An Improvement

When I woke up this morning and my paper thin linen sheet wasn't shoved to the bottom of my bed in anger (my thought process in the middle of the night- "why would they give us such heavy bedding in the middle of the summer?"), I knew it was gonna be a good day. I was actually comfortably wrapped in my sheet, the night having proved to be slightly cooler than usual. Usually we must choose between nearly dying of heat stroke with the windows closed or get eaten alive by swarms of mosquitoes and listen to the unnecessarily loud buses all night with the windows open. But thanks to mosquito spray, an incense that repels them and a plug in that periodically releases mosquito repellent, we were finally OK with the windows open and were so tired from lack of sleep, the buses weren't even a problem.

Next we skipped our way to Italian class to take a test. We bubbled with excitement because, who doesn't love irregular verbs? (slight exaggeration). Francesca was especially silly today spouting such gems as "when I have time to think about activities to do in class, I can be dangerous," or "the song was sappy and horrible... I wanted to- " and made a wrist slitting mime. PC-ness is not a concern of the teachers in Italy. She has certainly told us "I kill you," enough times (I can tell though. She's bluffing). She then read to us a few passages of a newspaper article which she thought was particularly hilarious. We didn't understand the Italian at all and when she translated it into English it was really not at all funny... however seeing her have to hold onto the table because she was laughing so hard at really mediocre statements was quite a show. But the best part was her surprise. She was so excited when she sat her gift bag on the table that we had to be excited too. Out she pulled a 2 ft tall American flag on a flag pole (to celebrate the 4th for us), But Wait! There is more. She then pushed a button on the base of it and it started playing "our country tis of thee" and the flag waved. She told us "I love things like this." I can just imagine her kitschy apartment full of Lisa Frank erasers and year-round Christmas decorations.

After our test was over, Michelle and I celebrated by going to our favorite sandwich shop where the owner is stoney faced man whose neutral look seems to say, "I could mess you up." The sanitation in this country would make our chefs at home (well the American one) cry. They make your sandwiches, take your money, set different kinds of meat on top of each other, and gloves? Ha! If you can't handle the germs, get a better immune system... is what they imply. But this place has unmatched sandwiches. The crispy toasted bread cuts up the inside of your mouth like it's been through an epic battle but it is oh so worth it. And though the owner could kick me apart, he'll grace you with a brief smile from time to time (usually when I mess up my Italian) and again it's worth it. It's a tough love sandwich shop.

Nursing my mouth wounds we walked over to the Boboli Gardens to hang out during our nice obnoxious 3 hour bread between classes. The gardens are across the river, about 30 min from our house. It's beautiful and much less touristy on the south side of the Arno which makes for a nice little getaway. After a relaxing hour or so in the garden we walked home marveling our lack of sunburns thus far, during which we each developed nice little shoulder and cheek sunburns. (Just moments ago Michelle cut up cucumber slices and set them on my shoulders. Soothing. I just realized they were still sitting there though, like those little Sgt Pepper jacket shoulder thingies....?)

When we got home I was sweating on every inch of my body and we both collapsed on our beds about 10 minutes before we had to leave again for class. Putting on a uniform and baking bread just did not sound like fun today. We both seriously considered ditching for the first time. We never had before... what could one day hurt? But we knew Mark, our other fellow South friend in the class, would give us crap and after a minute we sucked it up and went. We were glad we did because apparently the rest of the class had the same thought and No One Else Showed Up. Just Mark, Michelle, me 'n Chef Gabe. The other 9 decided to ditch apparently. If we'd actually decided not to come, Mark would have given us more crap than we realized! He'd have been the only one. But as it was, the class ran more efficiently than ever before. We got more done in a shorter amount of time, joked with chef, and made the best breads we've made yet. Suckers. It was even relatively cool in the classroom with 9 less people. AND after telling chef that I was an actor, chef told us about this little old town not far from here that has a medieval festival in just a few weeks with what he described as the best street performers in Italy. There are puppet shows, stilt walkers, fire eaters and other carnival type acts that go on in little secret secluded courtyards all over town. He said it was amazing but hard to get to but if we were all interested he'd help us find a way to get there. Yup. Best breads class so far.

A good day.

One more note- a interesting thing I've found being here is, I expected to perhaps start saying a few Italian words/ phrases without thinking, just like in New Zealand. You just hear them so often that they work their way into your vocab. Well... that hasn't really happened. What has happened is I find myself occasionally starting to say/ think phrases in broken English- the way they talk to us. I've had to stop myself from talking back to them the same way a few times. I don't want them to think I'm making fun of them, it just comes out.