Another Soccer Game

We had another game tonight. My understanding was that it was to take place at 7:50. I was reading in my room; around 6:50 I casually started getting ready, planning on being out the door by 7:00 - plenty of time to get there. On a whim, I checked my email before I left, curious about what time we're going to be playing next week. It was lucky that I checked, because I also saw that our game tonight was at 7:15, not at 7:50 as I had thought. I looked at my clock; it was 7:01.

My house is, according to Google Maps, 1.9 miles from the field. Because Fiorentina played AC Milan tonight, the streets around the stadium are absolutely crazy, and the buses are hardly running at all. I decided I'd have to run for it. I was on the road at 7:04 according to my cellphone, and I made it to the field just as we were kicking off. It wouldn't have been as big of a problem if was had had subs tonight, but we were pretty short on players. Anyway, I was practically sprinting along the crowded sidewalks and weaving in and out of traffic, but I made it there. The game was our easiest so far, the other team wasn't that good and we played pretty well so we ended up winning without too much difficulty.

My night doesn't end there though, because on the way home I casually engaged a young Italian man in conversation while waiting at the bus stop with Pietro to come home. What began with innocent banter ended with me and Pietro deciding it would be for the best if we just walked home. The guy was friendly enough, but he started talking about how the Americans were beautiful, going to great lengths to communicate to me that he thought I looked like Prince Harry, offering me cigarettes (but not Pietro), asking me how to say "dick" in English - things got kinda weird in a hurry. So we got outta there. On the plus side, I was able to more-or-less carry a conversation in a different language (probably leaning towards the "less" half of that equilibrium, but still). And now I'm at home. The end.

This Week, a Kid Thew Scissors At Me

Well, another week has passed in Italy and like any other, it has had its ups and downs.

This weekend I went to the Fiorentina game versus Livorno. Strangely enough, the highlight of the day came outside the stadium before the game even started. I was standing in line to buy tickets (because I'm never on top of my stuff enough to do things head of time), and this guy started talking to me in Italian. That's right, for some reason I've continued to trick people into thinking I'm one of them, and I'm always being approached for directions on the street. The last laugh is on them though when they find out I don't know what they're asking and even if I did, I wouldn't know the answer. Anyway, I actually got the gist of what this guy was asking, and I replied. A little later, he asked me another question, and I got that right too. The moral of the story is not only did I boss this guy at his own language (okay not exactly), I also out-knowledged him on Italian stadium procedures, something that he should generally know more about than me. I'm calling it a victory.

Monday I went back to my internship at the elementary school. Overall it's a really good experience, although it continues to be extremely fatiguing. I think the single moment that best illustrates this point is when the teacher stepped out of the classroom for literally ten seconds and two kids pulled out wooden swords and started fighting. It's either that or when a kid actually threw a pair of scissors at me to start class off. But in general the kids are all really sweet - the boys think it's cool that I play soccer and know Italian teams and players, and the girls think I'm scary, but that's okay. Kids give me chocolate after class a lot of the time, which I think means that I'm cool.

Monday also marked the first day of the 5-a-side soccer tournament I'm playing in with my school, which is coed and not super intense, but still pretty fun. When I got to school that morning my coach asked me if I would be the team captain. Cool, right? I was excited. I was also informed that along with the captaincy came certain responsibilities, the first of which was to cut three people from the team to get our roster down to the required ten. Not so cool. It was supposed to be a joint coach/captain kind of decision, but it basically came down to me picking three people who, even though they'd been showing up to practices, weren't going to be able to play in the tournament. Later my coach sent out an email telling the people they were cut, and I think it was obvious that I had a part in the decision. I thought it was kind of weird that I had to do that. Anyway, that was one of the lows of the week. We played two games on Monday - won one and lost the other. Tonight we played another game, which we tied. I play as a striker on our team, which is also kind of weird since I'm used to playing defense. I scored seven goals out of our eight tonight though (while playing more than a lot of other people), and I also hurt a girl on the other team, so, so far my dream of convincing everyone I'm the biggest d-bag at school seems to be coming true.

