Review

Ciao a tutti!

Once again, I've dropped out of the blogging universe for a while. I will likely drop out again in a few weeks when final exams come around. However, I a few minutes at the moment, so it's time for a quick update. Where did we leave off?

The Sala Borsa! I got my library card and never used it. I don't have time to read books for pleasure, although Schelling's Arms and Influence wasn't quite as boring as my other required readings.

Halloween! We had a big school-wide party at a palazzo. My friend and I got some cardboard and built a portico-headpiece, dressed up as columns and went as a side-street in Bologna. We thought it was terribly clever, but we failed to place in the costume competition. SAIS is more of a creative hotbed than we anticipated.

Midterms! They happened. They're over (for now).

Thanksgiving! I cooked my first-ever turkey (which had to be special-ordered because Italians don't really do turkey), and it turned out edible! I had more people over to my place that I had chairs, forks, glasses, napkins or any one utensil, but we all had a good time. There was a ridiculous quantity of food. I made the turkey, pumpkin pie (from a pumpkin), apple pie and my friends brought everything from mashed potatoes to Chinese-style chicken. It was all delicious, but I've never spent so many consecutive hours in a kitchen before and I need a long break before I do that again.

Trips! I went to Venice for a day to meet a friend. It rained, it poured, and I had no umbrella, but in spite of it all, we had a really good time. We took a vaporetto (water taxi) across the lagoon to the island of Murano and watched some glassmaking before taking a rainy walk along the canal and doing some serious window-shopping. Of course we were sure to get some super-touristy shots in St. Mark's square before we left. I hope to go back when the weather is sunnier. I also went to Florence on an art history class field trip. We saw Michelangelo's David and visited the Uffizi. The day started beautifully and ended in rain. Winter weather in northern Italy is a bit of a letdown. It's cold and rainy, pretty much all the time. Still, the Florentine streets were all lit up and decorated for the holidays. That and a cup of hot chocolate (pure, liquid chocolate) put me in a very cheery mood, despite the weather.

Summer! I got an internship at the US Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome. It looks like my adventures in Italy are really just beginning.

Extracurriculars! I started volunteering at a local middle school with a fifth grade English class. It's an hour week and a nice break from the seriousness of my own academics. Also, I finally found a french horn and any mysterious noises emanating from the basement of Via Belmeloro 11 can generally be attributed to me practicing. It's been a long time, but it's a fun hobby to revisit.

I'm on my way back to school, so that's all for now folks. Tomorrow, I leave for a conference in Geneva. Ciao!

Sala Borsa

In Bologna's main square, Piazza Maggiore, there are a whole lot of old, semi-famous things. There is the basilica where the coronation of the Holy Roman Empire's Charles V took place, the palazzo that became the prison of Prince Enzo, a stone eagle carved by a young Michelangelo, and the list goes on. Much newer is the Sala Borsa. Its outer shell is suitably medieval, but inside, it is a modern library that just opened in 2001. In fact, it is the largest open-shelf library in all of Italy. It is also one of my favorite places in Bologna.

When you walk into the main hall, it's a bit like walking into a train station from the late 19th century. It's one big open space, like a modern hotel atrium, ringed by walkways on three levels, all framed by elaborate ironwork. The ceiling is a combination of woodwork and colorful painting. It's hard to tear your eyes away, but the best architectural element of the Sala Borsa is actually beneath your feet. The floor is clear glass, through which you can see the ancient Roman ruins of the city. It's amazing to get such a close-up, birds-eye view. Living in a medieval city, I'm no longer impressed by anything new enough to have four digits in the date, but walking on top on Roman ruins is surreal.

The Sala Borsa is usually crowded. While that's not always ideal for my personal use, I think it's nice that people actually use the library. Bologna is a huge university town, and students flock to the Sala Borsa for their study rooms, but pretty much every age group is represented in the comfortable chairs scattered throughout the collections. In addition to all the Italian reading material, they also have a large English language collection. I only just got my library card Saturday night, but I can't wait to start using it!

Also, thanks to everyone who has sent me so much mail lately! I love it, and my blank wall is filling up, slowly but surely, with your lovely cards.

