Locked and Confused

Yesterday, we learned about opening things.

Sarah, my roommate and I began our day with showers in our 3×3 foot shower box (that has surprisingly strong water pressure! Yay!), tea, espresso, and Italian breakfast cookies. We walked out of our apartment about two blocks down the main shopping street to il Piazza del Campo, the main square in Siena, to begin our orientation. As a group of 13, we followed our Resident Director Christina around Siena to all the different important places in the city. After this tour, we were set loose for a few hours. Eric, another UVa student, Sarah and I chose to wander.

Our first stop was back at our apartment to pick up some scarves to increase both our warmth and Italian-ness. We struggled to open the front door to the apartment. Little did we know how this small obstacle would foreshadow the events that followed..

We walked around, finding various beautiful views, and feeling mildly self-conscious of how American we seemed. However, we couldn’t help but exclaim in excited English when we discovered these views.

Naturally, we got lost immediately afterwards.

Don’t worry, Dad. We figured it out. Plus, Siena is tiny, has signs everywhere for Piazza del Campo (from which I know my way at least home and to school by now) and furthermore, it has a violent crime rate of virtually zero.

We made it to Eric’s homestay house, and got to look around inside a real, beautiful Italian home. We found the Italian version of Risk the board game (“Risiko”) and only then were we entirely satisfied. Then we were set to leave and continue our explorations.

However. Um. Well…we were locked inside. We could not figure out how to open the strange Italian door. There were two knobs. Both gold, the same size and shape, one over the other. No door handle, no directions. The bottom knob twisted, but only to add four more deadbolts to the one already barring our exit. The top knob did not twist, pull out, pull down, push in, or move at all, as far as we could figure out. We all tried. Eric was calling his homestay mom to ask her how to open the door from the inside, trying to figure out how to ask her in Italian, all of us desperate for our escape, when finally Sarah tried pulling the knob to the side. VICTORY! It opened! One strange, strange Italian door figured out. Four months more of them to go.

That afternoon, we took a tour of the Selva Contrada (neighborhood) and its museum commemorating all of the Palios it has won, as well as its Contrada church. Afterwards, the thirteen of us returned to the CET school for some more orientating lectures.






When Sarah and I returned home, we were hankering for uno spuntino (a snack) so we heated some water for tea, and pulled out some biscotti to munch on. But try as we might, we could NOT for the lives of us undo the metal clip that was holding the bag closed. We tried prying it and squeezing it and bending it and pulling it, but in the end we had to ask Lorenza for help.

Do you see the opening in the bag? Yeah. We, the brilliant university students we are, did not observe the gaping hole in the side of the bag. We blame it on the cultural differences.

Last night we went out to dinner with the entire CET program, Italian roommates, Resident Director Christina and Director Emiliana included. Italian dinners, at least when you go out to eat them, don’t typically begin until around 8pm. Ours began at 7:30pm. Gianluigi, the biggest character of all the Italian roommates, and our liaison into Italian nightlife (“I’m not an alcoholic; I just drink alcohol all the time.”), when he heard the time of dinner, said, “What? That’s lunchtime.”

After dinner, a group of us went to a bar on the main square called Fonte Gaia, we all got drinks and sat around talking. Andrea, the other guy Italian roommate, had a friend, Mattia hang out with us. Mattia is leaving on Sunday for Sweden as a part of the Erasmus program.

Cultural side note: You don’t tip in Italy. Everything, tax, and tip, is included. Also, people don’t go to bars until midnight or later. Furthermore, people don’t binge drink. You drink enough to loosen up, but not to get drunk.

Back to bars. Gianluigi, Andrea, and Mattia brought Sarah, Ari, Ashton and I out with them to various bars. We spoke a pretty even mixture of Italian and English, and I was pleased that Gianluigi felt comfortable enough to tease me and tell my friends to hate me and exclude me, etc, since he’d only do that if he thought I was comfortable enough to handle it. He proceeded to lump Sarah and I together, and make fun of us both.

Gianluigi, Andrea and Mattia were fascinated by Ashton’s naturally Euro-hipster aura. At one point, he was teaching Andrea’s friends Roberta, Roberta and Laura how to do ‘the sprinkler’ and ‘the shopping cart’ and how to jump around instead of real dancing, and Gianluigi goes, “He’s a genius with women. He’s my favorite. I don’t know how he does it.”

We made it back home around 2:30am, happy, sleepy, and significantly better at Italian language and culture.

Erin Friedlander
Student Corresponent, Siena Spring 2012