Cooper

In This Post, I Do Some Stuff

This past Saturday I went to Ravenna on a school trip, so there were a few professors who took us around to see everything and explain it to us. This is cool because they are all extremely knowledgeable and I inevitably learn way more than I would if I just showed up in the same city and walked around on my own all day, but my god - we looked at a lot of churches. Churches are cool and all, and no disrespect if churches are your thing, but we literally looked at different churches for six hours straight. And yeah, part of the reason I came to Italy was because there's lots of cool, historically significant stuff to be seen here, but I also came to Italy to watch soccer and eat sandwiches. And in activities belonging to the latter category, this past Saturday was sorely lacking. Ravenna is still a very interesting city, I just got a little bored.

My weekend attempted to redeem itself on Sunday when I went to Vieraggio for carnevale. This weekend was the last weekend of carnivale in Italy. There are two huge carnevales, one being in Venice and the other in Viareggio. Viareggio is closer and cheaper, so I went there. From what I can tell, it's a lot different than Venice. There everybody dresses in really expensive, elaborate costumes. They dress up in Viareggio too, but in goofy, halloween-esque costumes. Things like Tigger, Alice in Wonderland, etc. There's also a huge parade with GIANT (as in at least three stories tall) floats made out of paper mache. Viareggio is also on the coast, so I got to walk on the beach and see the sea for the first time in Italy and get sand in my hair and in my underwear, so that was cool. Alas, I forgot my camera on Sunday, so all I have is this picture that somebody else took of me and I... found.... later:

And that was pretty much my weekend. All in all, pretty good.

Today was Monday. School was the usual. The highlight was learning a new verb tense in Italian class. After school I was slated to start my internship, where I'm helping teach English in a fifth grade Italian classroom. I rode to the school with my faculty supervisor, but from now on I'm taking the bus there. I am there for an hour of recess and then two hours of class, but with all the buses I have to take the whole process is really closer to a five hour commitment. Also, it's exhausting. Anybody who's ever witnessed a conversation between a group of Italians know how they go - lots of shouting, no turn-taking, everybody trying to be heard. Anybody who has spent time in a classroom full of fifth graders knows what that's like. So combining the two is absolutely devastating for one's brain - there's just no way human beings were designed to sit through that for two hours, let alone participate and teach. By the time I finished I was pretty pooped, and then I had to take two buses to get home an hour later.

Random Musings

I've been in Florence for exactly one month today.

I joined a gym that's really near my house and pretty cheap. The only thing is that it's almost all guys, and almost all of them are super jacked, and most of them seem like they know each other. I'm just the shrimpy little American who isn't jacked enough, doesn't know enough Italian, and nobody knows where he came from or why he's there.

I bought another sweater (only six euro). This one's purple, which is the dominant color in Florence. On the one hand, I feel pretty legit having a purple sweater. On the other hand, I feel like 1-year-ago Cooper would be absolutely disgusted by sell-out Florentine Cooper.

I don't remember if I already wrote this in the blog, and I can't be bothered to go back and check. Last week I took a cooking class where we made three different kinds of pasta from scratch, different sauces, and tiramisu. It was super duper good.

I found a little grocery store near my school with a deli counter in the way back where you can order panini. It's delicious. And way cheap.

That's all that comes to mind. I'm going to Ravenna tomorrow (leaving at the crack of dawn, again) and possibly Viareggio on Sunday.

Another Miserable, Absolutely Horrendous Week in Florence

Hey everybody. I'd apologize for the lack of posts in the past week, but that would be presumptuous on my part to assume that a) anybody reads this thing, and b) they actually enjoy it when they do. So I won't.

The main reason I didn't post anything this week is because nothing of note really happened. It was pretty much a boring week of school, and nothing exciting happened. I mean, I guess I was in Florence and all, but that's probably getting pretty boring to hear about by now.

There are no classes on Friday, so Thursday night I went to this bar near my house with the two other guys who live in the same apartment building as me. It turns out this is far more convenient than taking a bus downtown for the night and having to walk 45 minutes back home at 3:30 in the morning. Anyway, we went into this bar and there was nobody there. The bartender was looking at us kind of weird and asked if we wanted to go downstairs, so we did. It turns out that's where all the people who are in the know go, because there was this crazy Italian karaoke night going on, complete with a crazy DJ, crazy Italians, and more cigarette smoke than oxygen. The mood was great, and then the DJ left and some guy came out and started rapping over these super intense beats. His whole act was way angrier than what was called for, given the mood there. We left not too long after that.