Blogging: Bigger and Better

While I may not have been blogging much here, I did manage to squeeze out a post for the SAIS Bologna admissions blog. The writing is a bit over the top. That's what happens at 2 am after a night of studying structural realism.

You can read it here.

There's also a picture of me petting a lion. That's getting to be a theme, although Ravenna is a far cry from the banks of the Zambezi.

Oh, I was also in a film a while back.

You can watch it here.

Author, film star, to what corner of internet fame will the SAIS BC admissions blog take me next?

Everyday Surprises

As a matter of expediency, I take the same route to school everyday. By now one would assume I was intimately familiar with the neighborhood, and yet it never fails to surprise me. Walking home today, for example, I saw something that I had never noticed before.

 I was stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. The scene was familiar. Lots of concrete, a few rogue leaves blowing in the wind, cars, scooters and bikes all whizzing past rows and rows of post-war apartment blocks (sorry to ruin your romanticized image of Italy). The ground level of the apartment buildings are all taken up by shops, their names prominently displayed on canopies. I glanced across the intersection I was at. The apartment building looked better suited to mid-century Miami than medieval Bologna, and a large, cosmic mural screamed nineties. I looked away. The light was still red. I looked back. White letters spelled out "Macelleria" on a navy blue background. There was a butchery inside, fine, nothing to get excited about. I stifled a yawn. "Equina" the letters went on. "Hmm," I thought. That's unusual signage. There are macellerias and trattorias and lavaseccos and tabacchis on every corner, but equina? What could that be?

A large window display explained it. There, next to the entryway, was a life-size photo of the backside of a zebra. "Macelleria Equina" is a horse butchery.

Steak, anyone?

Pagliaccia at Pagliacci

By now, you're probably aware that when I go long periods without posting I'm not actually dead, I'm just busy. Schoolwork keeps me occupied from dawn til dusk these days (only slight hyperbole), but I left Via Belmeloro 11 before dark yesterday because I had another obligation. My roommate's boyfriend got us all tickets to the opera!

It was my first ever opera performance, and it was spectacular. I was really lucky, because there were English subtitles, played on a large screen above the stage. So even though I hadn't had time to read the synopsis beforehand, I was still able to follow along. It was a bit of a trick to balance the time I spent reading with the time I spent actually watching and enjoying the performance, but I managed well enough. Besides, I would have been just as happy to listen to the music and ignore the story entirely. There was a full orchestra, and the music alone was worth the trip.

Anyways, the performance was actually two short operas, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, separated by an intermission. As is typical of Italian opera, they were both high on drama and tragedy. As my roommate pointed out, everyone dies in the end. And so they did, with great music. I can't wait to go back!

Salad Dressing

Fruit and vegetable stands are a dime a dozen in my neighborhood. There's one directly below my apartment and another one across the street. However, while vegetables are easy to access, I haven't been eating much of them here. As every American knows, vegetables are just platforms for dressing and unfortunately, Italy is a dressing desert. I've searched high and low for a bottle of ranch or blue cheese, only to find a whole lot of nothing. Today, I finally decided to give up and assimilate. 

The local version of salad dressing is a mixture of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I learned this only by attending a cocktail party at which carrot sticks and celery were served next to bowls of olive oil and balsamic. I actually asked the bartender if the carrots were intended for the oily fluid, just to be sure. He assured me that they were, and it was typical of Italian cuisine from Emilia-Romagna. Armed with this knowledge, I prepared to make my own this afternoon. I already had olive oil in my cupboard, but I needed to trek to the supermarket for balsamic vinegar.

At the market, there were a dozen different kinds to choose from. I initially resorted to my cheapskate decision-making method of calculating the per-unit cost of each brand, but then it struck me. I live in Italy, the home of balsamic vinegar. Modena, where it has been made for a thousand years, is just down the road from me. This was not the time to out-cheap myself, it was an opportunity to buy something unique and unavailable in America. I forgot about economizing and went middle of the road. I'm so glad I did. I made my "dressing" and it's amazing. I've been snacking on lettuce for hours. I just might have to visit Modena for some food tourism. Who wants to come?

