So currently I am sitting in my dorm room on a beautiful afternoon in Siena, Italy reflecting on my past week of adventures. There have been countless stories and a lot of great luck on my part so I guess the best way to start would be from the beginning.
Monday morning I left bright and early around 4:30 in the morning to make my flight at 6:50. I arrived at the airport drowsy and tired from not sleeping and packing the night before and couldn't wait for my impending trip. It was smooth traveling from Atlanta to Chicago and from Chicago to London, with no major problems along the way. The only slightly annoying thing was that my plane ride from here to London. I managed to get the one seat that was next to an army of eighth graders that were going on a Euro trip with their school... let me just say that not only were they more fidgety and loud than most infants, three of the students were wearing toe socks...enough said. Regardless of that, I was going through the lines of the customs and I saw what seemed like a familiar face. Megan (Prunty) and I managed to book the same plane to London to connect to Italy the next morning and it took walking past each other three or four times for us to realize that we were standing next to each other with the same purpose. Thank goodness she had enough courage to ask me if I was an IRES student because I totally wouldn't have for fear that I was just seeing stars from not sleeping peacefully. Regardless we were able to share a hotel room that night and it was just fantastic to be able to see a familiar face on this lonely journey.
Tuesday morning I left for the airport to realize that Heathrow is more of a shopping mall than a terminal. With a 1PM train, I was anxious to get to Pisa on time, but of course our arrival was delayed. I had arranged for Dr. Gabriella Tamasi (a professor at the University of Siena that helps Emory with their chemistry study abroad program) to pick me up so when my plane arrived two minutes before the train was supposed to depart, I was extremely anxious of my schedule. We were delayed because of some internal emergency within the airport that closed all the airways into Pisa so we circled for a good 45 minutes before landing. I managed to mime my way into using a pay phone and asking for tickets and finally found the train. The train stations here are interesting because it is literally a long set of rails parallel to each other with each platform only reachable by an underground tunnel system similar to the subway. Of course, me, with no upper body strength and a gigantic 50+ pound luggage was struggling to move around the train station and even missed a connecting train because of my confusion. It's interesting because to ride the train, not only do you need to buy a ticket but also to validate it before getting on the train (a type of punching system on each platform). On top of that, there is also a train ticket checker that will check it again. I guess they must have a lot of suspicious train riders here or something.
Aside from that, I fortunately arrived in Siena safe and sound and was greeted by Dr. McCormick (Organic Lab Professor) and Dr. Tamasi and my adventure was only beginning. Naturally, just as I arrived it started pouring... but fortunately my luck would turn up because as I arrived at my Uni housing, I met my roommate, a lovely Polish German Sicilian who welcomed me warmly and could speak English (win!!). My housing here is so cheap and Dr. Tamasi has been tremendously helpful with setting everything up like a international student card and my internet, etc. that it has been just great. I had my first night in Siena and I couldn't be more excited to explore the city! My roommate introduced me to some of her friends and we went to the cafeteria to eat dinner. She showed me around the city a little and showed me the grocery store, good places to eat, etc. My first night, while nerve-wracking and tiring, was fantastic and I knew my summer was just beginning.
The next day I went with Dr. Tamasi around the city and she showed me where I was going to work, how to get to the bus stop, and introduced me to my lab mates and PI. Everyone was extremely friendly and welcomed me as if I was part of their family already. I was assigned a project and started reading up on the theory behind microwave synthesis. I was eager to get into the lab but am still waiting for approval from the international office for lab access because of the need for proof of medical insurance. Everyone here is friendly and it's so amusing to have to mime and translate because their English, while better than most Italians was still lacking the conversational practice. They love to practice "The English" on me and eager to ask me questions about American culture. For lunch, I had my first cup of Italian coffee and first slice of Italian pizza and honestly, I have to say that I'm in love. It was seriously life changing and I don't know if I can ever eat Italian food in America again. Absolutely phenomenal.
That night, I had dinner with Dr. McCormick. We walked around the city as around dusk and he showed me all the great places to visit and the best views in town. We were walking around and, honestly, my calves and glutts were being at attacked by the cobblestone roads and hills of Siena. The city is absolutely gorgeous, nothing quite compares to the beautiful medieval look of the architecture and buildings. The city is known for maintaining the same buildings and look since the medieval times, with some buildings and structures dating back to the pre-Roman times. It's ridiculous how beautiful even the apartment buildings are and looking out the window, I truly feel like I'm in Europe. The best way to describe it is that it is like the part where Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast is walking down the street and people pop out of their windows as they are singing songs. Of course, we have yet to break out into song here but you never know I guess. We ended up eating at this one Osteria (a type of simple restaurant here) that was precariously placed on a gigantic hill. The chairs and tables were interesting because to compensate for the steep hill, one of the legs was longer than the other, with any slightly movement in the chair risking the chance of falling over and tumbling down the hill. I don't understand why they insisted on sitting outside in such a dangerous environment but oh my gosh if it wasn't funny to be able to see people falling out of their chairs and dropping things and items rolling down the hill. When people finally started to get drunk, it was even more disasterous.
Continuing to go to work the next day, my lab mates invited me to join them for a communal dinner they were having that night in celebration of one of the girl's birthdays. The food here is absolutely to die for and when Luca (a PhD candidate) made a home-cooked meal I felt like I had died and gone to heaven with all the deliciousness. Positively ridiculous how delicious the food was. We spent the night chatting and laughing about weird lab happenings and I seem to have started to pick up Italian-accented English intonations to my words. The language barrier is funny if anything because it's like half-miming and mostly just speaking incredibly slowly and simply. It's great because they are trying to practice english but also attempting to teach me some Italian so hopefully of Italian will be perfecto at the end of the summer!
If anything, the biggest culture shock that I have is not being able to understand the signs or the posters posted around the city. Some words are so similar but the rest of the sentence would be indistinguishable. Also, the streets of the Siena don't really make any sense because they are circa 1400. It's crazy because being in America, of course our country is so young at 300 years old. Here, there are banks that have been running since 1472 some so old that they are known to be the banks that funded Christopher Columbus's trans-Atlantic journey. I feel like I'm walking the streets of Italian scholars and thinkers and hopefully the new air and environment can show me something about life that I have missed so far. If anything, I hope it inspires Nobel Prize-winning research!
Safe and sound, I'm ready for what Italia has to throw to me!
much love and olive oil, ciao!
