i primi giorni

So I've been in Bologna for four days by now, though it feels like it's been much longer. I don't think it's quite hit me that I'll be here for seven more months, either. It's such a longer time than I've ever spent away from home, it's difficult to wrap my head around it.

I'm pretty happy with my situation so far. It's been rainy and gray ever since I got here, but the city's still beautiful and I can tell it will be awesome in the spring. The main part of the city is surrounded by a medieval wall, and at the very center of the city is a big square, Piazza Maggiore. Piazza Maggiore is basically the center of the action, with the University and all the student hang-out spots right nearby. My apartment is just outside the medieval walls, which means it's a good 15-20 minute walk to the Piazza Maggiore, and more like 20-25 minutes to the University. Of the Brown-owned apartments, it's one of the furthest from the center.

Views from my apartment window

At first, I was a little disappointed about this, but actually it's not so bad. We live in an apartment complex in a more residential area, so though we don't live around most of the Unibo (University of Bologna) students, we live around real Bolognese people, which is pretty cool in itself. A mother and her kid live next door, and a gay couple who constantly gets into heated arguments lives below us.

There are six of us in my apartment altogether, three guys and three girls. Four of us are Brown students, one from Harvard, and one Italian. I like living in a rather big group - there's always someone to watch TV with, or go to the grocery store with. Based on what I've seen of the other kids in the program, I'm glad with the mix of personalities I've ended up with. Most of my roommates are really good at Italian, especially the Harvard guy who seems practically fluent. They all seem pretty adventurous, up for traveling and exploring. (Unfortunately I still haven't found someone who's up for going to Morocco with me!)

My Italian roommate is named Matteo and is from Sardinia (Sardegna), the island next to Corsica off Italy's coast. He speaks very little English -- he joked that the only phrase he knows is "This is the table," though that's a bit of an exaggeration. He also knows how to say random things like "peace and love." It's nice, though, because it forces us to speak Italian with him. I've heard from some of the other Brown students that their Italian roommates are fluent in English and so they always end up speaking English. Since he's sardo, his accent is a bit different from the standard Italian, and some of my roommates have trouble understanding him. Sardinians speak in kind of fits and starts, with long pauses and then a jumble of words mushed together. I'm more used to it, since I had a Sardinian Italian teacher for a year at Brown who spoke in exactly the same way.

So far we've done only a few organized things with the other Brown students... we had dinner on the first day, a little tour of Bologna, and yesterday a visit to a medieval museum. Since our apartments are kind of spread out throughout the city, we haven't seen the other Brown students outside of those activities. I was a little surprised, because a lot of us don't know each other already and I thought the program might make more of an effort to help us mingle and get to know each other. I think, though, that they'd rather we not hang around together - they want us to be totally immersed in Italian language and Italian life. I guess that's a good thing, but right now when we don't know any Italians it feels a little isolating.

It also doesn't help that people can pick us out as Americans everywhere we go. Every time we're in a group and we go into a store or restaurant or pub, everyone kind of looks at us, even before we start speaking English. I guess it's something about the way we dress or carry ourselves that gives us away. On the one hand, it's a positive thing that Americans are rare enough in Bologna that they garner stares everywhere they go. But it's also a little discouraging, since we want nothing more than to blend in. My roommates and I joked that we should get our other roommate Matteo to give us lessons in looking Italian. I wonder if by the end of the semester we'll still seem hopelessly American, or whether we'll be able to blend in.

The photos in this post are the views from my apartment window. So far, I haven't been taking any pictures since it's so gray and rainy out, but once we get a bit of sun I'll start taking pictures.