Designer Dog

Since my preterm courses are finished, I had this morning off. As much as I wanted to sleep in, instead I joined my roommate on a quick shopping jaunt. Shopping in America usually means a trip to the mall, but not here. My roommate took me to a boutique on the outskirts of Bologna called Clara. This was the classiest place I've ever set foot in. The racks were filled with proper Italian designers, and signs asked customers to not touch the displays or disturb folded garments. The staff was impeccably dress and all spoke rapid-fire Italian. Prices, of course, were astronomical. It would have all been terribly intimidating but for one thing. 

An obviously well-heeled customer entered the shop with her dog on a leash. The dog was clearly a mutt, and an ugly one at that. It was small and black with teeth that jutted out. The owner, a woman, didn't carry her dog. Instead, she let the dog's dirty paws clack across the marble floor. While I expected the staff to reprimand the woman for bringing her dog with her, they greeted her warmly. When the woman reached down and unleashed her dog, they just smiled. In a shop where the customers aren't allowed to touch the clothes, a dog off the street is permitted to roam at will. 

As it turned out, there was a sale section at the shop that offered some seriously deep discounts on clothes from past seasons. My roommate got a gorgeous black and cream dress by Valentino, and I got a silly polka-dot frock by PennyBlack. We plan to be extra-vigilant about our electricity consumption for the rest of the year!

Ravenna On My Mind

I've been meaning to write this post for a week now, but I've been rather tied up studying. I had two finals this week. My Italian exam was yesterday, and it was painful on so many levels. First of all, it was incredibly long. The written section took almost three hours to complete and was as thick as a book. This was followed by an oral section, for which my Italian was hilariously inadequate. I sat across an enormous oak table from two native speakers, one of whom I'd never even seen before, and tried desperately to keep up with my end of the conversation. It was a struggle. I'd start a phrase, only to realize halfway through that I didn't know a key verb conjugation or vocabulary word to complete the statement. I'm not too concerned though, as the final was only meant to be a placement test for further studies in Italian. Unfortunately, I think my class schedule is already to full to consider it.

My microeconomics final was this morning, and so I am currently free, free as a bird, until the first full semester starts on Monday. Actually, that's a lie. I'm hardly free at all. This is Orientation Weekend and there are lectures and seminars crammed into practically every waking moment. At least there are no exams or problem sets looming in my immediate future.

In any case, while this weekend will be spent sitting through endless lectures, last weekend I had a bit of an adventure. A group of us decided to get the heck out of Bologna and go to Ravenna. Why Ravenna? Why not? It was kind of a random choice of weekend destination, but I heard it had some very old stuff worth seeing, so off we went.

It was an early train, so our first mission upon arrival had nothing to do with all the historic sights. It was a matter of survival. We needed coffee, and that we found along with an unexpected surprise: the nicest man in Italy! In my limited experience, most bar workers here are pretty gruff. They do not stop to exchange pleasantries, smile, or even acknowledge you exist outside of a hand offering payment. This man, by comparison, was chock full of delight. He asked where we were from, told us where to go, and all-in-all we had a lovely chat. Alas, the streets beckoned and we abandoned the cafe.

This was a decision we almost immediately regretted. The day had begun sunny and warm. I had regretted wearing long pants.The day was now cloudy and cold. I regretted wearing short sleeves. This was a recurring theme throughout the day. The weather was always hot or cold, but never comfortable. Valiant tourists, we forged ahead. I got some kitschy photos of me fake-petting a stone lion and posing in front of medieval masonry. We wandered aimlessly, hoping to find Dante's tomb. When the aimless wandering didn't work, we asked a local for directions, which we received in Italian and kind of, sort of  understood. The closer one gets to the tomb, the harder it is to find. It's located adjacent to a piazza with a large church. For a moment we thought perhaps he was buried inside, so in we went. While Dante wasn't there, it was still a worthy visit. The walls were lined with funeral monuments to people who died up to 700 years ago. I really liked one with the word PETERE engraved on it. I'm thinking of copying it for my own tombstone.

Anyways, there was a staircase beneath the altar area of this church. At first I assumed it led to a crypt, but further inspection proved me wrong. The stairs didn't really lead anywhere, they just passed in front of a window in a brick wall. For fifty cents, you could turn a light on and illuminate what was behind the wall. At first glance, it looked like a perfectly ordinary room in a medieval brick structure. The ceiling was low and supported by large brick pillars. The floor was more impressive, as there were patches of ancient tile work scattered here and there. This was difficult to get a good glimpse of as it was covered by a pond. The room was really a pool with several feet of water and at least a dozen goldfish swimming about.

