It's Always Sunny in Perugia: An American In Perugia

It's me again!

I was going to try to update this once a week, but that might be too ambitious for me. We'll see, shall we?
SO. I have concluded just over two full weeks here in bella Perugia (pictures below). I briefly touched on our first few days in my last post, so now that I've got enough to write about, I'll give more detail. There are loads of photos on my Facebook page, but if you don't do facebook, I'll post more photos soon.

Starting Monday the 11th and continuing through Thursday, all of us had what I refer to as a crash course in survival Italian. Some students came in with prior experience, others like myself came in with none at all. We learned the basics: the alphabet, numbers, how to say your name, etc etc. Morning sessions went until noon, and then picked up again in the afternoon at either 1.30 or 3.30. My session was the latter, from 3.30 to 5.00. I had ample time every day to find a new cafe for lunch, go home and take a nap, or go to the school library to download books on my Kindle. We typically ate dinner in our flat, and gradually I've been eating later and later at night. Most places here don't serve dinner until 7 pm at the earliest. I've opened a few restaurants before. It's a bit awkward.

During the afternoon sessions of our Italian classes, we went on mini-field trips around Perugia: the grocery store, a cafe to practice ordering in Italian, or the bus station. It was really useful because the instructors told us things that we normally wouldn't notice or think about; for example, when buying produce in the store, you MUST have a plastic glove on to pick up the fruit/veg, and you MUST weigh it yourself and print off a price sticker. We've all run into that little trouble spot a few times at the check out, when the cashier notices we haven't printed off the sticker and then huffs at us in exasperation. I could just tell they were internally rolling their eyes at us.

I've done some contemplation of what it means to be an American in Italy. While the stereotype of Americans is very often untrue, some elements of it still come out. For example, drinking. In America, I or my friends might have a few drinks and then go to the bar. It's - I hesitate to say more acceptable, but for lack of a better term, I'll stick with that - more acceptable to be drunk and to proclaim yourself as such. Here in Italy, people don't really get drunk. Wine is drunk with dinner, of course, and there's very often cocktails served with apertivos, but rarely will you see a group of Italians stumbling down a street. It's considered rude and is, in fact, illegal to be publicly drunk here, which is fine by me, since I'm not known for my penchant for public intoxication. However, as part of a large group of college students used to a different style of drinking and partying, I can sense myself becoming more and more eager to move away from that stereotype of the loud, drunken American. It's definitely a bit stressful, trying to remember the various cultural aspects that I'm not used to. I have no doubt that we'll all get there, of course; it's more that we're still in the first few weeks of our stay and we're all feeling that sense of independence that came with the first year of college, only more intense.
That's just one example of the learning curve that we all inevitably come to.

Back to Perugia itself. The city is ancient, dating back to Roman times, and has some parts of the original city still in use. For example, the route to the bus station takes you underground through what used to be the city center 'back in the day.' I can't quite believe I get to live here. I walk around each day with my eyes wide open at the tiny alleyways that hide little cafes (referred to as 'bars' here) and shops.
Perugia is set like some ancient jewel on the side of a gold and amethyst valley. When at the right location, I can view a huge part of the Umbria region and the surrounding mountains. Umbria is a smaller region right in the middle of Italy, and Perugia is just one of many smaller towns dotted among the farms and lakes. The sunsets, on clear evenings, have been the most incredible shades of orange and purple, and across the valley you can see the city of Assisi.

My roommates and I, along with a handful of other people, journeyed to Assisi last Saturday. I am rarely speechless, but I was in that city. Almost every building is made of some stone that is mottled brown, white, and grey, with veins of tan and faint pink running through it. We arrived midday, so the sun was high and bright, the wind was icy. We wandered around the blustery city for a while, peeking down quaint alleyways and photographing window boxes, all the while holding on to our respective hats and scarves that were being blown about by the wind. Eventually we came upon Rocco Maggiore, the ruins of an ancient fortress that has been renovated and includes a museum. The center part of the fortress was a rectangle and in it were various rooms surrounding one central courtyard. The rooms had weapons and clothing that had been used as early as the 14th century (well, the clothes were replicas, the weapons I'm pretty sure were original, given the amount of dust and rust on them). We were also able to go out on the battlements of the fortress, and I was absolutely agog at the height we reached. Assisi is already halfway up a mountain, so to stand on the edge of the highest battlement was like being on the edge of the world. The wind, even stronger up there, came howling through mountains behind me, dark with shade and crouching ominously behind this tiny white gem of a city. We were only in Assisi for a few hours, and I'm already planning to go back.

The first week of classes went relatively smoothly: I have an Italian language class, an archaeology class, creative writing, and a history class called 'Saints, Sinners, and Harlots.' It's about medieval women in central italy, and is proving to be an interesting class. One focus of the course is the importance of food in the lives of women, particularly religious women, so that should be interesting. I begin my second consecutive week of class tomorrow.

This past weekend saw a short day trip to a small city in Tuscany called Cortona. If anyone is familiar with the book Under the Tuscan Sun, that is where said book is set. We went on Saturday, which was foggy & chilly (Italy has proven to be much colder in the winter than I had initially thought; it's unfortunate, seeing as I didn't pack a winter coat. Whoops). We weren't there long, but we got a good tour of the inner city, had a lovely long lunch at a restaurant that offered authentic Tuscan cooking classes (lunch consisted of the best pasta I've yet had, lovely red wine, and great conversation). Following lunch, we slightly tipsily rolled our overstuffed selves to the Museo dell'Accademia Etrusca, or the Etruscan museum. It was a bit pricey (ten euro for entry) but we were the only ones there and the exhibits were lovely. We saw lots of ancient Etruscan artifacts (quick reminder that the Etruscans were the people who lived in Tuscany prior to the Roman Empire) and, weirdly, a lot of Egyptian artifacts. Not sure why a mummy was hanging out in Cortona, but to each their own.

Here are some photographs: