankfully I'm not flying domestic--your FIRST checked bag is worth about $50 to American Airlines.

Then again tomorrow is an actually REALLY FUN day because I'm leaving for Italy! So excited, although the long day of travel is rather daunting. Fortunately, I have fellow CIEE students from the West Coast to remind me how lucky I am to live in the Northeast. One student said she's leaving at 5:30am tomorrow (and she's on the same 5:30pm flight out of JFK as I am). Oh, my. Talk about long day of traveling.

I'll try and take some pics on the flight to post, but I can't promise many great views. I have the center section aisle seat, so I'm a tad far from the window. Although I DO have awesome leg room! This is the first international flight I have ever been on where I don't have the center seat in either a 4-seat row or 3-row! Yay for Expedia who asked me what my seat preference was.

Unfortunately, this trip means I'll be missing the Giants game this weekend. :( And because I had to pack the bare minimum, that meant my Manning jersey it sitting at home, sadly. (For all my clueless-about-football friends, this is a very important weekend as it is a playoff game--win or go home--and it's in Green Bay, who previously beat the Giants in the finals seconds at MetLife Stadium.) Pathetically, I hope there is some place I will be able to watch the game. (Hey--I already said I was pathetic! No need to shake your head!) With my luck they'll go all the way and I'll miss the second ticker-tape parade in NYC in my lifetime. But I'll be in Italy, so I guess it's a pretty fair trade.

So excited, so nervous, so stressed out! I have to find a way to dump half this luggage. Is it too much to hope for an inspirational dream tonight?