As neat as the fish were, they were not enough to distract us from finding Dante's tomb. Having realized he was not buried inside, we searched the perimeter and quickly found it. It's not unimpressive, but considering the grand scale of most things in Italy, I could have been more impressed.

The next item on our list was the Basilica, as recommended by the nicest man in Italy. What the nicest man in Italy failed to tell us was how expensive the entrance fee was. No thanks, we said, we have the internet. We hit the gift shop instead. The postcards are beautiful.

We whiled away the rest of the day visiting churches and World Heritage sites, sitting in the park, eating pasta and perusing shop stalls. It was such a joy to get out of Bologna for a little while and enjoy a change of scene. I was almost sad to leave, but we had to hurry back to Bologna that night. There was a jazz festival in Bologna that weekend, and I had a Ray Charles tribute concert to get to. The concert would have been fun anywhere, but it was more than a little surreal to attend in a thousand-year-old piazza.

Academics

My life here in Bologna isn't all fun, games and trips to IKEA. In actuality, I spend the overwhelming majority of my time at school. Since most of my readers probably aren't familiar with it, I thought I'd take a few paragraphs and explain the program.

I'm a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, or SAIS for short. SAIS has three campuses, one in Washington D.C., one in Nanjing, China and a third, of course, here in Bologna, Italy. About half the students spend their first year abroad, and then move to D.C. for their second year. The school essentially offers only one degree, a Master of Arts in international affairs (there's also a one-year program for mid-career professionals, and a tiny Ph.D. program, but they're so small as to be effectively irrelevant to my experience). The program is split into two concentrations. Everyone must take a sequence of international economics courses, and then choose a second area of study to specialize in. There are both regional and functional concentrations available. For example, you could choose Latin American studies or international security. In addition, all students must pass proficiency exams in two core international relations courses and a language other than English. It's quite a lot to achieve in two years. I haven't really gotten started yet. I've been in Bologna for the last month for two pre-term crash courses to get prepared for the proper school year, starting in two weeks. I'm doing survival Italian and an economics prerequisite, both for no credit.

Once the academic year starts, I'll be jumping in with both feet, taking a full course load of economics and international relations. I was originally accepted into the international development track, but since I arrived I've been less than enthusiastic about how restricted the course offerings are in that area. A professor sagely advised me that thanks to my development "experience" as a Peace Corps volunteer, a degree in the field is rather superfluous. So I switched tracks to general international relations and look forward to the flexibility my new concentration affords me. The registrar was shocked to hear that I was giving up IDEV. "People kill to get into that program," she said. Well, maybe some people do, but not me. I'll let others fight to the death over the introduction to development gateway course, while I take a course on risk in political economy instead. I'm also auditing a course this fall on Italian art and culture. There are field trips! I'm very excited.

The campus here in Bologna is rather a joke. It is literally a single building, but it has everything a student could ever need. There are classrooms, a computer lab, a library, a cafe that serves pastries, pasta and prosecco (it is Italy, after all), a student lounge and, in the basement, a locker room with a drum kit and a ping-pong table. Everyone has to blow off steam somehow, and if the vino upstairs doesn't do it, banging around on a snare drum might. Being an American university abroad, all the windows are blast-proof. Following the earthquakes last year, the building was reinforced at great expense. You need an ID card to open the front door. It's all very safe. I guess if you're in Bologna at the time of some  massive zombie apocalypse, the SAIS building would be the place to be. Even more importantly, the view from the penthouse deck on the top floor is spectacular.

So that's basically it. Anyone want to go back to school now?

Making It Home

When I first moved into my flat here in Bologna, my room was a tad depressing. The white walls and plain furniture lent the place a very institutional air, and it just didn't feel like home. This is a common problem amongst students who didn't have space in their suitcases for home decor items, and are now faced with big, empty apartments and nothing to fill them with. To remedy this situation, Bologna offers one rather familiar option. So while some students jetted off to Florence or Parma or Venice for the weekend, a friend and I met at the train station and boarded the bus to IKEA.