Friday night was my mom's 53rd birthday, so we went to a restaurant for dinner with Paulo, Luisa (my host sister who is visiting from school in Milan this week), my mom's sister (see blog entry number 1), my mom's friend, and her friend's son. We were supposed to go at 8, but it got pushed back over and over until we didn't leave until around 10. At this point I was beyond hungry, but my mom knows the owner at this place so it was closer to 11 by the time we actually sat down. Over the course of the next hour we just sort of ate a constant stream of different courses. Although it's a restaurant during the evening, this place made its fortune as one of the best discoteca's in Florence. Around midnight they move all the tables out of the middle of the space and people start dancing. They're playing all these Italian dance songs before midnight though, so by the time we were eating people were already pumped; everyone was up on tables and benches dancing and singing along, etc. Even my mom was singing along. They finally played an American song that I knew the words to; I tried singing along but of course I was the only one singing so I just looked stupid. Anyway, we didn't make it home until around 3 in the morning. Mom, if you're reading this, I expect the same from you on your next birthday.

Last night was Fiortentina v. Roma in the Serie A. A big game for Fiorentina, since Roma's in 3rd place and Fiorentina, while they were not too long ago in 4th, have been steadily sliding since I've been here. I waited too long to buy tickets though and by the time I got around to it they were all sold out. The atmosphere around our house was great, people were singing and helicopters were circling overhead and there was even a fight between Roma supporters and police in riot gear on the corner right by my building. So anywhoo I went down to the stadium at halftime to try to sneak in, but that place is locked down like prison. The only positive was that I owned these Italians at their own language (that might be an exaggeration. I did do pretty well, though) - I was all like, "I've forgotten my ticket inside, my friend has it." "No, I can't call him because it's too loud, I can't hear anything." "It's already the second half, I can't just go in?" "For the love of God, man, have pity on a dying man whose last wish is to see the second half of the Fiorentina game." (I didn't actually say the last one. Mostly because I don't know how - I would have tried just about anything).

And that whole sequence of events just about took me to Monday morning, where I was supposed to get to watch The Matrix in my moral philosophy class until the stupid girl who sits right behind me and thinks that because she took a philosophy class once sophomore year she knows everything about everything and can argue with the professor (who has a PhD in philosophy) about anything, and who always asks stupid questions that bear no relevance to what we're talking about but which the professor is forced to respond to, thereby taking up the entire period so that we run out of time to watch The Matrix, started asking questions. If you were able to follow that aggresively long run-on sentence, you might be able to figure out that we didn't end up watching the move. But then I went and ate a panino, so I felt a little better.

That's about all. Stay tuned!

-Cooper

Roma

Hey team - this past weekend I went to Rome, so I figured I'd write a blog post about it. First of all, Rome as a city is way bigger than Florence, in terms of both size and population. Which on the one hand is cool, because it's a much different experience than being in Florence, but on the other hand makes it difficult to get a good picture of the city in just a few days being there. Even so, all signs so far indicate that Rome is a very cool city, for lack of a better word.

When I woke up at 6:30 am (in Italy I would just write 06.30. It makes more sense really, one doesn't ever need to specify am or pm when the clock is 24 hours.) on Friday to head to the train station, the temperature outside was well below freezing. I could even see my breath inside the bus on my way over. We caught an early bus, so we were in Rome by 10:00. Friday was dedicated to touring the Vatican Museum. It was cool and all, but we really flew through so there wasn't much time to look at things. I know I should have been more in awe, but I just don't know enough about art to get really really excited about this stuff, like some people do. Still, it was pretty sweet to see an original Caravaggio hanging up on the wall, since he's one of the only artists I actually know, and he's pretty badass. We also saw a ton of old statues. Eventually we made it to the Sistine Chapel. Some of the grandeur was definitely taken away by the fact that the floor was packed with tourists, but it is definitely a very different feeling to be standing below the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel than to be looking at it in the pages of a book (side note - I read recently that in the famous ceiling panel where God is reaching out from Heaven and touching Adam, the weird thing that God is sitting on is actually a giant brain. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's pretty sweet if it is, and it definitely makes me like Michelangelo more.). I learned that Michelangelo started painting faster and faster as he worked on the ceiling; he painted his last panel in just two days, which is pretty incredible.

