the flight of time

Today marks three weeks since arrival in Padova. Time is going by ridiculously fast it blows my mind. I think that time has just progressively been speeding up! Regardless, a lot of things are going on here, lots of fun is being had, and lots of learning is underway. Our whole Boston University group is going on a weekend trip to Firenze, departing tomorrow morning bright and early at 9am from the train station (which is about a 40/45 minute walk from where I live). We will be visiting several galleries and museums tomorrow and and saturday and we will be doing some off the beaten path explorations (necessity). Three of my friends and I will be staying two nights at a hostel and the other 6 will be staying at an Air B&B. It's exciting!
   Last weekend we went to Verona for the day and we were blessed with the perfect temperature and the perfect amount of sunshine dancing down upon us. apart from going to see the casa di giulietta, (too crowed with tourists) we roamed around and stumbled upon some of the most beautiful bridges, buildings, churches, narrow streets, steep green hills rising up in the peripheries, and of course little cafes. It was amazing.
   I've been doing a lot of socializing with italians. In the element! It is one of the most amazing sensations that I couldn't possibly do justice with my words. this language sometimes gives me shivers. My italian has improved quite a fair bit, predominantly my understanding (which i would say is at about 90%) and writing... We had to write a composition for our Italian class and the paper I ended up writing to my surprise came out very stylized-- metaphorical and poetic and very quite Tess.
   On the academic front things are going well, learning so much every day that at the end of four hours of class in italian i'm exhausted! in a couple weeks we will begin our courses at the University of Padova, i'm hoping (so extremely) to take a french language, literature, translation and mediation course. At the BU academic center here i'm taking two courses with core focuses on emigration and immigration-- one is just that, in a historical mind frame, and the other is a migrant italian literature course that focuses on works of literature written by either immigrants who have spent a majority of their lives in Italy or those who were born here to parents who immigrated. These works of literature are so beautiful-- they offer us so much perspective both culturally and literarily. Immigration into Italy and the concept of "lo straniero," or the foreigner, is often a topic of discussion. It's really interesting to be studying a topic so currently culturally relevant that I hear people at the dinner table or in the bars talking about it almost every day.
  There is really not too much more to add at this point, just that things are really wonderful here and i don't know if I'll ever be able to leave. The other american students are really wonderful.  We have become a little clique-y which is better in my opinion because being in a big group of 11 americans is horrendous. (even though they are wonderful people). That being said though, we do all get along really well and when we do have to all do an activity together we have loads of fun.
  I'm trying my best to show that not all americans eat fast food, not all americans are monolingual, not all americans are culturally ignorant, not all americans dress poorly, not all americans tote guns, etc, etc, etc, without dissing my country of origin. I have discovered though that the way to get the message across that not all americans are arrogant and to disprove the aforementioned stereotype it proves pretty helpful to not be ashamed to carry myself as an individual and to not associate myself in the conversation as 'american'; rather as a child of the earth.

   xxx Baci xxx

 Verona Arena 

colors in the sky

happy people

 

 the kittens are growing up!

 good morning little princess <3