I have Internet!

Woo-hoo!  I finally have Internet at my place.  I'm not completely sure when it started working.  My landlord came by on Tuesday to help me with it, but before he arrived I turned on the router and tried to bring up the problem pages on the web, but it worked!  Everything all of a sudden worked even though the router still didn't have all the appropriate lights.  The landlord came over, we put in the username and password information and now I'm good to go.  I think I'll be fine from here on out.  And the connection seems to be pretty fast.  I still haven't gotten to test Skype yet though.

So anyway, life in Italy gets better every day.  I've figured out that in combination with people not speaking to me in Italian when I first got here, I was also frustrated with the lack of help from Rotary and also the lack of company.  But things are better now.  I have fantastic friends that are American, British, and Italian.  I also have been getting great help from certain Rotary members and the Roteract.  I went to a murder mystery dinner with the Roteract kids and last night had a fantastic dinner with the Todescans, a family of Rotarians.  I love that family.  We speak all in Italian, but the Mrs. speaks English just in case I don't get something, plus they feed me fantastic food and lent me an old bike today!

Anyway, all is going well here in Firenze.  I can't write too much now because I have to write several essays for Rotary before next week.  In English and Italian...ugh...

Rotary thus far

Actually a very old post, so not actually anything about "last night" lol

Grand dio!  Tutto andava bene!  Benissimo!  Tonight I went to my first Rotary meeting tonight, thanks to the wonderful Elaine Poggi, and had an amazing time.  E tutto era in italiano!  Elaine only knew two or three people there, but she is a very outgoing person and immediately started introducing me to people.  She started with the nearest group of people, who after a while I found out were a bunch of teenagers.  They were nice, but basically talked amongst themselves.  There was also an American girl there but I continued speaking to her in Italian when they introduced me to her, but then I found out that she doesn’t really speak any Italian.  Alas, everyone in that group was between 16 and 18.

Then I found Elaine and told her that those kids were too young for me so we found the group from Roteract that were all around my age.  I ended up meeting a lot of people because we all sat at a table together.  It was a lot of fun and really funny because every time I was introduced to someone they would great me with what little English they knew, but then became very excited when they found out I could speak Italian.  Thus, I had a great night and great dinner with new friends and picked up my first Rotary banner.  Sadly, I didn’t take one of mine so I couldn’t give them one, but they’re letting me come back in the spring to present them with a banner.

Since then I’ve been to a couple other events for both Rotary and Roteract.  I was working on this post like a month ago and as per usual I didn’t finish and kept forgetting about it.  One very fun event though that I recently went to was to play Wii with the Roteract and Interact clubs.  We played Wii Tennis, which was very fun and surprised them that I knew how to play so well.  It was also funny because the Wii announcer still spoke English but all the text on screen was in Italian.

So the next step is being an actual member of Roteract.  There is some big dinner I’ll be going to next week.  I keep getting confused about what’s going on with membership and payment because they always explain it to me very, very fast.  So, things for Rotary are going pretty well, even though my “host” has only spoken to me once in the last couple months to basically say he’s been busy and I still won’t be able to speak at his club anytime soon.

Okay, if you read through all that, great.  This is basically a month or two old and I’ll try to be more up to date next time.

La SpeeeeEEEEEEEEranza!

I’m prefacing this with the fact that I originally was writing it like September 23^rd or 24^th as a word document and I’m just now posting it.  Sorry!

Yesterday I received an e-mail about events that are happening in Florence for students this week.  In that e-mail was information about a concert that night of Porgy and Bess.  And what was even better was that the tickets for students were only 5 Euros!  So of course I planned on going.

So, when I got home I went for a run (because I’m running in the Corri la Vita this weekend) and went about 2 miles I think only really stopping at stoplights.  I got back and had hoped to cook dinner before going to the concert, but realized that to get there in time to buy a ticket, even by bus, I needed to shower and leave.  So I did and then looked up a quick bus schedule.  Well, I couldn’t find any evidence of this bus around my house, so I hopped on one that came by, asked if it was going to the theater, and several people on the bus said yes and a young couple told me to go with them.

So, I talked to them for a while and we got to the theater and looked for the ticket office.  They had purchased their tickets online, and apparently so had a few other hundred people and they all had to stand in the ticket line to pick up these tickets.  We finally found the end of the line, about a block long, and took our places.  The guy told me that he didn’t know about any tickets being left, but I could always try.  So I stood there.  As we got closer we started seeing signs saying the performance was sold out, but I was already about 20 minutes into the wait.  So we talked about it and decided that maybe people didn’t show up and I should keep waiting because I had already committed over half an hour (and the show was already about 10 minutes late.  So I got to the point in the line where you just stand and wait for the absentee tickets.  My new friends wished me luck and get their tickets.

I continued to wait.  I was very confused by the line because no one was assisting us and we were all just standing there.  Then finally they started giving out tickets.  Most were for 35 Euros and I thought about buying one and trying for a discount of like 10 or 15 Euros.  Then all of a sudden they said that they were not selling any more tickets because they had to start the show.  We were all extremely let down.  But then some guy showed up behind all of us and he had a single ticket and it looked like he had a girlfriend for whom he couldn’t buy a ticket.  I asked him how much and he only wanted 5 Euros!  But then they said they were closing the doors and he thought the ticket wouldn’t matter.  The people behind the desk said I could still get in if I hurried.  So I gave him the money and took off running.  The ticket was for the floor seats but the door was closed, so they took a last minute group of us upstairs to the second tier.  We walked in as they were finishing tuning, but it was amazing to make it in like that!

So, as for the concert, it was decent.  From the tier I could hear the singers on stage right pretty well, but for the second half I moved down to my actual ticketed seat and could only really hear people on stage left.

After the concert I went around to the stage door, of course, and waited for performers.  The chorus slowly filed out and I actually knew a few people, one of whom because he had sung Colline in La Boheme in Lucca when I was there two years ago.  Super cool!  My voice teacher’s wife was also in the chorus and the music director for my church.  The only soloist I saw come out was the tenor who sang Sportin’ Life, Ronald Samm.  I talked with him for a bit and he was very nice.

Overall a very fun and exciting night, made all the better by the suspense of whether or not I would get in to see the concert!

Now, as you all could tell it took me a while to get this post up.  My Internet is back to not working at my apartment.  I’m starting to look for a way out of the agreement so I can move at the end of this month or maybe for the next semester.  Internet is kind of required in this day and age to stay in touch with friends and loved ones.  Also, I have a couple more blog posts written up in word perfect so I’ll try to use this week to get everything up.  Try not to miss one!