L'Arrivo

I don’t mean to make anyone jealous, but right now, I’m eating Nutella from the jar, in my adorably Florentine apartment listening to Nino Rota.  I live above a gelateria, and pasta shop.  We live next to the largest market in Firenze. (Yes, I’ll be pretentious and use the correct name).  And when I say “next to”, I don’t mean a block or two away.  I mean when I stepped out of my apartment I could smell the fresh basil.  Perhaps this is how Italy smells though. 

It’s surreal to be here.  Not because it’s quaint and charming with European eccentricities (although it is).  It’s surreal because I’ve been jet lagged for three days.  In Italy it’s almost midnight.  In Elizabeth’s body it’s three in the afternoon. 

It felt unreal when we started this journey.  (The thought of twenty hours of straight travel can be a bit daunting).  And by “we” I mean Jessica, Beatrice, Kara and I.  Four girls from Chapman.  Four girls completely unprepared for the next four months.  We began our trip in LAX.  I like to think of this as Dante’s journey through Hell.  A short jaunt to Chicago.  Then maneuvering our way through O’Hare airport.  Luckily my Eagle-Scout father sat me down to map out the Chicago airport days before leaving.  From Chicago to Zurich and barring a catty middle-aged American woman, it was quite pleasant.  Then from Zurich to Firenze.  Then came the arduous task of Italian customs and immigration. 

Our passports, with our useless visas. *Not pictured: Me*

Basically you get off the plane.  Yeah.  That’s about it, which is just super considering that amount of energy it takes to get a visa for this country.  To get my visa I literally hunted down the Italian Vice Consulate in Seattle and accosted him at his house. 

So, we get out of the airport and into a taxi.  Apparently, the four words of Italian I spoke to our rather hefty driver was enough to tell him, “we mean business”.  Now, I’ve seen ridiculous drivers; I live in California.  But this man, and all the other vehicles for that matter, had no regard for lanes or stop signs or pedestrians.  At one point we passed a bus on a one lane street (completely illegal in America).  When the bus driver flipped us off, our driver proceeded to insult said bus driver’s innocent mother.  Ah, the sounds of the city.

Not the best picture, but you get the idea.

Basically, from there we got checked into our apartments.  That night I was too exhausted to make food and too overwhelmed to go out searching for a restaurant so I just settled on gelato.  Yeah.  I settled for gelato.  This was my first experience with real gelato.  And to quote the great Gershwin boys, “how long has this been going on?”  How could I have possibly lived twenty years without this?  And now that I’ve had it, I realize those twenty years have been spent in misery.  No one should be without gelato.  No one. 

I have so much more to say.  That’s just the first few hours of being here.  Everything is so vibrant.  The shutters of the windows.  The smell of leather and basil and mozzarella fill the crisp air.  It would take me a lifetime of nothing but writing to do this city justice.  But Nino got it write with a few chromatic notes.

Let me end this entry with an apology for my avid followers.  I’ve been without internet since arriving in Firenze. Now, we have limited connection.  One girl can be on at a time.  There are six of us.  And the chord to get connected is in two of the girls’ bedroom.  It’s been an incredibly frustrating situation to say the least.  Our landlord has been so considerate and desperately trying to help us, but the people at the internet company keep telling us we need to re-configure our computers (we don’t).  Suffice to say, an Italian IT guy is about to get my American Chuck Taylor’s shoved up their -- you get the idea, right? Frustrating.

Buona Notte Ragazzi. A domani!

Elisabetta

(I think I'm taking this thing a little too far...)