After 24+ hours of traveling from San Diego California, to Los Angeles California, to Stockholm Sweden, I finally made it to Rome Italy. Once in Rome, I had to figure out how to navigate the airport train system to get to Roma Termini (the Grand Central Station of Rome). Roma Termini is in every way like every video you’ve seen of Grand Central Station, with the crazy hustle and bustle of thousands of people, just with added warnings to be aware of pick-pockets. No big deal right…
Once I arrived at Roma Termini I made my way to Siena. Ever so kindly, my sweet host Azzurra met me half way in Grosseto, and drove me the second half of the way Siena. This experience alone, traveling and navigating the public transportation system entirely by myself, in a language I can barely converse in, was so beautifully eye-opening. It was fun, scary, and a little stressful but I DID IT! Already my trip was beginning to be a life-changing event.
Once I was “home” with Azzurra I was acquainted with my room and a beautiful plate of pasta and tiramisu Azzurra prepared for me and took a very much needed nap. After recharging a bit Azzurra showed me around town and how to get to school in the mornings.
The rest of the week was phenomenal! I started class on the following Monday and since my first day here I feel like I have learned so much. My Italian classes at Notre Dame were essential to learning the grammatical side of the Italian language, but I can already feel the difference that conversation has made on my language learning experience. For example, there is a Russian man in my language learning class who is about 45 years old and has been in Siena for about 2 months and speaks Italian as if he were born and raised here (mind you he had no knowledge of the language prior to his studies at Dante Alighieri in Siena). However, when we played a grammar game that had to do with choosing the correct preposition for a given phrase, he was very inconsistent while I on the other hand (thanks to my brilliant professors at Notre Dame) had no trouble identifying which preposition was needed for each phrase (okay not every phrase but hey no one is perfect). Language learning for 5+ hours a day and Italian conversation for like 13 hours a day was at-first extremely exhausting. My brain wasn’t used to this much Italian in one day especially when every interaction must have all of your intense focus and concentration to understand and articulate correctly. However, with repetition, patience and my knowledge of Italian grammar rules, I feel like in just a few short weeks I too can sound like “una vera italiana”.
Aside from language learning I was able to do a little bit of sight-seeing. Siena in itself is a beautiful city to explore, and within the museums are even more treasures to be discovered (at a price of course). Saturday night Azzurra took me to an awesome restaurant in Firenze for dinner and we did some sight-seeing at night, which was incredible, and I most certainly want to return to explore during the day.
Lastly the FOOD is amazing. I have probably gone up two pant sizes in just a week from all the tasty food Italians love to eat. Oh well, I can worry about my health later. Haha. That’s all for now. I’ll be back with more enlightening experiences soon.