This was a good deal more difficult than we anticipated as pronouncing IKEA in Italian turned out to be nearly impossible. My friend asked several people where we could find the IKEA bus stop, and each time the person questioned stared at us in confusion for a second before quizzically responding with some variant of "ee-kay-uh". No matter, we found the bus, boarded and were on our way, zooming through the narrow streets on a coach bus, like we were headed on a long-distance school field trip.

After some time on the highway, we arrived at a large shopping complex outside the city. Beyond the parking lot, we could see mountains and vineyards and a generally picturesque view of the country. We felt small twinges of guilt as we turned into the behemoth of the generic big box store. The guilt didn't last long. We wandered through the show rooms, fantasizing about our apartments if we ever lived anywhere long enough to furnish the place. We filled our shopping bag with adorable items we didn't strictly need. Dozens of vanilla-scented tea lights? Yes, please! Picture frames with stock art inside? Absolutely! A house plant? Of course!

When I list out our purchases it sounds like our trip was very quick and efficient. It wasn't in the slightest. IKEA is designed to make you linger, either through distraction by their quirky furniture designs or confusion by their quirky store layout. You couldn't get out of an IKEA in a hurry if you wanted to, and we didn't want to. So we agonized over choosing pictures and frames and potted plants like the future of the universe hung in the balance. Is this color too green? Is this candleholder too plain or too fancy? Should we get one or five?

Thankfully, our shopping styles complemented each other and after endless discussion, we each ended with almost exactly the same items. I bought a peace lily and she bought a different plant, but that's pretty much the only difference in our decorating choices. We dragged our bags up to the cashier, about 4 miles away from the rest of the store, and there received gift cards in the amount of our bus tickets. The cashier told us we could use them on our next trip to IKEA. Considering we had just spent the better part of a day there, we weren't really planning on coming back. Besides, then we would just get another gift card and the cycle would being anew. After a quick refreshment of generic soda, at last we wandered outside into the fresh air. 

Down by the bus stop we met a couple other students who had also made the expedition to IKEA. One of them had a pillow in her bag. It was then my friend realized that she had forgotten to buy one. The time was 7:50. The store closed at 8:00. Could we get in, find and buy a pillow, and get out of an IKEA in that timeframe? It was a challenge we embraced. We ran back into the store, bounded up a flight of stairs and down another, whirled through the aisles to the bedding department and started feeling up pillows. I found a big pile of decorative ones that cost about the value of my gift card. Maybe I wouldn't have to come back to IKEA after all! I grabbed one in an electric blue. My friend located a pillow that suited her needs, and we were off like a shot to check-out where we hoped to cheat the system.

Using the gift cards worked without a hitch, and we ran back outside with a few minutes to spare before the very last bus back to the city. It was almost a perfect night, if not for the mosquito that bit me on my face. That was unfortunate. However, having done a tad of home decoration, I can honestly say it was well worth it. It's amazing what a plant and a few generic pictures can do for a place. I'm home, home at last. 

Umbrella

While most Americans imagine Italy to be a land of endless lasagna and eternal sunshine, I have not found that to be true. Bologna is often cloudy and rainy. When it rains here, it really pours, and this can go on quite literally all day. For instance, this morning I woke up to rain. I walked to class in the rain. I walked home in the rain. I walked back to class in a cloudy haze. I walked home again in a cloudy haze punctuated by loud claps of thunder. 

I did not bring an umbrella to Bologna. I thought the porticoes would provide sufficient coverage from the rain, and they do, where they exist... which is not so much in my immediate neighborhood. Oh well, I borrowed my absent roommate's umbrella for today. Alas, she returns tonight and so my "borrowing" days are soon to be over. Walking home from school tonight, I had a mission. Buy an umbrella.

Now I had no idea where to find an umbrella. Wal-Mart is the type of shop guaranteed to carry umbrellas, and there are no Wal-Marts here, nor anything even remotely similar. Italians favor tiny shops with mind bogglingly limited selections. Imagine a supermarket that doesn't sell eggs. Regardless, I searched every shop window between the Porta San Donato and my building for an umbrella. I found none. However, I did find the Emporio Duse. I think it's proper English name would be "junk shop". It was a shop, filled with junk. Cheap pots, fake flowers and shower curtains were piled high on every shelf. Hanging from the ceiling were umbrellas. 

