Falling in Love with Italian Life

After the first few days in Siena, I'm really getting to know the city. Landmarks are becoming familiar, and going out isn't as overwhelming as it was at first. Behind every corner is a new feast for the eye; literally everything here is ancient and beautiful.

Probably my favorite picture I've taken so far. It really captures how tiny the streets are.
Also, there's a pigeon flying in the sky. They are EVERYWHERE here, and are not afraid
flying in right in your face.

Cute little shop where they sell fresh fruit

I love all the pottery here! I might have to buy one before its all over.

From left to right: Piergiacomo (one of my Wine in Italy teachers), Jeff (my art history professor, visiting here from Oregon), Becca, Me, and Joey (the only three students in the program!)
Here, we are at the fortress of Siena, which is a part of the wall that surround the city.

Beautiful archway, and a great landmark for finding our way around Siena :)

Awesome statues

Hog's head hanging outside a butcher shop. If you look closely, it even has glasses! Haha.

Becca and I in front of Siena's duomo {cathedral}

Inside Siena's duomo. The black and white stone is representative of the struggle of light
and dark (or good and evil)

Restaurant where we had our first official Italian meal, complete with antipasti,
red wine and wonderful pasta

From left to right: Me, Claudia, Silvia (our site director), Joey, Jeff, and Becca
All of the food was delicious! I had picchi, a super thick spaghetti-like noodle, which Siena is famous for. 

I'm falling more in love with this city each day I spend here. Tomorrow I have my first day of classes, which should be interesting.

First Day in Siena

The first day in Siena was a whirlwind, but it has gotten me really excited to be here. I just wanted to share a few photos so you guys could see where I will be going to school and where I will be living.

The AHA center is INCREDIBLE. The building that it is in used to be a house for a noble family of Siena, and we get to go to school on the floor where the family used to reside. The next floor up is where the servants used to live, and the first floor is where they kept their horses. Check it out:

AHA Library, formally the master bedroom

Ceiling in the library

Front desk at AHA Headquarters

Hallway in AHA Office

Classroom. We won't be needing that many chairs, since there are only three people in my program.
 It's going to be so strange coming from OSU, where class sizes are so big, but I plan on learning a lot!

Next, we got to see where we will be living the next few months. It is a great little apartment right in the heart of downtown Siena and very close to the AHA office. Here are a few pictures:

Door to the apartment

My bed

Steps to the porch

Porch window

View from the porch

We also went on a practical tour of Siena, where our site director, Silvia, showed us the ins and outs of the city. I'll share a few snapshots, but we are learning more tomorrow in a more academic tour of Siena!

Pizza place, where our site director, Silvia, bought us a (square) piece of pizza

I got ham and cheese, which had crust on top and on bottom.
Twice the bread =  twice the deliciousness!

Beautiful alley we walked down

The clock tower in the Piazza del Campo

Gelato place where our professor, Jeff, bought us gelato.
 I got a lot of free food today:) Jeff and his wife Chris are visiting
 Siena from Eugene, where he is a professor at U of O

Duomo, Siena's amazing cathedral

Tomorrow, we are getting a formal tour of the city. I'm excited to learn more about its official history, but learning where the best gelato place is was important to know too! :) It's been a great day, and I'm excited for an amazing term.

The Journey to Siena

The journey here was a long and tough one. Here's what I learned along the way:


I will never take Portland Airport for granted again
Other airports are giant, confusing, and slowwwww...

Compliments can come at the most unexpected times
I get off the plane in Paris, and I head to Customs, which is this big scary desk in which very serious and official-looking employees check your passport. The woman takes my passport, looks at it and then me, and proceeds to tell me something in French. I must have looked confused, because she turned to her co-worker to confirm what she told me. At this point, I know something must be wrong with my passport, so naturally I'm a little concerned. She then turns to me and says in broken English, "Nicole Kidman? You look like her." I sighed with relief and thanked her for the compliment.

Billy Joel is apparently universal
On the bus to downtown Florence, "In the Middle of the Night" came on, and it made me smile.

God sends us good people to help us out
There was one point when I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it to Siena. I had taken a bus from the Florence airport to downtown, and needed to get to another bus station to catch a bus to Siena.  I asked four different people, all of which who gave me different answers in broken English. I was exhausted, confused, and in a foreign country by myself. All I could do was lift up a prayer and I am absolutely positive that God sent Jeanine my way. She was an American who has lived in Italy for 20 years, and she helped me find the station, buy a ticket, and made sure I got on safely. I almost broke down in tears as I thanked her for all of her help.


Lines on the road, if they exist at all, are merely suggestions
In Italy, no one follows them anyway.


Despite some bumps in the road, I made it to Siena. The first night was hard; the combination of jet lag and homesickness really got to me. But I know I'm here for a reason, with many more lessons to learn.

Goodbye Comfort Zone... Ciao Italia!

 Siena is in the Tuscany region of Italy.
Look at this! I mean, am I really lucky enough to live in this surreal and beautiful place!?

Thanks for checking out my blog. For the next three months, I will be living in Siena, Italy. I wanted to create a blog not only to keep in touch with friends and family back home, but also to create a keepsake from my adventures abroad. 

The past week has been filled with difficult good-byes. I've said goodbye to some awesome friends, and three great years at Oregon State. Soon, I will be saying goodbye to my family and my wonderful boyfriend, who have all been so supportive of my grand adventure. But honestly, the hardest part is saying goodbye to my comfort zone, leaving all that is familiar and good.

For those of you who know me, you know how out of character it is for me to move to the other side of the world. I believe that because world travel is not my natural tendency is what makes this trip that much more important. Of course I am nervous, but I've been oddly peaceful about the whole thing. I'm not going to speak the native language, I'm inevitably going to get lost with my terrible sense of direction, and I'll be completely overwhelmed by a culture utterly foreign to me--and it's going to be awesome! 

I'm not planning on being very wordy on this blog, but I do want to keep track of all of the lessons I learn along the way, hence the title of the blog. :) What I'm hoping is to have a great assortment of snippets from my adventures; some will be funny, some will be heartfelt, some may be a product of sheer exhaustion, but I'm hoping to have a collection of memories to carry with me the rest of my life.