Wed Mar 2

Well, here it is the third day of language school and we seem to have weathered a number of crises since our last post:  Monday the power went off right in the middle of cooking dinner in the apartment, so we had to bail out and eat out at a nearby restaurant.  We thought the internet connection had crashed on us, too, and were offline until last night (it was a problem within our laptop, not the network).  Then Tre got an electric shock from the metal sink drainer.  Maria Chiara, our landlord, tried to  help us with the net and is working on the shock.  She tries to be on top of things.  On Wednesday Ken came home while I was taking a nap and sat on my glasses.  Fortunately there’s an optometrist a short walking distance away.  He went out a few minutes before 7 and by 7:15 glasses were perched on my head and I was able to complete dinner………..large ravioli type pasta that looked like pope’s hats, mild sausage, a mesculin salad with oil and vinegar.  Of course chianti, too.  The weird thing is both of us seemed to have a problem with wine in the states.  Here we just slug it back.

Yesterday evening our language school organized a dinner for 16 Euro to a trattoria over by the Arno.   

Ponte Vecchio over the Arno

They hadn’t told us where we were going and we just followed the leader.  It was actually a beautiful walk on a very chilly night.  The trattoria was  in a basement cellar and the meal, while not the best we have had, certainly made up for it in quantity and good fellowship.  It started with three kinds of what else???  Ham and some greens.   Then came a soup of beans and bread.  There are a lot of soups In Florence with bread as part of the soup.  The pasta dish had a light tomato sauce with a hint of anchovy.  Next came veal covered in shaved  parmesan and chunks of grilled potatoes.  All this was followed by my favorite dessert, panna cotta.  If you’ve never had panna cotta, it’s a custard-like dessert that is congealed with gelatin, not eggs. 

Today in language class we were asked to write about someone who was either a famous actor, singer, politician or writer.  To my surprise I was the only one to choose a non-American.  I am also the only American in my class.  That won't be for long since Ken will be joining me for the grammar section.  He took the entrance exam on Monday, and got placed in the second level class, to his amazement and horror.  However, he’s had enough of the ”imperfetto” verb tense by now.  Doesn’t even know how to do it in English, let alone Italian, and suspects that ordinary people won't be offended if his grammar is less than perfect.  The Portuguese (there are at least 4 from Brazil), Spanish and French students definitely have an edge since their languages are so similar to Italian. There’s one really brave women from Japan who’s also taking the course. 

Our school (Istituto Italiano) is on the fourth floor of the building shown in the photo.  It does have an elevator, but it’s small and slow, so we usually get our workout climbing the stairs.

Istituto Italiano

Our apartment is only a couple of minutes walk from the school, near Piazza San Lorenzo.  (You can look it up for homework!)  Streets are narrow and cobblestoned here, so you have to walk carefully and alway be on the lookout for careening cars, motorcycles or bikes and the occasional dog poop.  You can get an idea of the isses of driving in Florence by looking at the sreet our apartment looks out on.  This unhappy truck driver had to go find the owner of the car so he could get by!

Traffic on a typical street in our neighborhood

Either tomorrow or Saturday it’s back to the supermarcato for some fresh meats, veggies, fruits and bread.  Maybe a little dolce (sweets), too.  Having been a newly crowned diabetic I was really afraid that I would be unable to eat all that Florence and Italy in general had to offer.  In fact it’s pretty easy to eat a fairly healthy diet with so many great offerings.  I think Ken will take some pictures at the marcato so you can see for yourselves the incredible array of food.  It’s easy to see why Italians are rarely fat.  1.) They walk to everything and 2.) There’s wonderful food when they get there.