If there was a sign giving a price, I didn't see it. Instead, each umbrella was individually labelled with price tag possibly written by someone's arthritic grandmother. They were totally illegible. I walked away. A few aisles away was another selection of umbrellas, this time inscribed with the Hello Kitty logo. I looked at a tag. Squinting with enormous effort, I worked out what looked to be 4 euro. Not bad, I thought. Surely all the umbrellas were in the same price range. 

I returned to the first set of umbrellas I saw, picked a cheery green one, and sauntered up to the counter immensely pleased with myself. I greeted the cashier, and she rang through the umbrella as I hunted for my wallet in my backpack. 

"Tredici," she said. 

I swallowed.

I looked to my left and saw a bucket chock full of umbrellas, with a large sign advertising them very clearly for 8 euros. I sighed.

My day had been going so well. I was so proud of myself for shopping alone, in Italy, in Italian. More than anything, I wanted a happy ending. To be able to say that I actually did something right, no mistakes, no apologies, no awkward moments.

And that's how I ended up spending 13 euros on an umbrella. It's hanging in my closet right now, and I have to say it looks pretty sharp. It really is a very nice umbrella, and it will certainly get plenty of use, so maybe, just maybe it was worth every euro.

Walking Tour

SAIS arranged several walking tours of Bologna to help students get to know their adopted city a little better. I went on one this morning. It was absolutely wonderful, and I learned so much. Of course, after two hours of walking we only got through the tiniest fraction of Bologna's incredibly long and storied history.

Some highlights...

Porticoes: Bologna was the first European city to free slaves. When this happened, the city was overrun by former slaves. To accommodate them, the current residents added rooms to the facades of their homes and columns underneath to support the new structure above. The porticoes became such a hallmark of the city that it was actually illegal to build anything new without a portico until the 18th century.

St. Stephen's Church: This is actually a collection of connected churches. There used to be seven, but only four remain. The newest is from the 15th century. The oldest is from Roman times, though the floor, the tour guide mentioned, was much newer. It was replaced in the 12th century. Charlemagne visited the church to move the relics of two very early Christian martyrs. I have walked in Charlemagne's footsteps!

University: When the University of Bologna first began, students were taught in the homes of their professors. The Pope didn't like this, so he had a palace built to be used as the university. There is an anatomy theater inside that dates from the 14th century. I saw the table on which they laid the cadavers and the pulpit from which the professor taught. He didn't actually touch the body, he directed his assistants to perform the cutting. When Napoleon arrived in Bologna, he had another campus built for the university, and it is this one that is still used today.

Roads: Many of the main streets in the city center were built by the Romans, and they go to quite distant places. For example, one that runs through the location of an medieval fish market goes all the way from the Adriatic Sea to Milan. To this day, it is very heavily trafficked. I know, because trying to cross it was harrowing!

What struck me most about the city was how functional the old buildings and streets are, and how accustomed the locals are to it. There's a McDonald's in a building from the 12th century and no one blinks an eye at it. I visited my friends' apartment, which has an amazing view of an enormous church, and I asked how old it was. No one knew, but they guessed five or six hundred years and shrugged. Everything is old in Italy, they said. I used to think America had old things too, but Italy is redefining the word for me.

Adventures in Washing

Learning to do laundry abroad seems to be a recurring theme in my life. First, there was South Africa where I hauled water from a tap, poured it into a bucket, threw my clothes in, tossed in some powder and swirled things around. Now I'm in Italy, and I have a machine to do all that for me. You'd think it would be easier. You'd be wrong. Yesterday I finally ran out of decent clothes and resolved to try out the washing in my flat. It was quite the adventure.

To begin with, the machine itself is very different from the big American ones I am accustomed to. Instead of just pouring the soap in with the clothes, it goes in a little tray you pull out from the top like a drawer. Alas, the tray is divided into three sections and the laundry soap only goes in one. Which one? Heaven only knows. I drizzled it everywhere. Fabric softener is supposed to go in another, but since the  soap was already everywhere, I figured what the heck? And I drizzled it everywhere on top of the soap. I'm sure you can already tell this is not going well.

