Tea, Tachiflu Medicine, Tissues, Emergen-C, and more Tea.

I got some shit called Tachiflu to help my cold. It's a powder that you put in hot water and it tastes like medicated lemon-honey tea. I guess it's working, my nose has dried up which is great. Pre-Tachiflu my nose was like the fucking Niagra Falls and I was sneezing every other second so, yeah, this is definitely more ideal. I still have no energy which sucks but I only had class on Monday and Tuesday this week so thank god for that.

Classes, Colds, and Complaints

October 12, 2011

I’ve just finished my second full week of university classes and am living in a university apartment with three lovely Italian girls, one with whom I share a double. We have no living room, just two bedrooms/bathrooms with an adjoining kitchen, so visitors beware: bring your own sleeping bag or portable air-mattress if you plan on coming here.

My classes are interesting…I think…I’m not quite sure because I only understand about 30% of what the professor says in one of them and about 60% in the other. I’m taking history of contemporary philosophy, which, as you might assume, is the class in which I only understand 30%. All the lectures are on concepts and theories, which can be difficult in English, so just imagine how much info goes zooming over my head in Italian. My other class, contemporary Italian literature, is slightly easier. My professor gets very excited about the novels we’re reading and is a small, slightly chubby, old lady so it’s a little like listening to an Italian grandmother tell a story. I’m very excited about this class because the novels that we’ve been assigned sound really interesting and I can read four of them in English (hurrah for reasonable professors!).

But, alas, Italy always throws obstacles at me the second I start to feel comfortable. I have yet to find any of my courses’ books (because why would Italian bookstores sell Italian novels in English?), the weather took a sudden turn so all of the sudden it’s cold out, and because of this sudden temp change I’ve come down with a pretty bad cold. Meh. Now I have to go to the pharmacy. I’ll tell you about it when I get back. OH! And the internet just went out so I have no idea when I’ll be able to post this.

Alright, I’m back. So the pharmacy run was surprisingly easy, I don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t be. I knew the key words to explain my cold to the pharmacist: raffredore (cold), congestionata (congested), and le tosse (coughs). Armed with the correct vocabulary and very obvious symptoms I conveyed my illness, received my medication and its instructions, and paid in all of three minutes. 

Prompt service? In Italy? Unheard of. Except, apparently, at the pharmacy. 

Ashes Ashes we all Fall Dead

October 10, 2011

The week before last will forever be referred to as….THE WEEK OF DEATH

It was by far the most hectic week I’ve had here, which is saying a lot because I’m including weeks where I had to lug around my two large suitcases (plus an over-loaded backpack) from city to city and on and off trains.

 

List of Pains-in-the-Ass:

1. I had two oral exams for my language class. The exams here are more like an interrogation than an exam. It’s just you and your teacher face-to-face. One was on the history of Padova/Italian grammar and the other was more of a presentation on a topic of your choice. All in Italian, of course.

2. Then I had to move from one residence to another on the whole other side of town.

3. And then I had to miss class to sit for five hours at the police station to deal with some beaurocratic bullshit about the Permesso di Soggiorno (I honestly have no idea what it’s purpose is, but we had to do it).

4. AND on top of all that university classes started.  You have to shop around for classes here instead of just signing up for them on the internet like at the UC’s so it’s a lot more time-consuming.

So I missed most of our last week of language course class which means that I half-assed my presentation and crammed hard-core for the oral exam because the history reading we’d been assigned was so thick with Italian technical terms that none of us really understood it the first time around. Finally, now that I’ve settled into my permanent housing, got an A in my language course, and found all of my university classes, I can relax.