On Monday morning I woke up my new IKEA
alarm clock beeping incessantly. The tiny little machine is far too loud and
complicated to have only cost one euro. Waking up in my apartment is always confusing because we have
shutters over the window, blocking out any light so I always feel like it’s the
middle of the night. On top of all this we have no carpets and the apartment is
only heated at about 68 degrees for a few hours a day so getting out of bed and
stepping onto the freezing cold floors is exceptionally difficult. Once up and
out of bed I packed up my bag, grabbed a banana and headed off to my first
class. While running to cross the street before getting hit by a bus, the
shoulder strap of my bag snapped under the weight of my books and my things
spilled into the middle of the road. Luckily Florentine bus drivers are used to
crazy pedestrians so I wasn’t run over. After scooping up my bag I rushed to
meet Corinna by the Duomo. My first class was Wine Marketing and
Communications, held, with all the other food and wine classes in the building
farthest away from my apartment, on Via Guelfa. After about a twenty-minute
walk and a little backtracking we finally found the building. When I walked in
and asked the woman at the front desk where my class was, she informed me that
it was actually held in Corso dei Tintori 21, the building closest to my
apartment and pretty much on the other side of town. After another
twenty-minute walk in the bitter cold I reached my classroom, muttered
apologies in Italian and English and sat down at the back of the class. I
quickly got over my embarrassment (especially when a girl walked in late about
an hour after me and didn’t even bother to apologize) and eagerly started
taking notes. It’s going to be a great class and my teacher, Enrico, seems very
nice. It’s a pretty standard marketing class except for its concentration on
wine and the fact that we’ll actually be doing a few wine tastings in class.
On
Tuesday I attended my first conversational Italian class. Having completely
forgotten how to speak Italian since last Italian course in the spring, I was
nervous to see what level the rest of my classmates were on. I could tell when
I sat down that everyone else was nervous, which was comforting. There were only
six of us so we made some awkward conversation about how we hoped the teacher
was nice and how we didn’t even really speak Italian at all. When the teacher
finally came in and handed out our syllabi the first thing I noticed was the
course description which read: “This course is meant for those students who
already possess fluency and confidence in the Italian language and who wish to
perfect their skills in current idiom.” I’m sure that not one person in my
class is fluent (except a guy who transferred in on Thursday from a higher
class because he was too lazy and makes us all look really bad), so I’m not too
concerned. Thursday’s class proved that our teacher is plenty willing to dumb
her lessons down until we get back into the swing of things.
Aside
from learning that my friend Nellie is in my Ethics of Globalization class,
Wednesday was fairly uneventful. Our teacher was a no-show so a woman came in
to hand out our syllabi and inform us that this teacher “expects a lot of his
students,” which is something every college kid hates to hear. After class I
went to pick up our three required books: “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”,
“Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations & the Threat to Global
Prosperity” and “The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy”. Sounds fun
right? Stay tuned…
Thursday
is both my busiest and most exciting day of class. I leave my apartment right
at 8:30, giving myself a full half hour to make it across the campus to Via
Guelfa (thankfully I had triple-checked my course list today making sure I was
going to the right building). I walked into An Exploration of Wine Culture and
was immediately greeted by the sight of six bottles of wine and rows of wine
glasses on the desk at the front of the room. My teacher, Lapo, spent the first
part of class giving a simple introduction of the process of wine making and
tasting in a very thick Italian accent. By around 11 am we were tasting
Prosecco (Italian champagne). Lapo walked us through a proper tasting and then
toasted to the semester. Even before tasting the wine I couldn’t seem to keep a
smile off my face. There’s just something about being required to drink wine in
class before noon that makes me giggly. Just before ending class Lapo said,
“Remember my dear, the wine is an alive product.” Expect many more quotable
quotes from Lapo throughout the semester.
By
Food, Culture and Society in Italy at 3:00, I was dragging a little. Sitting
around the countertop tables in our kitchen-classroom I found myself glancing
at the clock every five minutes or so. Like my wine class in the morning
though, once we reached the second half of class I was well awake. Starting
next week we’ll have a short lecture followed by a tasting and then a cooking
exercise. The first class was strictly tasting. We tried two different types of
Italian honey a strong, dark honey called Miele della Luigiana and a lighter
honey that was extremely sweet and smooth that comes from the Acicia tree. We
also tried three different types of olives: green olives preserved in brine,
black olives that are dried, baked and then rehydrated with olive oil and
water, and then another type of green olive that is preserved with chili
powder. We tried both the olives and honey on various types of Tuscan bread. Saving
the best for last, my teacher brought out tiny jars of thirty-year-old balsamic
vinegar (each jar costing about sixty euros) and had us taste the vinegar by
itself. Then we drizzled it on top of a custard-flavored gelato. The
combination was amazing. The balsamic vinegar gave the gelato an almost fruity
taste. By the end of class I fully trusted my teacher and decided that, no
matter what, I will taste everything she offers us. The lesson on cheese is
late in the semester so hopefully I will have expanded my palate enough by that
point to at least not gag during the tasting.
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