I put my clothes in and shut the door. Now I was confronted by a series of buttons and dials, all neatly labelled... in Italian. A language I regrettably still do not speak. Thankfully, some words are easily translated. Delicato I figured was delicate. OK. That setting might not clean anything, but it probably won't ruin anything either. I turned the first dial there and moved on to the next. This one had pictures, but they weren't much help. One was a t-shirt, another was a blouse and then came several variations of a crumpled Santa hat. I gave up immediately and turned the dial to the least crumpled Santa hat. Finally I came to the temperature dial. From my experience in South Africa, I am relatively comfortable with Celsius, so this part didn't give me too much trouble. However the confidence boost was short lived.

There was a big button at the bottom of the control panel that I took to be the start button. I pushed it. Nothing happened. I pushed again. Nothing. Now I know that idiocy is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, but I was so convinced that I was right that I just continued. Push. Nothing. Pound. Nothing. Jam. Nothing. OK. Maybe it was another button. I pressed another one. Again, nothing. This went on for some time, as you can imagine. My frustration grew. Just as I was contemplating hand washing in the sink, I had an idea. Check to make sure the machine was plugged in! Confident that I had solved my problem, great problem solver that I am, I checked. The machine was, in fact, already plugged in. Darn it. But was the power on? I flipped what had at first appeared to be a light switch. It wasn't a light switch at all! I pressed the big power power button and the machine started grumbling immediately.

The cycle seemed to take forever to complete. When it finally finished, the machine was about a foot away from the wall where it had first started. Strange. I opened the door. I was immediately hit by a burst of chemical "freshness". OK. So my clothes smelled clean. Too clean. I took them out. There were still wet, of course. I hung them on the drying rack. Soon the air throughout the flat was perfumed with the scent of ultra-clean clothes. I will use less detergent next time. I will also try to work out which tray to use. That seems to have been my problem. In any case, my clothes eventually dried, but not exactly as I would have liked. My jeans can practically stand up on their own. When I tried folding my dress, it made a distinct crunching noise.

I am chalking the whole experience up as a success because the goal was to clean my clothes, and voila, they are clean. The process just needs some refining. I'll let you know how that goes.

Home Sweet Home

After some delay, I finally moved into my flat last night. I'm now a resident of Via Eleonora Duse, and I have the set of keys to prove it! So far, things are going swimmingly.

The flat itself is enormous, or as enormous as a place without a proper sitting room can be. We have 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, and one large, L-shaped hall/kitchen/living room space. The bathroom alone is bigger than my room in Loopeng! Of the bedrooms, I have the larger one, the tradeoff being that I only have one window, but my, what a window! It fits the scale of the apartment and is quite large. It is both screened and shuttered. Soon, I hope to invest in some curtains.

I am not living with other SAIS students, but rather an Italian girl who has lived in this very flat for some time. She's still away on her summer break, but I'll meet her next week. So far, moving into an already-occupied flat has been a great blessing. While other SAISers hunt for furniture and try to figure out how to get internet access at their apartments, I walked into a fully furnished flat with WIFI. I was fully moved in as soon as I emptied my suitcase in the closet! It could not have been easier.

What could be easier is my commute to school. I walked both ways today, in the August heat, and it was rather brutal. It took exactly twenty-five minutes each way, as Google predicted. Hopefully it will become more pleasant as the weather cools down. The walk, while enjoyable in the sense of getting a bit of fresh air, is not particularly scenic. I may as well be in New York, or Cleveland, or Kimberley. It's terribly nondescript. While SAIS is on the edge of the medieval city center, and most students live further into that area, my flat is in the opposite direction. I am deep within the modern section of Bologna, and while it is brighter, cleaner and less crowded than the city center, it lacks a certain mystique. Oh well, on hot days, the fact that I am one of a very few students with air conditioning at home more than makes up for it!

School is definitely picking up at this time. I have my first problem set in economics due tomorrow, and plenty of Italian homework to keep me busy as well. Oh, and then there's SAIS's secret third required course: Professional Development. I have assignments for that as well. I roll my eyes at quite a lot of it, but frankly job placement is the only possible justification I can think of for their outrageous tuition fees, and I do appreciate them taking it so seriously.

