Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death...

Thursday, January 15:

I’m still not sleeping well.

I wake up every hour.

My body thinks I’m taking a nap.

As I lay in bed wide awake at 6:30 AM I decide to make the most of it and go to the gym. My roommate is also awake and gets up too.

I worked out in the small gym in the basement of Villa Natalia where I live. It felt good to exercise, and of course the place was deserted at 7:00 AM.

I took my time getting ready for the day after working out, and met Molly for breakfast at 9:00.

We had Academic Orientation at Villa Ulivi, across the “Valley of Death” that runs between either side of the campus. There’s a path from my building to Villa Ulivi (where most of the classes are held) that’s shaped like a steep “V”. We have to go down and back up again every time we go to class. It will be good for us.

We had another unsatisfying lunch and then went across campus to Villa Sassetti for and information fair, where local businesses came and handed out paraphernalia. I left with about 20 pamphlets, but luckily, St. Mark’s Episcopal/Anglican (explain THAT one…) Church gave us a bag to carry everything else in.

We had a short break before it was time to officially immigrate into Italy. We had to show our passport to an Italian Consul who checked us off and confirmed that we were officially temporary residents of Italy. Kinda cool.

I came back to my room and took a nap for a few hours before dinner. Molly and I played a little piano last night after dinner. It was nice to get our hands on an instrument!

Some people went out last night, but I simply couldn’t. I was WAY too wiped out. I had a nice night at home, and forced myself to stay up, talking with friends via AIM or Skype.

Interesting things I’m noticing in Italy:

They use commas instead of periods for the decimal place. So something in the USA that is $3.75 would be € 3,75 in Italy. It’s not that big of a deal, but when you look at a whole receipt full of prices like that… you get really thrown off. It’s incredibly disorienting at first, and I’m still not totally used to it.

I have a strong desire to speak in Spanish when I’m here, simply because it’s ANY language other than English. When I hear a foreign language being spoken all around me, my default response it to think in the foreign language that I know, even though it’s worthless here.

One of the coolest things I’ve seen is Italian graffiti. I don’t know why it intrigued me so much, but when I saw Italian phrases spray-painted on the wall that runs along Via Bolognese, it just struck me that graffiti is, of course, everywhere.

The other thing that sounds completely cheesy but is really true is the international language of emotion. Since I’ve been traveling and hearing so many languages, you start looking at what is in common once you take away the language, and what stands out is emotional expression. Smiles. Laughter. It’s all universal, and I think that’s why they call music the “universal language” because it’s just that – emotional expression. And every culture and language can relate to that.