Anyway, that was fun and all, but the highlight of Day 1 was definitely St. Peter's Basilica. It is just awesome. Hard to describe, and really a picture doesn't do it justice, but here's one I found that at least gives you an idea of what the inside looks like:
The ceiling that you see in the foreground is actually high enough to totally encapsulate a 15 story building. But the church is designed to appear more reasonable to humans - the statues set back into the columns are 14 ft tall, while the ones all the way up by the arches are 20 ft tall. This fools your eye into thinking they're not as far away as they actually are, and so your brain doesn't realize how big the space is. The open space in the ceiling you see at the end is the church's cupola (dome), which rises up even higher than the rest of the church. I later walked up there with some friends, but first this picture I took inside the church of a boy standing in a pillar of light:
So we climed all the way up to the top, which is something like 550 stairs. That doesn't sound like very much now that I see it typed out, but it was a long way up. But once you get to the top, you can see pretty much all of Rome, in 360 degrees. This photo shows the square in front of the church - I'm not very up on my Catholic terminology, but it's where the balcony is that Pope comes out to when he talks to people. As you can see, we're pretty high up.

Day 2 was my favorite day. We went on a walking tour of Rome, seeing some of the most famous sights. The weather was bad (the sun would come out, but then without warning it would start absolutely pouring down rain), so I didn't get too many pictures.

Our first stop was il Colosseo. I can't really describe how awesome it is. You see so many pictures and movies of the Colosseum that you get this picture of it in your mind. But when you see it in real life, you realize just how incredibly massive it actually is. It's absolutely amazing to think that something like this was built almost 2000 years ago - it could hold somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 people. I was with a really good "tour guide" this day (really just a guy from Syracuse, but he knew a ton about the Colosseum and was really excited about it, so that was great.). He talked about how the Romans could fill or empty the whole structure in about 20 minutes, which is incredible. But he talked most about the actual Gladiator matches. I guess this entry is getting so long that I should save room by not going into specifics, but in a nutshell, the events were absolutely brutal. And surprisingly, the movie Gladiator actually got most of the details right. It made me want to go back and watch it pretty badly. Here's a picture from the outside of the Colosseum. You can see how big it is compared to the people standing at its base. It's just massive.
Here's a picture of me inside the Colosseum that I had some Spanish girl take (2nd side note - there's so many tourists in Rome that sometimes I would try to pretend to be Italian just to mess with them. Like, if two women came up to me and asked me in English to take their picture, I would answer and speak only in Italian. A few times I even had people come up to me and ask me for directions. Do I really look that Italian?). I was going to upload some other pictures of the inside but again, in the interest of time, I will spare you, the reader.
The next stop on our journey was the Roman Forum, but it basically poured the whole time we were there. One of the characteristics of the Roman Forum is that it has almost literally nowhere to take cover from the rain, which you will discover if you ever go there while it's pouring rain. I don't have many memories from that part of the day, but I'll just tell you all that I went there.

My favorite part of Day 2 (and thus, if you've been keeping track, of the whole trip), was the Pantheon. My understaning is that they still don't know exactly what it was for, but it was some sort of relgious burial place/giant sundial. Or something. The key point to take away though it that it's cool. If you're still reading at this point (congratualions, by the way), you'll note that I've already used the word "cool" to descibe several things. The Pantheon is the most deserving. It was cool cool. Double cool, if you will. Let me try to describe it. First, here's a picture:
There are sixteen columns in front. They are made out of monolithic slaps of Egyptian granite, which is one of the hardest rocks in the world. 2000 years ago, the Romans somehow managed to not only carve out these giant slabs of Egyptian granite, they somehow transported them all the way back to Rome and erected them. I can't imagine how much each of them must weigh.

I don't have pictures of the inside of the Pantheon, but you could surely find some online with just a little poking around. But the inside is even better than the outside. The floor is a perfect circle, 142 ft in diameter. There are all sorts of swell architecture things going on in the interior, but the most obvious is the giant dome which extends up from the walls. The dome is construced from a single, massive piece of concrete. Even with our modern technology this would be extremely difficult to create; the fact that the Romans did it 2000 years ago is incredible. The top of the dome is 142 ft above the floor - the interior of the Pantheon is a perfect sphere. Right at the center is The Oculus (latin for "eye"), a hole through which light shines. Unfortunately, despite raining just minutes before, the weather was sunny again by the time we arrived at the Pantheon. When it does rain, it comes through The Oculus in a perfect cylinder. It collects on the marble floor before gradually draining out through a tiny hole in the middle of the imperceptibly sloping floor.

That's about all, my apologies to all who read this (although to be fair, you probably just looked at the pictures and skipped over the rest).

-Cooper