A Special Kind of Sadness

It's a special kind of sadness experienced by those who watch the sun go down on a beautiful, medieval, European city from the inside of a classroom. I was taking notes in microeconomics from 5-7:30 this evening, a practice I will continue four days a week for the next four weeks. But you know what would make me feel better? Mail! If you'd like to write, the best way to reach me is at the university.

Kelsey Soeth
The Bologna Center
Johns Hopkins SAIS
Via Belmeloro 11
40126 Bologna
Italy

Please, please, please do not forget to put the country! Not that I'm pointing any fingers...

In other news, I ventured out onto the streets today to buy a SIM card for my ancient Blackberry. While the data bundles offered here aren't nearly as cheap as South Africa, I don't think I was swindled too badly and the big news is that I'm back online. Call me, text me, BBM me (23E416E6), e-mail me (kmsoeth@gmail.com), Facebook me (Marie Soeth), tweet me (KSoeth)! I can do it all!

The number is rather a mouthful, and I have no idea how you'll make it work in the States, but the Italian version is: 333 658 9343

Look forward to hearing from you!

First Impressions

Welcome to my latest blogging endeavor! This round I'm even typing on an actual keyboard, rather than my tiny but trusty Blackberry. Now I have no excuses for errors. In any case, I will try my best to keep this blog updated with all my exciting Italian adventures, but, as usual, please keep your expectations low. 

I left London yesterday morning. It was typical English weather, cold, cloudy and wet. Even with a wool sweater on, I felt the chill. So when I debarked the plane on the runway in Bologna, the first thing to strike me was the heat. It wasn't warm, no, it was hot. Hot like a beach in the tropics hot. Or maybe I felt that way due to the damp sweater I was still wearing.

The airport was tiny, but easy to navigate which was a relief with all my luggage. I only had to walk a few meters to find the taxi stand and wait about twenty seconds before I was ensconced in a taxi on my way to the big, bad city of Bologna. The trip was short but scenic. The countryside, or what little of it I could see from the backseat of a taxi roaring down the highway, was stereotypically Italian. All open plains, distant mountains, and those ridiculous Seuss-like trees. It wasn't as green as I expected, it was more brown and gold. Sun-drenched is my best description.

Entering the city proper of Bologna was at first disappointing. We turned off the highway onto a long, broad commercial strip. There was nothing even remotely lovely about it, but just when I began to despair of the location, we reached the city center. Suddenly, Bologna was beautiful. The buildings are ancient, painted all shades of red and yellow, with enormous shutters. They're packed together along narrow, winding streets. While it appears dangerously easy to get lost here, it's hard to imagine that being an upsetting experience. I could wander the streets for ages and be perfectly happy.

This morning, that is exactly what I did. I walked around with the vaguest intention of finding the Johns Hopkins Bologna Center campus. Of course, I set off in completely the wrong direction and found myself on a bridge over the rail yard. While I watched some dark and stormy clouds roll in over the horizon, I had my first stereotypically Italian experience when a older gentleman walked past and said "Ciao, bella." Not being very quick on my feet, I just gave him a nod and walked on. I nearly walked straight into a couple of Jehovah's witnesses who gave me a pamphlet and invited me to a meeting. At last I extricated myself from that conversation and continued to wander. A light rain started to fall and since I managed to not pack a single element of rain gear, I was endlessly grateful for the long arcades. 

Eventually, and completely unintentionally, I came to one of the most popular sights in Bologna, the Two Towers. I know very little about their history, but I can tell you definitively that they both appear to be leaning dangerously. A man on a scooter was stopped at a light in the shadow of one tower, and I couldn't help but worry for his safety should the tower begin to fall.

Scooters, naturally, are everywhere. I have seen far, far more of them than actual cars. Clearly, I am amongst my people. The locals also appear to be dog lovers. Most everyone out for a Sunday morning stroll had a dog with them. It was not unusual to pass by a cafe and find a dog tied to a chair leg while its owner enjoyed a bit of breakfast.

After a few hours, I finally caved and looked at a map. I was only a few blocks from SAIS, so I popped over and had a look. The campus is home to, by far, the ugliest building in the center of Bologna. Oh well, it's not like I'll have to spend much time looking at it. But I do pity the neighbors whose view is so lacking. 

My camera batteries died while I was in London, so I will have to buy new ones before I post any pictures. Stay tuned!